Z with stroke
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Ƶ (minuscule: ƶ) is a letter of the Latin alphabet, derived from Z with the addition of a stroke.
Uses in alphabets[]
It was used in the Jaᶇalif alphabet (as a part of Uniform Turkic Alphabet) for the Tatar language in the first half of the 20th century to represent a voiced postalveolar fricative [ʒ], now written j. It was also used in the 1992 Latin Chechen spelling as voiced postalveolar fricative [ʒ]. It was also used in a 1931 variant of the Karelian alphabet for the Tver dialect. The 1931-1941 Mongolian Latin alphabet used it to represent [d͡ʒ].
Uses as currency symbol[]
Ƶ was sometimes used instead of Z to represent the zaire, a former currency of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Ƶ is used as a currency symbol in the video games EVE Online and Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War to represent the in-game currencies Interstellar Kredits (ISK) and Zollar, respectively.
Ƶ is used as a currency symbol in the Dragon Ball universe for "zeni".
Uses as variant of the letters Z and Ż[]
In Polish, the character Ƶ is used as an allographic variant of the letter Ż. The Germans, Italians, French, Romanians, Spanish, Swedes, Czechs and perhaps other peoples often use it as a handwritten variant of Z.[citation needed] In Greek, it is a handwritten form of the letter Xi (ξ), where the horizontal stroke distinguishes it from Zeta, ζ.
Ƶ and ƶ are also used by mathematicians, scientists, and engineers as variants of Z and z in hand-written equations to avoid confusion with the numeral 2.
Uses on computers[]
The Unicode standard specifies two codepoints:
- U+01B5 Ƶ LATIN CAPITAL LETTER Z WITH STROKE
- U+01B6 ƶ LATIN SMALL LETTER Z WITH STROKE
- Letters with stroke
- Latin letters with diacritics
- Specific Polish letters