Basic Latin alphabet
Aa Bb Cc Dd   Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv   Ww Xx Yy Zz

Z is the twenty-sixth and last letter of the modern Latin alphabet. The letter A is the first letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is a (eɪ plural B is the second letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled bee or occasionally be (biː plural bees. C is the third letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled cee or occasionally ce (siː D is the fourth letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled dee or occasionally de (diː E is the fifth letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled e (iː plural es or ees (also written E's E F is the sixth letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled ef or eff (ɛf G is the seventh letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled gee or occasionally ge (dʒiː I is the ninth letter of the Latin alphabet. Its English name is i (aɪ J is the tenth letter in the modern Latin alphabet; it was the last of the 26 letters to be added K is the eleventh letter of the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled kay (keɪ L is the twelfth letter of the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is el or occasionally ell (ɛl M is the thirteenth letter of the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled em (ɛm N is the fourteenth letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled en (ɛn O is the fifteenth letter of the modern Latin Alphabet. Its name in English is spelled o (oʊ plural usually o's or os; sometimes P is the sixteenth letter of the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled pee or occasionally pe (piː Q is the seventeenth letter of the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled cue (kjuː R is the eighteenth letter of the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled ar (ɑr pronounced or) S is the nineteenth letter in the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled ess or occasionally es (ɛs generally es- T is the twentieth letter in the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled tee or occasionally te (tiː U is the twenty-first letter in the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled u (juː V is the twenty-second letter in the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled vee or occasionally ve (viː W is the twenty-third letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled double-u (ˈdʌbljuː X is the twenty-fourth letter in the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled ex or occasionally ecks (ɛks plural exes The letter Y is the twenty-fifth letter in the modern Latin alphabet. A letter is an element in an Alphabetic system of writing such as the Greek alphabet and its descendants

In many dialects of English, the letter's name is zed (pronounced /zɛd/), reflecting its derivation from the Greek zeta (see below). English is a West Germanic language originating in England and is the First language for most people in the United Kingdom, the United States The Greek alphabet (Ελληνικό αλφάβητο is a set of twenty-four letters that has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early See also Principality of Zeta Zeta (uppercase Ζ, lowercase ζ; Ζήτα Zita is the sixth letter of the Greek alphabet. In American English dialects, its name is zee /ziː/, deriving from a late 17th-century English dialectal form. Phonology North American English regional phonology In many ways compared to English English, North American English is conservative in its Phonology. As a means of recording the passage of Time, the 17th Century was that Century which lasted from 1601 - 1700 in the Gregorian calendar Another English dialectal form is izzard or izzed /ˈɪzɚd/, which dates from the mid-18th century and probably derives from the French et zède "and z". The 18th century lasted from 1701 to 1800 in the Gregorian calendar, in accordance with the Anno Domini / Common Era numbering system French ( français,) is a Romance language spoken around the world by 118 million people as a native language and by about 180 to 260 million people This is the predominant form in anglophone South Asia. An Anglophone (or anglophone) is someone who speaks the English language.

Other Indo-European languages pronounce the letter's name in a similar fashion, such as zet in Dutch, Romanian and Czech, zède in French, zäta in Swedish, zeta in Italian and Spanish, and zê in Portuguese. Dutch ( is a West Germanic language spoken by around 24 million people 22 million of which are from the Netherlands, Belgium and Suriname Romanian or Daco-Romanian ( dated: Rumanian or Roumanian; self designation limba română, ˈlimba roˈmɨnə is a Romance Czech (ˈʧɛk čeština ˈʧɛʃcɪna in Czech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers it is the majority language in the French ( français,) is a Romance language spoken around the world by 118 million people as a native language and by about 180 to 260 million people Swedish ( is a North Germanic language spoken by more than nine million people predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along the Italian ( or lingua italiana) is a Romance language spoken by about 63 million people as a First language, primarily in Italy. Portuguese ( or língua portuguesa) is a Romance language that originated in what is now Galicia (Spain and northern Portugal.

