Zhe (Cyrillic)

Zhe (Cyrillic) - Page 1

Zhe (Ж, ж) is the letter of Cyrillic alphabet which represents the voiced postalveolar fricative /ʒ/ (listen), similar to the s in the English word treasure or the g in the English word mirage.

It is the seventh letter of the Bulgarian alphabet, the eighth letter in the Belarusian, Macedonian, Russian and Serbian alphabets, and the ninth in the Ukrainian alphabet. It is also found in most non-Slavic languages written in the Cyrillic script, representing either /ʒ/, /ʐ/, or /dʒ/. In the old Cyrillic alphabet, zhe was the seventh letter. Its name was живѣте (zhivěte, 'live' imp.), and it did not have a numerical value.

It is not known how the character for zhe was derived. No similar letter exists in Greek, Latin or any other alphabet of the time, though there is some graphic similarity with its Glagolitic counterpart zhivete Ⰶ (Image: ) which represents the same sound. However, the origin of zhivete, like that of most Glagolitic letters, is unclear. One possibility is that it was formed from two connecting letters shin ש, the bottom one inverted. Sha ш, which represents the unvoiced counterpart of zhe, is one of several Cyrillic letters that derive directly from Hebrew letters.

Zhe is most often transliterated as zh (as in Doctor Zhivago), or as j, or more rarely as zx, except in Serbian and Macedonian and some transliteration systems of Bulgarian where it is most often transliterated as ž. The closest Polish counterpart is ż and, in some instances, rz, in Czech and Slovak the closest counterpart is ž.

Zhe is one of the first letters learned by children who learn to write in Slavic languages, because it looks quite like a young frog floating in a pond, and in these languages the word meaning "frog" or "toad" is written "жаба". Also, it looks like an insect, and the Russian for "bug" is "жук".

Zhe can also be used in Leet speak in place of the letter x. The rap group Kris Kross has a logo of two k's placed back-to-back similar to zhe.