Z, the Sütterlin letter z

History

The letter Z is the 26th letter of the German alphabet. Phonetically, it represents a voiceless alveolar affricate /ts/, a core sound of High German resulting from the High German consonant shift.

Sütterlin lowercase z retains the lower descender loop with a clear upright top stroke. Capital Z is drawn upright with a horizontal top line, a diagonal downstroke with a small cross-tie, and a clean baseline strike.

The letter z is essential in civil and parish records for 'Zeuge' (witness), 'Zivilstand' (civil status), 'Zeit' (time), and 'Zoll' (customs). Its descender loop clearly differentiates it from Latin cursive z.

Z began as the Proto-Sinaitic sign for a stabbing weapon.^[1] Its Phoenician name, zayin, means dagger or weapon,^[2] and it stood seventh in that alphabet.^[3] By classical times Greek zeta had tipped its long stroke to the right, probably because that was quicker to write.^[4] Etruscan had no voiced stops, so its dz became ts,^[5] and Latin, which had no ts either, replaced the I-shaped Z in its alphabet in the fifth century BC.^[6]