Ż

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

Polish

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

Ż represents the voiced retroflex fricative [ʐ], similar to the pronunciation of ⟨g⟩ in "mirage". It usually corresponds to Ж or Ž in most other Slavic languages.

Its pronunciation is the same as the rz (digraph), the only difference being that ⟨rz⟩ evolved from a palatalized ⟨r⟩. It also sounds closer to Czech Ř.

Ż occasionally devoices to the voiceless retroflex fricative [ʂ], particularly in final position.

Ż should not be confused with ⟨Ź⟩ (or ⟨z⟩ followed by ⟨i⟩), termed "soft zh", the voiced alveolopalatal fricative ([ʑ]).

Examples of Ż

 żółty  (yellow)
 żona  (wife)

Compare ź:
 źle  (wrongly, badly)
 źrebię  (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 common to see capital Ƶ with dot above, used to easily distinguish it from capital Z or Ź (Z with acute accent).

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".

Computing codes

See also

• Polish alphabet
• Polish phonology
• Dot (diacritic)