Dzhe

Dzhe (Џ џ; italics: Џ џ) is a letter of the Cyrillic script used in Serbian and Macedonian to represent the voiced postalveolar affricate /dʒ/, like the pronunciation of ⟨j⟩ in "jump". Sometimes, the name dzherv is used, following the pattern of traditional names such as cherv for ⟨Ч⟩ and djerv or gjerv for ⟨Ђ⟩.

Dzhe corresponds in other Cyrillic alphabets to the digraphs ⟨дж⟩ or ⟨чж⟩, or to the letters Che with descender (Ҷ ҷ), Che with vertical stroke (Ҹ ҹ), Khakassian Che (Ӌ ӌ), Zhe with breve (Ӂ ӂ), Zhe with diaeresis (Ӝ ӝ), or Zhje (Җ җ).

In the Latin version of Serbo-Croatian, it corresponds with the digraph ⟨dž⟩ which, like the digraphs ⟨lj⟩ and ⟨nj⟩, is treated as a single letter, including in crosswords and other puzzles.

Abkhaz uses it to represent the same sound as Dje, and uses a dzhe-soft sign ligature to represent the same sound it does in Serbian.

History

The origin of the letter Dzhe is the 15th century Romanian Cyrillic alphabet. Serbian scribes began using it in the 17th century.^[1] Vuk Karadžić included it in his Cyrillic script reform.

Related letters and other similar characters

• DŽ Dž dž : Latin letter Dz with caron
• J j : Latin letter J

Computing codes

References

1. ^ Petar Đorđić, "Istorija srpske ćirilice", Belgrade 1970, p. 203

External links

• The Wiktionary entry for Џ
• The Wiktionary entry for џ