TZ ligature
The Tz ligature is a letter in the Latin writing system . It is a ligature made up of a T and a Ʒ . The letter was introduced by Spanish missionaries in Latin America for the writing of the Maya languages there . The sound that this symbol represents is described by the missionaries as “similar to the ' 4 with comma ', but softer, whereby the tongue comes into contact with the teeth, corresponds exactly to the German tz”. This sound is known today as the voiceless alveolar affricate (IPA: / t͡s /).
Use as an aesthetic ligature in German
In German, the tz ligature is sometimes used as an aesthetic ligature. A prominent example is the design of the Berlin street signs in the Erbar Grotesk font .
The use of a tz ligature is mandatory in the Fraktur sentence ; this ligature is not canceled in the locking sentence either.
In the Kurrent script , tz was sometimes used as a separate letter that came after the z in the order. From this the phrase "until tz" (until the end) is derived.
From a coding standpoint, however, these are always two characters, namely the two Latin letters t and z. The use of the Unicode character for the Tz ligature is a mistake here.
Presentation on the computer
Unicode contains the TZ ligature at the code points U + A728 (upper case, LATIN CAPITAL LETTER TZ) and U + A729 (lower case, LATIN SMALL LETTER TZ).
Direct representation:
- Capital letter: Ꜩ
- Lower case letter: ꜩ
Individual evidence
- ↑ Proposal to add Mayanist Latin letters to the UCS (PDF file; 536 kB)
- ↑ Felix Müller: Why do street signs in Berlin look so different. Berliner Morgenpost , May 17, 2018, accessed on March 13, 2020 .
- ↑ tz , wispor.de