Cyrillic Capital Letter Ze with Diaeresis

Cyrillic Capital Letter Ze with Diaeresis at U+04DE is an uppercase Cyrillic letter used for a distinct sound in languages that extend the basic Cyrillic alphabet. It belongs to the Cyrillic block and is the capital form of the corresponding lowercase ze with diaeresis. Its best-known use is in Udmurt, a Uralic language of Russia, where it represents the affricate sound /d͡ʒ/, similar to the English j in “jam.” It appears in ordinary Udmurt spelling, names, educational materials, dictionaries, and local publications whenever that sound occurs at the beginning of a capitalized word or in all-caps text. The letter can be mistaken visually for the Russian capital Ze with an added diaeresis, but in Udmurt it is not just a decorated variant; it is a separate alphabet letter with its own place in the writing system. It is uncommon outside Udmurt-language contexts, so it is most often encountered in linguistic references, minority-language computing, and text copied from Udmurt sources.