In theEarly Cyrillic alphabet its name wasземлꙗ (zemlja), meaning "earth". The shape of the letter originally looked similar to a Greek letterΖ or Latin letterZ with a tail on the bottom (ꙁ). Though a majuscule form of this variant (Ꙁ) is encoded in Unicode, historically it was only used as caseless or lowercase.[1]
Medieval Cyrillic manuscripts and Church Slavonic printed books have two variant forms of the letter Zemlja: з andꙁ. Only the formꙁ was used in the oldestustav (uncial) writing style; з appeared in the later poluustav (half-uncial) manuscripts and typescripts, where the two variants are found at proportions of about 1:1.[1] Some early grammars tried to give a phonetic distinction to these forms (like palatalized vs. nonpalatalized sound), but the system had no further development.Ukrainian scribes and typographers began to regularly use З/з in an initial position, andꙁ otherwise (a system in use till the end of the 19th century).Russian scribes and typographers largely abandoned the widespread use of the variantꙁ in favor of з in the wake ofPatriarch Nikon's reforms.[1] They still used the older form mostly in the case of two З's in row:ЗꙀ (the system in use till the mid-18th century).
Thecivil (Petrine) script knows only one shape of the letter: З/з. This shape is therefore confusing with the number 3, given that the two shapes are very similar to it. However, shapes similar to Z/z can be used in certain stylish typefaces.
In calligraphy and in general handwritten text, lowercase з can be written either fully over the baseline (similar to the printed form) or with the lower half under the baseline and with the loop (for the Russian language, a standard shape since the middle of the 20th century).
/sʲ/, if followed by⟨ь⟩ in final position or before voiceless consonants;
/ʒ/ or/z̠/ (Iron dialect ofOssetian, but/z/ in Digoron and Kudairag);
clusters⟨зж⟩ and⟨зш⟩ are pronounced in Russian as if they were⟨жж⟩ and⟨шш⟩, respectively (even if⟨з⟩ is the last letter of a preposition, like in Russian без жены "without wife" or из школы "from school");
cluster⟨зч⟩ (sometimes also⟨здч⟩) is pronounced in Russian as if it was⟨щ⟩ (рассказчик "narrator", звёздчатый "stellar, star-shaped", без чая "without tea");
cluster⟨дз⟩ can be pronounced (mostly in Ukrainian, Rusyn and Belarusian) as thevoiced alveolar affricate/dz/ (Ukrainian дзеркало "mirror") or its palatalized form/dzʲ/ (Belarusian гадзіннік "clock"), but if⟨д⟩ and⟨з⟩ belong to different morphemes, then they are pronounced separately. In the standard Iron dialect of Ossetian, this cluster simply stands for/z/; other dialects treat it as the affricate/d͡z/.
A letter that looks like Cyrillic Ze (actually, a stylization of digit 3) was used in the LatinZhuang alphabet from 1957 to 1986 to represent the third (high)tone. In 1986, it was replaced by⟨j⟩.
