| Dz with caron | |
|---|---|
| Dž | |
| DŽ, DŽ, Dž, Dž, dž, dž | |
 | |
| Usage | |
| Type | alphabetic |
| Language of origin | Serbo-Croatian |
| Sound values | [dʒ] |
| History | |
| Development | |
| Transliterations | |
| Variations | DŽ, DŽ, Dž, Dž, dž, dž |
| This article containsphonetic transcriptions in theInternational Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, seeHelp:IPA. For the distinction between[ ],/ / and ⟨ ⟩, seeIPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters. | |
Dž (titlecase form; all-capitals formDŽ,lowercasedž) is the seventhletter of theGaj's Latin alphabet forSerbo-Croatian (Bosnian,Croatian,Montenegrin andSerbian), afterD and beforeĐ.
It is pronounced[ɖʐ] or[d͡ʒ], like "j" in English. Dž is adigraph that corresponds to the letterDzhe (Џ/џ) of theSerbian Cyrillic alphabet. It is also the tenth letter of theSlovak alphabet. Although several other languages (see below) also use the letter combinationDŽ, they treat it as a pair of the lettersD andŽ, not as a single distinct letter.
When the letter is the initial of acapitalised word (likeDžungla orDžemper, or personal names likeDžemal orDžamonja), the ž is notuppercase. Only when the whole word is written in uppercase, is the Ž capitalised.
The capitalized version of this letter ('DŽ'), as a single character inUnicode, is also the largest character amongst every Latin character in size (in blocksBasic Latin,Latin Extended-A,Latin Extended-B).
InGaj's Latin alphabet (used forSerbo-Croatian), when the text is written vertically rather than horizontally (on signs, for instance),dž is written horizontally as a single letter; in particular,dž occupies a single square incrossword puzzles. Also, in cases where words are written with a space between each letter,dž is written together without a space betweend andž. These characteristics are also shared byLj andNj. Similarly, when a name beginning with Dž is reduced to initial, the entire letter is initial, not just D. For example, Dženan Ljubović becomes Dž. Lj. and not D. L. This behaviour is not the case inSlovak, where it is split into D/d and Ž/ž.
Czech does have the soundd͡ʒ, but in native Czech words it only occurs as a replacement of[t͡ʃ] before other voiced consonants. Therefore,[t͡ʃ] and[d͡ʒ] are written in native words using the same letterč. This is not possible in loanwords, and Czech adopted the Dž orthography in this case (for exampledžus). In this case, the two letters are always split when text is written vertically.Lithuanian andLatvian similarly useDž for the sound[d͡ʒ] without considering it a separate letter. In Lithuanian,dž ispalatalized to[dʑ] when followed bye, ę, ė, i, į ory.
Letter "Dž" is found inUnicode at code points U+01C4 (uppercase, DŽ), U+01C5 (titlecase, Dž), and U+01C6 (lowercase, dž). Unicode representations of the letter are very rarely used in digital media, which tends to favor the corresponding two-character combinations. Manufacturers ofcomputer keyboards andtypewriters for Croatian users typically do not provide a single key for the letter.X keyboard extension provideslatinunicodekeyboard layouts for entering Unicode representation of the letter on standardCroatian keyboard.[1]
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