In Chinese (Mandarin) Hanyu Pinyin Z is pronounced [ts] unaspirated "c" (Hanyu Pinyin "c", not Latin) (halfway between beds and bets). Standard Mandarin, also known as Standard Spoken Chinese, is the official modern Chinese spoken language used in mainland China and Taiwan Pinyin, more formally Hanyu pinyin, is the most common Standard Mandarin Romanization system in use In romanised Japanese Z stands for both [z] and [dz]. is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities

Contents 1 History 1.1 Blackletter Z 2 Usage 3 Codes for computing 4 See also 5 References

History

Proto-Semitic Z	Phoenician Z	Etruscan Z	Greek Zeta

The name of the Semitic symbol was zayin, possibly meaning "weapon", and was the seventh letter. The Middle Bronze Age alphabets are two similar Undeciphered scripts dated to be from the Middle Bronze Age (2000-1500 BCE and believed to be ancestral Zayin (also spelled Zain or Zayn) is the seventh letter of many Semitic abjads, including Phoenician 𐤆 Aramaic, Hebrew It represented either z as in English and French, or possibly more like /dz/ (as in Italian zeta, zero).

The Greek form of Z was a close copy of the Phoenician symbol I, and the Greek inscriptional form remained in this shape throughout ancient times. The Greeks called it Zeta, a new name made in imitation of Eta (η) and Theta (θ). See also Principality of Zeta Zeta (uppercase Ζ, lowercase ζ; Ζήτα Zita is the sixth letter of the Greek alphabet.

In earlier Greek of Athens and Northwest Greece, the letter seems to have represented /dz/; in Attic, from the 4th century BC onwards, it seems to have been either /zd/ or a /dz/, and in fact there is no consensus concerning this issue. Athens (ˈæθənz Αθήνα Athina,) the Capital and largest city of Greece, dominates the Attica periphery as one of the world's The 4th century BC started the first day of 400 BC and ended the last day of 301 BC. In other dialects, as Elean and Cretan, the symbol seems to have been used for sounds resembling the English voiced and unvoiced th (IPA /ð/ and /θ/, respectively). Crete ( Greek: Κρήτη transliteration: Krētē, modern transliteration Kriti) is the largest of the Greek islands and the In the common dialect (κοινη) that succeeded the older dialects, ζ became /z/, as it remains in modern Greek.

In Etruscan, Z may have symbolized /ts/; in Latin, /dz/. Old Italic refers to several now extinct Alphabet systems used on the Italian Peninsula in ancient times for various Indo-European (predominantly Italic In early Latin, the sound of /z/ developed into /r/ and the symbol became useless. It was therefore removed from the alphabet around 300 BC by the Censor, Appius Claudius Caecus, and a new letter, G was put in its place soon thereafter. Appius Claudius Caecus ("the blind" ca 340 BCE - 273 BCE) was a Roman politician from a wealthy Patrician family G is the seventh letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled gee or occasionally ge (dʒiː

In the 1st century BC, it was, like Y, introduced again at the end of the Latin alphabet, in order to represent more precisely the value of the Greek zeta — previously transliterated as S at the beginning and ss in the middle of words, eg. The 1st century BC started the first day of 100 BC and ended the last day of 1 BC. The letter Y is the twenty-fifth letter in the modern Latin alphabet. sona = ζωνη, "belt"; trapessita = τραπεζιτης, "banker". The letter appeared only in Greek words, and Z is the only letter besides Y that the Romans took directly from the Greek, rather than Etruscan.

In Vulgar Latin, Greek Zeta seems to have represented (IPA /dj/), and later (IPA /dz/); d was for /z/ in words like baptidiare for baptizare "baptize", while conversely Z appears for /d/ in forms like zaconus, zabulus, for diaconus "deacon", diabulus, "devil". Vulgar Latin (in Latin sermo vulgaris, "folk speech" is a Blanket term covering the popular Dialects and Sociolects of the Latin Z also is often written for the consonantal I (that is, J, IPA /j/) as in zunior for junior "younger".

