Z

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Template:Redirect Template:AZ Template:IPA notice Z is the twenty-sixth and last letter of the Latin Alphabet.

In almost all forms of Commonwealth English, the letter is named zed Template:IPA, 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 Template:IPA 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.

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History

Proto-Semitic Z Phoenician Z Etruscan Z Greek Z
Image:Proto-semiticZ-01.png Image:PhoenicianZ-01.png Image:EtruscanZ-01.png Image:GreekZ-01.png

The name of the Semitic symbol was zayin, possibly meaning "weapon", and was the seventh letter. It was either pronounced /z/ as in English and French, or possibly more like Template:IPA (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 pronunciation seems to have been /dz/; in Attic, from the 4th century BC onwards, it seems to have been as English /z/. In other dialects, as Elean and Cretan, the symbol seems to have been used for sounds resembling the English voiced and unvoiced th (IPA Template:IPA and Template:IPA, respectively). In the common dialect (κοινη) that succeeded the older dialects, ζ became Template:IPA), as it remains in modern Greek.

In Etruscan, Z may have symbolized Template:IPA; in Latin, Template:IPA. In early Latin, the sound of /z/ developed into /r/, and the symbol became useless. It was therefore removed from the alphabet, and G was put in its place.

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 been pronounced as dy (IPA Template:IPA), and later y (IPA Template:IPA); di being found for Z in words like baptidiare for baptizare "baptize", while conversely Z appears for di in forms like zaconus, zabulus, for diaconus "deacon", diabulus, "devil". Z also is often written for the consonantal I (that is, J, IPA Template:IPA) as in zunior for junior "younger".

Besides the above Latin forms, there was a more "cultured" Vulgate pronunciation of Z as Template:IPA, 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."

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Usage

In Italian, Z represents two phonemes, namely Template:IPA and Template:IPA; in German, it stands for Template:IPA; in Castilian Spanish it represents Template:IPA (as English th in thing), though in other dialects (Latin American, Andalusian) it is pronounced as Template:IPA (and word-finally, Template:IPA, Template:IPA, Template:IPA or Ø), making haz, has and even ha homophones.

The International Phonetic Alphabet uses Template:IPA 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 Template:IPA which in later French is changed to Template:IPA. 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 written zh (IPA Template:IPA), in 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.

No words in the Basic English vocabulary begin with Z, but it occurs in words beginning with other letters.

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 use the letter s instead in some common words (e.g. globalization vs. globalisation).

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Codes for computing

{{Letter |NATO=Zulu |Morse=––·· |Character=Z |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.

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Meanings for Z

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See also

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External links

Template:AZsubnavals:Z bs:Z ca:Z sn:Z cs:Z da:Z de:Z el:Z es:Z eo:Z fr:Z gl:Z ko:Z hr:Z ilo:Z it:Z he:Z kw:Z la:Z nl:Z ja:Z no:Z nn:Z pl:Z pt:Z ro:Z ru:Z (буква) simple:Z sl:Z fi:Z sv:Z th:Z vi:Z yo:Z zh:Z

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