Že Explained

Že or Zhe (Persian: ژ), used to represent the phoneme pronounced as /link/, is a letter in the Persian alphabet, based on (Arabic: ز) with two additional diacritic dots. It is one of the five letters that the Persian alphabet adds to the original Arabic script, others being Persian: چ,Persian: پ and Persian: گ, in addition the obsolete Persian: ڤ.[1]

It is found with this value in other Arabic-derived scripts. It is used in Pashto, Kurdish, other Iranian languages, Uyghur, Ottoman Turkish (j in the modern Turkish alphabet), Azerbaijani and Urdu, but not in Arabic.

In Kashmiri, this letter is called "tse" and represents the phoneme [t͡s].

In most of the Levant and Northwestern Africa, the letter Arabic: ج is used for pronounced as /link/.

In other scripts

Devanagari

In Devanagari the letters and (with a nuqta) are used to represent the sound of /ʒ/, e.g. Hindi: टेलीविझ़न / Hindi: टेलीविश़न Hindi: ṭēlivižan 'television'. The letter corresponds to the Urdu Perso-Arabic Urdu: ژ.

Bengali

In Bengali the sound of /ʒ/ may be represented as জ়়, i.e. the letter Ja with two dots.

Cyrillic

The letter ж, common in some Slavic languages, has an equivalent sound to the "s" in "television" e.g. Zharkov (Russian Cyrillic: Жарков).

See also

Notes and References

  1. Orsatti . Paola . 2019 . Persian Language in Arabic Script: The Formation of the Orthographic Standard and the Different Graphic Traditions of Iran in the First Centuries of the Islamic Era . Creating Standards (Book).