Until recent times, the English alphabets used by children terminated not with Z but with & or related typographic symbols. The modern English alphabet consists of 26 letters derived from the Latin alphabet: History See also History of the An ampersand ( &) also commonly called an " 'and' sign," is a Logogram representing the conjunction "and" George Eliot refers to Z being followed by & when she makes Jacob Storey say, "He thought it [Z] had only been put to finish off th' alphabet like; though ampusand would ha' done as well, for what he could see. Mary Ann (Marian Evans ( 22 November 1819 – 22 December 1880) better known by her Pen name George Eliot, was an "

Blackletter Z

A glyph variant of Z originating in the medieval Gothic minuscules and the Early Modern Blackletter typefaces is the "tailed z" (German geschwänztes Z, also Z mit Unterschlinge) In some Antiqua typefaces, this letter is present as a standalone letter or in ligatures. Blackletter, also known as Gothic script or Gothic minuscule, was a script used throughout Western Europe from approximately 1150 Blackletter, also known as Gothic script or Gothic minuscule, was a script used throughout Western Europe from approximately 1150 Antiqua Typefaces are those designed between about 1470 and 1600 specifically those by Nicholas Jenson and the Aldine roman commissioned by Aldus Manutius Together with long s, it is also the origin of the ß ligature in German orthography. The long, medial or descending s ( ſ) is a form of the minuscule letter ' S ' formerly used where 's' occurred in the middle The letter ß ( Unicode U+00DF is a letter in the German alphabet.

A graphical variant of tailed Z is Ezh, as adopted into the International Phonetic Alphabet as the sign for the voiced postalveolar fricative. Ezh ( Ʒ ʒ) is a letter in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA representing the Voiced postalveolar fricative consonant The voiced palato-alveolar fricative or domed postalveolar fricative is a type of Consonantal sound used in some spoken Languages The symbol

Unicode assigns codepoints for "BLACK-LETTER CAPITAL Z" and "FRAKTUR SMALL Z" in the Letterlike Symbols and Mathematical alphanumeric symbols ranges, at U+2128 ℨ and U+1D537 𝖟, respectively. Letterlike Symbols are special characters like a regular alphabet or symbol characters but they have specific style and appearance which is known and commonly used in many different Mathematical alphanumeric symbols are modifications of Latin and Greek letters and decimal digits that enable mathematicians to denote different notions

lowercase z as taught in some German primary schools

Variant of z in an Antiqua typeface

Usage

In Italian, Z represents two phonemes, namely /ts/ and /dz/; in German, it stands for /ts/; in Castilian Spanish it represents /θ/ (as English th in thing), though in other dialects (Latin American, Andalusian) this sound has merged with /s/. Andalusia (Andalucía is an autonomous community of Spain. It is the most populous and the second largest in terms of land area

The International Phonetic Alphabet uses [z] for the voiced alveolar sibilant. The voiced alveolar fricatives are Consonantal sounds The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents these sounds depends on whether a Sibilant Early English had used (and to an extent, still does use) S alone for both the unvoiced and the voiced sibilant; the Latin sound imported through French was new and was not written with Z but with G or I. The successive changes can be well seen in the double forms from the same original, jealous and zealous. Both of these come from a late Latin zelosus, derived from the imported Greek ζηλος. Much the earlier form is jealous; its initial sound is the [dʒ] which in later French is changed to [ʒ]. It is written gelows or iclous by Wycliffe and his contemporaries; the form with I is the ancestor of the modern form. At the end of words this Z was pronounced ts as in the English assets, which comes from a late Latin ad satis through an early French assez "enough". See English plural. In the English Language, Nouns are inflected for Grammatical number —that is singular or Plural.

Z is also used in English to represent (IPA: /ʒ/) in words like azure, seizure. But this sound appears even more frequently as s-before-u, and as si before other vowels as in measure, decision, etc. , or in foreign words as G, as in rouge. The IPA character chosen for this sound in the nineteenth century is confused with another, much earlier obsolete character; for which, see Yogh. Not to be confused with the unrelated ʒ. For the rune transcribed as ȝ, see Gyfu.

Few words in the Basic English vocabulary begin with Z, though it occurs in words beginning with other letters. Basic English is an attempted core Subset of The English language created by Charles Kay Ogden and described in his book Basic English A General Introduction It is also the most rarely used letter in the English language. English is a West Germanic language originating in England and is the First language for most people in the United Kingdom, the United States ^[1]

For the use of "z" in such Scottish names as Culzean, Menzies or Dalziel, see: yogh. Not to be confused with the unrelated ʒ. For the rune transcribed as ȝ, see Gyfu.

Z was abolished in Icelandic in 1974. Icelandic ( is a North Germanic language, the language of Iceland.

