Z with stroke
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 Dragonball 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. Germans, Italians, French and Spanish often use this sign in the hand-writing as the letter Z, as do others. In Greek, it is a handwritten form of the letter Ξ. The horizontal stroke distinguishes it from its Ζ counterpart.
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