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

Polish

ż represents a voiced retroflex fricative (), 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 (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 ().

Examples of ż

(yellow)

(wife)

Compare ź:

(wrongly, badly)

(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 () rather than retroflex.

Maltese

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

Computer use

See also

• Polish alphabet

• Polish phonology

• Dot (diacritic)

Category:Polish languageCategory:Maltese language

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