Hungarian dzs
Encyclopedia
Dzs is the eighth letter, and only trigraph
Trigraph (orthography)
A trigraph is a group of three letters used to represent a single sound or a combination of sounds that does not correspond to the written letters combined. For example, in the word schilling, the trigraph sch represents the voiceless postalveolar fricative , rather than the consonant cluster...

, of the Hungarian alphabet
Hungarian alphabet
The Hungarian alphabet is an extension of the Latin alphabet used for writing the Hungarian language.One sometimes speaks of the smaller and greater Hungarian alphabets, depending on whether or not the letters Q, W, X, Y are listed, which can only be found in foreign words and traditional...

. Its name is pronounced [dʒeː], and represents the sounds d͡ʒ and [dː͡ʒ].

Length

In several words, it is pronounced long, e.g.
  • menedzser, bridzs, bridzsel, maharadzsa, lodzsa, rádzsa, hodzsa, dodzsem, tádzsik, Tádzsikisztán, Kudzsiri-havasok (meaning "manager, bridge [game], to play bridge, maharaja, loggia, rajah, hodja, bumper cars (dodgem), Tajik, Tajikistan, Sebeş or Şureanu Mountains", respectively)

in other ones, short, e.g.
  • tinédzser, büdzsé, Fudzsi (meaning "teenager, budget, Fuji", respectively)

It is short without exception:
  • next to another consonant: lándzsa, findzsa, nindzsa, bendzsó, bandzsa, halandzsa, halandzsázik, mandzsetta, Kilimandzsáró, Azerbajdzsán, Mandzsúria (meaning "lance (

  • and at the beginning of the word: dzsóker, dzsungel, dzsem, dzsip, dzsida, dzsihád, dzsigg, dzsigoló, dzseki, dzsentri, dzsámi, dzsembori, dzsessz, dzsinn, dzsogging, dzsömper, dzsörzé, dzsunka, dzsuva, dzsúsz, dzsumbuj, dzsúdó, dzsúdzsicu (both are short), Dzsenifer, Dzsesszika, Dzsibuti, Dzsószer, Dzsingisz, Dzsungária, Dzsaváharlál, Dzsaipur (meaning "joker, jungle, jam, Jeep, spear, Jihad, jig, gigolo, jacket, gentry, mosque (


It is not usually doubled even when it is pronounced long, except when a word with this sound has an assimilated
Assimilation (linguistics)
Assimilation is a common phonological process by which the sound of the ending of one word blends into the sound of the beginning of the following word. This occurs when the parts of the mouth and vocal cords start to form the beginning sounds of the next word before the last sound has been...

 suffix: bridzs + dzsel: briddzsel (with the bridge game
Contract bridge
Contract bridge, usually known simply as bridge, is a trick-taking card game using a standard deck of 52 playing cards played by four players in two competing partnerships with partners sitting opposite each other around a small table...

).

Usage

Usage of this letter is similar to
Dž is the seventh letter of the Croatian and Bosnian alphabets, and the Latin forms of Serbian, Montenegrin and Macedonian, after D and before Đ. It is pronounced . Dž is a digraph that corresponds to the letter Dzhe of the Cyrillic alphabet used for writing the Serbian, Montenegrin and...

 in Slovak
Slovak language
Slovak , is an Indo-European language that belongs to the West Slavic languages .Slovak is the official language of Slovakia, where it is spoken by 5 million people...

 or Czech
Czech language
Czech is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian in English until the late 19th century...

. In Hungarian, even though these three characters are put together to make a different sound, they are considered one letter, and even acronyms keep the letter intact. As one can see from the examples above and below, it is almost exclusively used in foreign loanwords, to represent the voiced postalveolar affricate
Voiced postalveolar affricate
The voiced palato-alveolar affricate, also described as voiced domed postalveolar affricate, is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The sound is transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet with ⟨⟩ , and the equivalent X-SAMPA representation is ⟨dZ⟩...

(j/soft g in English).

Examples

The following are Hungarian loanwords (mostly taken from English) using the trigraph dzs:
  • nindzsa = ninja
  • dzsem = jam
  • dzsip = jeep
  • bendzsó = banjo
  • dzsungel = jungle
  • dzsessz = jazz
  • lándzsa = spear
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