Ż

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Ż is a letter in the Polish, Kashubian and Maltese alphabets.

Polish

ż represents a voiced retroflex fricative ([ʐ]), similar to English "s" as in pleasure. It usually corresponds to ж or ž in other Slavic languages.

Its pronunciation is the same as the rz (digraph), the only difference being that rz evolved from a palatalized r.

ż occasionally devoices to [ʂ] (voiceless retroflex fricative), particularly in final position.

ż should not be confused with ź (or z followed by i), termed "soft zh", a voiced alveolopalatal fricative (IPA: [[WP:IPA|ʑ]]).

Examples of ż

żółty (help·info) (yellow)
żona (help·info) (wife)

Compare ź:
źle (help·info) (wrongly, badly)
źrebię (help·info) (foal)

Occasionally, capital Ƶ (Z with horizontal stroke) is used instead of capital Ż for aesthetic purposes, especially in all-caps text and handwriting. It is often common to see capital Ƶ with dot above, used to easily distinguish it from capital Z or Ź.

Kashubian

Kashubian ż is a voiced fricative like in Polish, but it is postalveolar ([ʒ]) rather than retroflex.

Maltese

In Maltese ż is pronounced like "z" in English "maze".

Computer use

See also

• Polish alphabet
• Polish phonology
• Dot (diacritic)

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