Codes for computing

In Unicode, the capital "Z" is codepoint U+005A and the lower case "z" is U+007A. The NATO phonetic alphabet, more formally the international radiotelephony spelling alphabet, is the most widely used Spelling alphabet. Morse code is a Character encoding for transmitting telegraphic information using standardized sequences of short and long elements to represent the letters numerals Flag semaphore is a system for conveying information at a distance by means of visual signals with hand-held flags rods disks paddles or occasionally bare or gloved hands The American Manual Alphabet is a Manual alphabet that augments the vocabulary of American Sign Language when spelling individual letters of a word is the preferred The Braille system is a method that is widely used by blind people to read and write In Computing, Unicode is an Industry standard allowing Computers to consistently represent and manipulate text expressed in most of the world's Capital letters or majuscules pronunciation /məˈdʒʌskyuls ˈmædʒəˌskyuls/ in the Roman alphabet A, B, C, D, Lower case (also lower-case or lowercase) minuscule, or small letters are the smaller form of letters as opposed to upper

The ASCII code for capital "Z" is 90 and for lowercase "z" is 122; ^[2] or in binary, 01011010 and 01111010,^[2] correspondingly. American Standard Code for Information Interchange ( ASCII) The binary numeral system, or base-2 number system, is a Numeral system that represents numeric values using two symbols usually 0 and 1.

The EBCDIC code for capital "Z" is 233 and for lowercase "z" is 169 (64 less). Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code ( EBCDIC) is an 8- Bit Character encoding ( Code page) used on IBM mainframe Operating ^[2]

The numeric character references in HTML and XML are "Z" and "z" for upper and lower case respectively. A numeric character reference (NCR is a common markup construct used in SGML and other SGML-based markup languages such as HTML and XML. HTML, an initialism of HyperText Markup Language, is the predominant Markup language for Web pages It provides a means to describe the structure Don't change "Extensible"

See also

• Zed
• Zee
• Ž
• Ź
• Ż
• Ezh
• Ƶ
• Zzz
• З, з - Ze (Cyrillic)

References

The ISO basic Latin alphabet
Aa	Bb	Cc	Dd	Ee	Ff	Gg	Hh	Ii	Jj	Kk	Ll	Mm	Nn	Oo	Pp	Qq	Rr	Ss	Tt	Uu	Vv	Ww	Xx	Yy	Zz
Letter Z with diacritics ŹźẐẑŽžŻżẒẓẔẕƵƶȤȥⱫⱬᵶᶎʐʑɀ Two-letter combinations Za Zb Zc Zd Ze Zf Zg Zh Zi Zj Zk Zl Zm Zn Zo Zp Zq Zr Zs Zt Zu Zv Zw Zx Zy Zz ZA ZB ZC ZD ZE ZF ZG ZH ZI ZJ ZK ZL ZM ZN ZO ZP ZQ ZR ZS ZT ZU ZV ZW ZX ZY ZZ Letter-digit & Digit-letter combinations     Z0 Z1 Z2 Z3 Z4 Z5 Z6 Z7 Z8 Z9     0Z 1Z 2Z 3Z 4Z 5Z 6Z 7Z 8Z 9Z     history • palaeography • derivations • diacritics • punctuation • numerals • Unicode • list of letters

