Zāy

Zay in isolated form

connected shape
from the right:	ـز

Zāy ( Arabic ﺯﺍﻱ) or Zāʾ (زاء), also Zain or Zayn (زين), Germanized Sai or Sain , is the eleventh letter of the Arabic alphabet . It emerged from the Phoenician Zajin and is thus related to the Latin Z , the Greek Zeta and the Hebrew Zajin . The numerical value 7 is assigned to it.

Sound value and transcription

The zay corresponds to the voiced S in "Siegfried". It can be clearly distinguished from the voiceless s (as in "smog"), since this sound is also present in Arabic in the form of the sīn . In the DMG transcription, Zay is reproduced with "z", while the Duden - since "z" is pronounced like "ts" in German - recommends the transcription with "s". In English and French-language texts, where the Z regularly denotes the voiced s sound, Zay always stands for “z”.

The zay is a sun letter , i. i.e., a preceding al- (definite article) is assimilated.

Graphic modifications

In order to be able to write the soft “sh” sound (like J in “Journal”), which does not occur in Arabic, the letter Že was developed from the Zay in the Persian alphabet .

Zay in Unicode

Unicode codepoint	U + 0632
Unicode name	ARABIC LETTER ZAIN
HTML	& # 1586;
ISO 8859-6	0xd2