Dz is a digraph of the Latin script, consisting of the consonants D and Z. It may represent pronounced as /link/, pronounced as /link/, or pronounced as /link/, depending on the language.
Dz generally represents pronounced as /link/ in Latin alphabets, including Hungarian, Kashubian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Slovak, and romanized Macedonian. However, in Dene Suline (Chipewyan) and Cantonese Pinyin it represents pronounced as /link/, and in Vietnamese it is a pronunciation respelling of the letter D to represent pronounced as //j//.[1]
Some Esperanto grammars, notably Plena Analiza Gramatiko de Esperanto,[2] consider dz to be a digraph for the voiced affricate pronounced as /link/, as in edzo "husband". The case for this is "rather weak".[3] Most Esperantists, including Esperantist linguists (Janton,[4] Wells[5]), reject it.
is the seventh letter of the Hungarian alphabet. It is called dzé (in Hungarian pronounced as /d͡zeː/) as a letter of the alphabet, where it represents the voiced alveolar affricate phoneme pronounced as /link/.
⟨Dz⟩ and ⟨dzs⟩ were recognized as individual letters in the 11th edition of Hungarian orthography (1984).[6] Prior to that, they were analyzed as two-letter combinations ⟨d⟩+⟨z⟩ and ⟨d⟩+⟨zs⟩.
Like most Hungarian consonants, the sound pronounced as //dz// can be geminated. However, the letter is only doubled in writing (to) when an assimilated suffix is added to the stem: eddze, lopóddzon.
In several words, it is pronounced long, e.g. bodza, madzag, edz, pedz. In some other ones, short, e.g. dzadzíki, dzéta, Dzerzsinszkij (usually at the beginning of words), though it is always short after another consonant (e.g. in brindza).
In several verbs ending in -dzik (approximately fifty), there is a free alternation with -zik, e.g. csókolódzik or csókolózik, lopódzik or lopózik. In other verbs, there is no variation: birkózik, mérkőzik (only with) but leledzik, nyáladzik (only with, pronounced long). In some other verbs, there is a difference in meaning: levelez(ik) "to correspond", but leveledzik "to produce leaves".
Usage of this letter is similar to that of Polish and Slovak languages: though is a digraph composed of and, it is considered one letter, and even acronyms keep the letter intact.
Dz generally represents pronounced as /link/. However, when followed by i it is palatalized to pronounced as /link/.
(bell)
(kind, type)
Compare dz followed by i:
(child)
(girl, girlfriend)
In Slovak, the digraph dz is the ninth letter of the Slovak alphabet. Example words with this phoneme include:
The digraph may never be divided by hyphenation:
However, when d and z come from different morphemes, they are treated as separate letters, and must be divided by hyphenation:
In both cases od- (from) and nad- (above) are a prefix to the stems zem (earth) and zvuk (sound).
Dz is sometimes used in Vietnamese names as a pronunciation respelling of the letter D. Several common Vietnamese given names start with the letter D, including Vietnamese: Dũng, Vietnamese: Dụng, and Vietnamese: Dương. Whereas D is pronounced as some sort of dental or alveolar stop in most Latin alphabets, an unadorned D in the Vietnamese alphabet represents either pronounced as //z// (Hanoian) or pronounced as //j// (Saigonese), while the letter Đ represents a voiced alveolar implosive (pronounced as //ɗ//) or, according to Thompson (1959), a preglottalized voiced alveolar stop (pronounced as //ʔd//).[7] Z is not included in the Vietnamese alphabet as a letter in its own right.
Many Vietnamese cultural figures spell their family names, pen names, or stage names with Dz instead of D, emphasizing the Hanoian pronunciation. Examples include the songwriter Dzoãn Mẫn, the poet Hồ Dzếnh, and the television chef Nguyễn Dzoãn Cẩm Vân.[8] Other examples include Bùi Dzinh and Trương Đình Dzu.
Some Overseas Vietnamese residing in English-speaking countries also replace D with Dz in their names. A male named Vietnamese: Dũng may spell his name Vietnamese: Dzung to avoid being called "dung" in social contexts. Examples of this usage include Vietnamese-Americans Việt Dzũng and Dzung Tran. (Occasionally, D is instead replaced by Y to emphasize the Saigonese pronunciation, as with Yung Krall.[9])
Dz is represented in Unicode as three separate glyphs within the Latin Extended-B block. It is one of the rare characters that has separate glyphs for each of its uppercase, title case, and lowercase forms.
| Code | Glyph | Decimal | Description | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| U+01F1 | DZ | Latin Capital Letter DZ | ||
| U+01F2 | Dz | Latin Capital Letter D with Small Letter Z | ||
| U+01F3 | dz | Latin Small Letter DZ |
The single-character versions are designed for compatibility with Yugoslav encodings supporting Romanization of Macedonian, where this digraph corresponds to the Cyrillic letter Ѕ.
Additional variants of the Dz digraph are also encoded in Unicode.