Ż, ż (Z with overdot) is a letter, consisting of the letter Z of the ISO basic Latin alphabet and an overdot.
Usage
Polish
thumb|right|250px|Signage on Polish [[municipal police () cars uses both the standard form (Ż, on the door) and the variant with horizontal stroke (Ƶ, on the roof sign)]]
thumb|right|250px|[[Żubr (beer)|Żubr beer - crossed variant of the letter Ż: Ƶ]]
In the Polish language, ż is the final, 32nd letter of the alphabet. It typically represents the voiced retroflex fricative (), somewhat similar to the pronunciation of in "mirae"; however, in a word-final position or when followed by a voiceless obstruent, it is devoiced to the voiceless retroflex fricative ().
Its pronunciation is the same as that of the digraph , except that (unlike ) also undergoes devoicing when preceded by a voiceless obstruent. The difference in spelling comes from their historical pronunciations: ż originates from a palatalized or , while evolved from a palatalized .
The letter was originally introduced in 1513 by Stanisław Zaborowski in his book Ortographia.
Occasionally, the letter Ƶ ƶ (Z with a horizontal stroke) is used instead of Ż ż for aesthetic purposes, especially in all-caps text and handwriting.
Kashubian
Kashubian ż is a voiced fricative like in Polish, but it is postalveolar () rather than retroflex.
Maltese
thumb|250px|City limit sign of [[Żurrieq in Malta]]
In Maltese, ż represents the voiced alveolar sibilant , pronounced like "z" in English "mae". This contrasts with the letter , which represents the voiceless alveolar sibilant affricate , like in the word "ha". The corresponding letter in Arabic in this Maltese letter is .
Emilian-Romagnol
In Emilian-Romagnol, ż represents the voiced dental fricative , pronounced like "th" in English "is".
Computing codes
{| class=wikitable style=text-align:right
|- align=center
! align=right | Character !! colspan=2 | Ż || colspan=2 | ż
|- align=center
| align=right | Unicode name || colspan=2 | <small>LATIN CAPITAL LETTER<br>Z WITH DOT ABOVE</small> || colspan=2 | <small>LATIN SMALL LETTER<br>Z WITH DOT ABOVE</small>
|-
| align=left | character encoding || decimal || hex || decimal || hex
|-
| align=left | Unicode || 379 || 017B || 380 || 017C
|-
| align=left | UTF-8 || 197 187 || C5 BB || 197 188 || C5 BC
|-
| align=left | Numeric character reference || &#379; || &#x017B; || &#380; || &#x017C;
|-
| align=left | CP 852 || 189 || BD || 190 || BE
|-
| align=left | CP 775 || 163 || A3 || 164 || A4
|-
| align=left | Mazovia || 161 || A1 || 167 || A7
|-
| align=left | Windows-1250, ISO-8859-2 || 175 || AF || 191 || BF
|-
| align=left | Windows-1257, ISO-8859-13 || 221 || DD || 253 || FD
|-
| align=left | Mac Central European || 251 || FB || 253 || FD
|}
See also
- Ź and Ž
- Polish alphabet
- Polish phonology
- Dot (diacritic)