Cyrillic Capital Letter Abkhasian Dze

Cyrillic Capital Letter Abkhasian Dze at U+04E0 represents an uppercase consonant letter used in Abkhaz writing. It belongs to the Cyrillic block and is one of the extended letters needed for languages whose sound systems are not covered by the basic Russian alphabet. In Abkhaz, it is the capital form of the letter used for the voiced affricate commonly romanized as dz. It appears in ordinary Abkhaz text, names, dictionaries, educational materials, and grammatical examples where that sound begins a word or occurs after capitalization, such as in headings or proper nouns. The letter is also relevant in Caucasian-language scholarship, transliteration tables, and digital text processing for Abkhaz, where it must be distinguished from the similar-looking Cyrillic letter Ze. Its lowercase partner is used far more often in running text, while this capital form is mainly encountered at sentence starts, in all-caps styling, and in alphabet listings.