ezh

Ezh (Ʒ ʒ) , also called the "tailed z", is a letter, notable for its use in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to represent the voiced postalveolar fricative consonant. For example, the pronunciation of "si" in vision and precision , or the ⟨s⟩ in treasure . See also the letter ⟨Ž⟩ as used in many Slavic languages, the Persian alphabet letter ⟨⟩, the Cyrillic letter ⟨⟩, and the Esperanto letter ⟨Ĵ⟩. Ezh is also used as a letter in some orthographies of Laz and Skolt Sami, both by itself, and with a caron (⟨Ǯ⟩ ⟨ǯ⟩). In Laz, these represent voiceless alveolar affricate and its ejective counterpart , respectively. In Skolt Sami they respectively denote partially voiced alveolar and post-alveolar affricates, broadly represented and . It also appears in the orthography of some African languages, for example in the Aja language of Benin and the Dagbani language of Ghana, where the uppercase variant looks like a reflected sigma ⟨Σ⟩. Origin As a phonetic symbol, it originates with Isaac Pitman's English Phonotypic Alphabet in 1847, as a z with an added hook. The symbol is based on medieval cursive forms of Latin ⟨z⟩, evolving into the blackletter ⟨z⟩ letter. In Unicode, however, the blackletter ⟨⟩ ("tailed z" , German ) is considered a glyph variant of ⟨z⟩, and not an ezh. Humanist Gian Giorgio Trissino proposed in 1524 a reform of Italian orthography introducing ezh as an uppercase for the sound.