Dzhe

Dzhe or Gea (Џ џ; italics: Џ џ) is a letter of the Cyrillic script used in Macedonian and varieties of Serbo-Croatian (Bosnian, Montenegrin, and Serbian) to represent the voiced postalveolar affricate /dʒ/, like the pronunciation of ⟨j⟩ in “jump”. Sometimes, the name dzherv is used, following the pattern of traditional names such as cherv for ⟨Ч⟩ and djerv or gjerv for ⟨Ђ⟩.

Dzhe corresponds in other Cyrillic alphabets to the digraphs ⟨дж⟩ or ⟨чж⟩, or to the letters Che with descender (Ҷ ҷ), Che with vertical stroke (Ҹ ҹ), Khakassian Che (Ӌ ӌ), Zhe with breve (Ӂ ӂ), Zhe with diaeresis (Ӝ ӝ), or Zhje (Җ җ).

In the Latin version of Serbo-Croatian, it corresponds with the digraph ⟨dž⟩ which, like the digraphs ⟨lj⟩ and ⟨nj⟩, is treated as a single letter, including in crosswords and other puzzles.

Abkhaz uses it to represent the voiced retroflex affricate /ɖʐ/. The ligature џь is used to represent the /dʒ/ sound.

History

The origin of the letter Dzhe is the 15th century Romanian Cyrillic alphabet, where it began as a modified form of the letter ⟨ч⟩. Serbian scribes began using it in the 17th century.Vuk Karadžić included it in his Cyrillic script reform, after which the letter entered widespread use.