Ż

Ż, ż (Z with overdot) is a letter, consisting of the letter Z of the ISO basic Latin alphabet and an overdot.

Usage

Polish

Signage on Polish municipal police (Straż Miejska) cars uses both the standard form (Ż) and the variant with horizontal stroke (Ƶ)

In the Polish language, the letter represents the voiced retroflex fricative ([ʐ]), somewhat similar to the pronunciation of ⟨g⟩ in "mirage".

Its pronunciation is the same as of the digraph rz, the only difference being that ⟨rz⟩ evolved in Polish from a palatalized ⟨r⟩. Ż represents common Slavic phoneme that originates from a palatalized /ɡ/ or /z/.[1] It can also occasionally devoice to the voiceless retroflex fricative ([ʂ]), particularly in final position.

The letter was originally introduced in 1513 by Stanisław Zaborowski in his book Ortographia[2]

Occasionally, capital Ƶ (Z with horizontal stroke) is used instead of capital Ż for aesthetic purposes, especially in all-caps text and handwriting.

Emilian-Romagnol

Ż is used in Emilian-Romagnol to represent the voiced dental fricative [ð] (or, in some peripheral dialects, the affricates [dð~dz]), e.g. viażèr ([vjaˈðɛːr], "to travel").

Kashubian

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

Maltese

City limit sign of Żurrieq in Malta

In Maltese, ż represents the voiced alveolar sibilant, pronounced like "z" in English "maze".

Computing codes

character	Ż		ż
Unicode name	LATIN CAPITAL LETTER Z WITH DOT ABOVE		LATIN SMALL LETTER Z WITH DOT ABOVE
character encoding	decimal	hex	decimal	hex
Unicode	379	017B	380	017C
UTF-8	197 187	C5 BB	197 188	C5 BC
Numeric character reference	Ż	Ż	ż	ż
CP 852	189	BD	190	BE
CP 775	163	A3	164	A4
Mazovia	161	A1	167	A7
Windows-1250, ISO-8859-2	175	AF	191	BF
Windows-1257, ISO-8859-13	221	DD	253	FD
Mac Central European	251	FB	253	FD

References

Corbett, Greville; Comrie, Bernard (2003). The Slavonic Languages. Routledge. p. 690. ISBN 978-1-136-86137-6. The spelling difference reflects the historical difference between a palatalization of /r/ (for rz) and of /g/ or /z/ (for ż).
Edward Polański. Reformy ortografii polskiej – wczoraj, dziś, jutro. Biuletyn Polskiego Towarzystwa Językoznawczego, vol. 60, p. 31. 2004. Warsaw. Energeia. ISSN 0032-3802.

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[1] Corbett, Greville; Comrie, Bernard (2003). The Slavonic Languages. Routledge. p. 690. ISBN 978-1-136-86137-6. The spelling difference reflects the historical difference between a palatalization of /r/ (for rz) and of /g/ or /z/ (for ż).

[2] Edward Polański. Reformy ortografii polskiej – wczoraj, dziś, jutro. Biuletyn Polskiego Towarzystwa Językoznawczego, vol. 60, p. 31. 2004. Warsaw. Energeia. ISSN 0032-3802.

Ż