ISO 646 is an ISO standard that since 1972 has specified a 7- Bit character code from which several national standards are derived The letter A is the first letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is a (eɪ plural B is the second letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled bee or occasionally be (biː plural bees. C is the third letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled cee or occasionally ce (siː D is the fourth letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled dee or occasionally de (diː E is the fifth letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled e (iː plural es or ees (also written E's E F is the sixth letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled ef or eff (ɛf G is the seventh letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled gee or occasionally ge (dʒiː I is the ninth letter of the Latin alphabet. Its English name is i (aɪ J is the tenth letter in the modern Latin alphabet; it was the last of the 26 letters to be added K is the eleventh letter of the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled kay (keɪ L is the twelfth letter of the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is el or occasionally ell (ɛl M is the thirteenth letter of the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled em (ɛm N is the fourteenth letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled en (ɛn O is the fifteenth letter of the modern Latin Alphabet. Its name in English is spelled o (oʊ plural usually o's or os; sometimes P is the sixteenth letter of the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled pee or occasionally pe (piː Q is the seventeenth letter of the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled cue (kjuː R is the eighteenth letter of the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled ar (ɑr pronounced or) S is the nineteenth letter in the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled ess or occasionally es (ɛs generally es- T is the twentieth letter in the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled tee or occasionally te (tiː U is the twenty-first letter in the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled u (juː V is the twenty-second letter in the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled vee or occasionally ve (viː W is the twenty-third letter in the Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled double-u (ˈdʌbljuː X is the twenty-fourth letter in the modern Latin alphabet. Its name in English is spelled ex or occasionally ecks (ɛks plural exes The letter Y is the twenty-fifth letter in the modern Latin alphabet. A diacritic ( also called a diacritic or diacritical mark, point, or sign, is a small sign added to a letter to alter pronunciation Ź ( minuscule: ź) is a letter of the Latin alphabet, formed from Z with the addition of an acute. Pitch The circumflex accent was first used in the polytonic orthography of Ancient Greek, where it occurred (subject to certain rules on the accented syllable The grapheme Ž ( minuscule: ž) is formed from Latin Z with the addition of Háček. Ż is a letter in the Polish, Kashubian and Maltese alphabets Ẓ ( minuscule: ẓ) is a letter of the Latin alphabet, formed from Z with the addition of a dot below the letter A macron, from Greek el μακρόv ( makrón) meaning "long" is a Diacritic ¯ placed over or under a Vowel which was originally Ƶ ( minuscule: ƶ) is a letter of the Latin alphabet, derived from Z with the addition of a stroke. Ȥ ( minuscule: ȥ, Unicode codepoints U+0224 and U+0225 respectively a Latin letter Z with a hook Ⱬ ( minuscule: ȥ Unicode codepoints U+2C6B and U+2C6C respectively is a Latin letter Z with a descender The palatal hook (  ̡ is a type of hook diacritic formerly used in the International Phonetic Alphabet to represent Palatalized consonants. The voiced retroflex fricative is a type of Consonantal sound used in some spoken Languages The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet The voiced alveolo-palatal fricative is a type of Consonantal sound used in some spoken Languages The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet ɀ a Latin letter Z with a "swash tail" (encoded by Unicode, at codepoint U+0240 was used as a phonetic symbol by linguists studying African The złoty (/ˈzwɔtɨ/, plural for numbers ending in 2 3 and 4 (except 12 13 and 14 złote /ˈzwɔtɛ/ plural for all other numbers złotych /ˈzwɔtɨx/ Zirconium (zɚˈkoʊniəm /ˌzɝˈkoʊniəm/ is a Chemical element with the symbol Zr and Atomic number 40 Zero tolerance is the concept of compelling persons in positions of authority who might otherwise exercise their discretion in making subjective judgments regarding the severity of a given ZE redirects here For other uses see Ze. Líneas Aéreas Azteca was an Airline based in Mexico City, Mexico WE (pronounced as the word we, rather than WE is an originally Dutch, slightly upmarket high street Fashion Retailer Z2 may refer to Z2 (computer, a computer created by Konrad Zuse Z2 (band, an electronic music producer Zork 7z is a compressed Archive file format that supports several different Data compression, Encryption and pre-processing filters The Latin alphabet originated in the 7th century BC, undergoing a history of 2500 years before emerging as one of the dominant Writing systems in use today Palaeography, palæography ( British) or paleography ( American) (from the Greek grc παλαιός palaiós, Variants of the Latin alphabet are used by the Writing systems of many languages throughout the world A diacritic ( also called a diacritic or diacritical mark, point, or sign, is a small sign added to a letter to alter pronunciation Roman numerals are a Numeral system originating in ancient Rome, adapted from Etruscan numerals. Unicode as of version 51 defines the following ranges for encoding the Latin alphabet and derived characters See also Mapping of Unicode characters List of Latin letters. Basic alphabet Extensions and ligatures Letters with diacritics Digraphs trigraphs and tetragraphs

© 2009 citizendia.org; parts available under the terms of GNU Free Documentation License, from http://en.wikipedia.org
Dapyx Software network: MP3 Explorer | Ebook Manager | Zenithic