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Z

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Image:Latin alphabet Zz.svg
OSI 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

Note: This page or section contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. See IPA chart for English for a pronunciation key.

The letter Z is the twenty-sixth and the last letter in the Latin Alphabet.

In almost all dialects of English other than American English, the letter is named zed /zɛd/, reflecting its derivation from the Greek zeta (see below). Other European languages use a similar form, e.g. the French zède, Spanish and Italian zeta, and Dutch zet. The American English form zee /ziː/ derives from an English late 17th-century dialectal form, now obsolete in England (the letter rhymes with "V" in the "Alphabet song" nursery rhyme). Another English dialectal form is izzard, which dates from the mid 18th-century, probably deriving from French et zède meaning and z, or else from s hard.

Contents

[edit] History

Proto-Semitic Z Phoenician Z Etruscan Z Greek Zeta
Image:Proto-semiticZ-01.png Image:PhoenicianZ-01.png Image:EtruscanZ-01.png Image:Zeta uc lc.svg

The name of the Semitic symbol was zayin, possibly meaning "weapon", and was the seventh letter. 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).

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. 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). 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/. 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.

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. 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". Z also is often written for the consonantal I (that is, J, IPA /j/) as in zunior for junior "younger".

Besides the above Latin forms, there was a more "cultured" Vulgate use of Z as representing /dz/, which passed through French into Middle English.

Until recent times, the English alphabets used by children terminated not with Z but with & or related typographic symbols. 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."

[edit] 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/.

The International Phonetic Alphabet uses [z] for the voiced alveolar sibilant. Early English had used 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.

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.

Few words in the Basic English vocabulary begin with Z, though it occurs in words beginning with other letters. It is also the most rarely used letter in the English Language

For the use of z in such Scottish names as Culzean, Menzies or Dalziel, see yogh.

(See IPA chart for English for the meaning of all the above phonetic symbols.)

In Shakespeare's King Lear Z is used as an insult. A character is called "Thou whoreson zed! Thou unnecessary letter!" (II.ii), intimating that Z (in Shakespearean English at any rate) is a useless letter, like the person on the receiving end of the insult. Such a view illustrates the difference in usage of the letter between British English and American English which uses the letter much more often, whereas the British would commonly use the letter s instead in some common words (e.g. globalization vs. globalisation), apart from those following Oxford spelling.

[edit] Codes for computing

Alternative representations for Z
NATO phonetic Morse code
Zulu ––··
Image:ICS Zulu.svg Image:Semaphore Zulu.svg Image:ASL Zulu.png Image:Braille Z.svg
Signal flag Semaphore ASL Manual Braille

In Unicode the capital Z is codepoint U+005A and the lowercase z is U+007A.

The ASCII code for capital Z is 90 and for lowercase z is 122; or in binary 01011010 and 01111010, correspondingly.

The EBCDIC code for capital Z is 233 and for lowercase z is 169.

The numeric character references in HTML and XML are "Z" and "z" for upper and lower case respectively

Z (Zed) is a formal specification notation, useful for describing computer based systems, is based on Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory and first order predicate logic.

[edit] Meanings for Z

[edit] See also

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[edit] External links


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
als:Z

bs:Z ca:Z cs:Z sn:Z co:Z da:Z de:Z arc:Z el:Z es:Z eo:Z eu:Z fr:Z (lettre) fur:Z gd:Z gl:Z ko:Z hr:Z ilo:Z it:Z he:Z kw:Z la:Z hu:Z nl:Z (letter) ja:Z no:Z nn:Z pl:Z pt:Z (letra) ro:Z ru:Z (латиница) simple:Z sl:Z fi:Z sv:Z tl:Z th:Z vi:Z tr:Z (harf) yo:Z zh:Z

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