Ze (Cyrillic)

Not to be confused with the Arabic numeral 3, the letter yogh (Ȝ), or the letter ezh (Ʒ).

Cyrillic letter Ze
Numeric value:	7
The Cyrillic script
Slavic letters
А Б В Г Ґ Д Ђ Ѓ Е Ѐ Ё Є Ж З З́ Ѕ И Ѝ І Ї Й Ј К Л Љ М Н Њ О П Р С С́ Т Ћ Ќ У Ў Ф Х Ц Ч Џ Ш Щ Ъ Ы Ь Э Ю Я
Non-Slavic letters
Ӑ А̄ А̊ А̃ Ӓ Ӓ̄ Ә Ә́ Ә̃ Ӛ Ӕ Ғ Г̧ Г̑ Г̄ Ҕ Ӻ Ӷ Ԁ Ԃ Ꚃ Ꚁ Ꚉ Ԫ Ԭ Ӗ Е̄ Е̃ Ё̄ Є̈ Ӂ Җ Ꚅ Ӝ Ԅ Ҙ Ӟ Ԑ Ԑ̈ Ӡ Ԇ Ӣ И̃ Ҋ Ӥ Қ Ӄ Ҡ Ҟ Ҝ Ԟ Ԛ Ӆ Ԯ Ԓ Ԡ Ԉ Ԕ Ӎ Ӊ Ң Ԩ Ӈ Ҥ Ԣ Ԋ О̆ О̃ О̄ Ӧ Ө Ө̄ Ӫ Ҩ Ԥ Ҧ Р̌ Ҏ Ԗ Ҫ Ԍ Ꚑ Ҭ Ꚋ Ꚍ Ԏ У̃ Ӯ Ӱ Ӱ́ Ӳ Ү Ү́ Ұ Х̑ Ҳ Ӽ Ӿ Һ Ԧ Ꚕ Ҵ Ꚏ Ҷ Ӵ Ӌ Ҹ Ꚓ Ꚗ Ꚇ Ҽ Ҿ Ы̆ Ы̄ Ӹ Ҍ Э̆ Э̄ Э̇ Ӭ Ӭ́ Ӭ̄ Ю̆ Ю̈ Ю̈́ Ю̄ Я̆ Я̄ Я̈ Ԙ Ԝ Ӏ
Archaic letters
Ꙁ Ꙃ Ꙅ Ꙇ Ꙉ Ҁ Ѻ ОУ Ꙋ Ѡ Ѽ Ꙍ Ѿ Ꙏ Ѣ Ꙑ Ꙓ Ꙕ Ꙗ Ѥ Ѧ Ꙙ Ѫ Ꙛ Ѩ Ꙝ Ѭ Ѯ Ѱ Ѳ Ѵ Ѷ Ꙟ Ꙡ Ꙣ Ꙥ Ꙧ Ꙩ Ꙫ Ꙭ ꙮ Ꚙ Ꚛ
List of Cyrillic letters Cyrillic digraphs

Ze (З з; italics: З з) is a letter of the Cyrillic script.

It commonly represents the voiced alveolar fricative /z/, like the pronunciation of ⟨z⟩ in "zoo".

Ze is romanized using the Latin letter ⟨z⟩.

The shape of Ze is very similar to the Arabic numeral three ⟨3⟩ and the Cyrillic letter E ⟨Э⟩ and the Latin numeral 3.

History and shape

In early Russian typewriters like this, there was no key for the digit 3, so Ze was to be used instead.

Ze is derived from the Greek letter Zeta (Ζ ζ).

In the Early Cyrillic alphabet its name was землꙗ (zemlja), meaning "earth". The shape of the letter originally looked similar to a Greek or Latin letter Z with a tail on the bottom (majuscule: Ꙁ, minuscule: ꙁ).

In the Cyrillic numeral system, Ze had a value of 7.

Medieval Cyrillic manuscripts and Church Slavonic printed books have two variant forms of the letter Ze: З/з and Ꙁ/ꙁ. Some early grammars tried to give a phonetical distinction to these forms (like palatalized vs. nonpalatalized sound), the system had no further development. Ukrainian scribes and typographers were regularly using З/з in an initial position, and Ꙁ/ꙁ otherwise (a system in use till the end of the 19th century). Typographers from the Great Russia also knew the two shapes, but have used the second form mostly in the case of two З's in row: ЗꙀ (the system in use till mid-18th century).

The civil (Petrine) script knows only one shape of the letter: З/з. However, shapes similar to Z/z can be used in certain stylish typefaces.

In calligraphy and in general handwritten text, lowercase з can be written either fully over the baseline (similar to the printed form) or with the lower half under the baseline and with the loop (for the Russian language, a standard shape since the middle of the 20th century).

Phonetic value

The letter Ze may represent:

• /z/, the voiced alveolar sibilant (Macedonian, Bulgarian, Bosnian, Serbian, Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian);
• /zʲ/, if followed by ⟨ь⟩ (by ⟨ј⟩ in Bosnian and Serbian) or any of the palatalizing vowels, as in Russian зеркало [ˈzʲer.kə.ɫə] (“mirror”);
• /s/, the voiceless alveolar sibilant (in final position or before voiceless consonants);
• /sʲ/, if followed by ⟨ь⟩ in final position or before voiceless consonants;
• clusters ⟨зж⟩ and ⟨зш⟩ are pronounced in Russian as if they were ⟨жж⟩ and ⟨шш⟩, respectively (even if ⟨з⟩ is the last letter of a preposition, like in Russian без жены “without wife” or из школы “from school”);
• cluster ⟨зч⟩ (sometimes also ⟨здч⟩) is pronounced in Russian as if it was ⟨щ⟩ (рассказчик “narrator”, звёздчатый “stellar, star-shaped”, без чая “without tea”);
• cluster ⟨дз⟩ can be pronounced (mostly in Ukrainian and Belarusian) as the voiced alveolar affricate /dz/ (Ukrainian дзеркало “mirror”) or its palatalized form /dzʲ/ (Belarusian гадзіннік “clock”), but if ⟨д⟩ and ⟨з⟩ belong to different morphemes, then they are pronounced separately.

З-shaped Latin letters

Zhuang

A letter that looks like Cyrillic Ze (actually, a stylization of digit 3) was used in the Latin Zhuang alphabet from 1957 to 1986 to represent the third (high) tone. In 1986, it was replaced by ⟨j⟩.

Other related letters and similar characters

• 3 : Digit Three
• Ζ ζ : Greek letter Zeta
• Z z : Latin letter Z
• Ʒ ʒ : Latin letter Ezh
• Ȝ ȝ : Latin letter Yogh
• Ҙ ҙ : Cyrillic letter Dhe or Ze with descender
• Ӡ ӡ : Cyrillic letter Abkhazian Dze

Computing codes

Character	З		з
Unicode name	CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER ZE		CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER ZE
Encodings	decimal	hex	decimal	hex
Unicode	1047	U+0417	1079	U+0437
UTF-8	208 151	D0 97	208 183	D0 B7
Numeric character reference	З	З	з	з
KOI8-R and KOI8-U	250	FA	218	DA
Code page 855	244	F4	243	F3
Code page 866	135	87	167	A7
Windows-1251	199	C7	231	E7
ISO-8859-5	183	B7	215	D7
Macintosh Cyrillic	135	87	231	E7

External links

• The dictionary definition of З at Wiktionary
• The dictionary definition of з at Wiktionary