For years now the scholars behind the scenes at beans HQ have been trying to work out how to spell two of the English languages’ favourite spoken words but without success. We are talking of course about casj/cazsh/caj and the ever lovely (to quote Ian) “jush… juxch… jgusssh”.
Well the time has come to make an announcement, this has been researched, checked and casually googled at least twice, and we can now confidently write down those two words correctly for the first time in history…..
Yes… Thats it! It’s so monumental, that the font we use on the site, doesn’t even have the character needed to write it. No, it’s not a 3, because look I can type that… 3. It’s actually an ‘Ezh’ or a ‘tailed z’ and to quote wikipedia:
Ezh, also called the “tailed z“, is a letter whose lower case form is used in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), representing the voiced postalveolar fricative consonant. For example, the pronunciation of “si” in vision and precision, or the “s” in treasure.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ezh
So there you have it. The mystery has been solved (as long as you have a fully IPA compliant font).
13 comments on “You can spell that word…”
This is great. Until now I was having to just say “voiced postalveolar fricative” when dictating to my secretary words like cazsz… dzujzhd… words including this sound. Now when I press record on the dictaphone I can just ask for a “tailed z”.
I still can’t read whatever it is that you’re telling us but I’m sure I will get the jist of it.
It looks like instructions for calling some kind of Power Rangers robot.
What would you do with a Power Rangers robot if you could call one?
I can’t remember anything about the Power Rangers’ powers so I would probably just get it to make itself useful with the washing up or something.
It’d probably just smash up your dishes and go out to fight a badly edited-in godzilla from some 50’s B-movie. I’d save your efforts and just get a dishwasher.
A Power Rangers dishwasher or just a normal one? All my new kitchen appliances are superhero themed. I’ve got a Spiderman microwave and a Captain Planet toaster.
If you can buy a Power Rangers dishwasher I will eat my hat. With some seasoning. And a little side salad and garlic bread.
That sounds pretty tasty. I reckon I can skip the whole dishwasher bit because you’ve made the hat sound so appetising that you’ll just eat it anyway.
You’re right. Here’s to my new business for 2023; eating hats, 30 delicious recipes covering a multitude of hats including pork pies, berets, fedoras and big pompous hats from Ladies Day at racing things.
What about one of those Carmen Miranda hats with all the fruit on it? That’d be a tasty hat. You could make the hat itself out of shortcrust pastry to really zhu… dzu… zzhuhzhh… to really spice it up in the way Kev says we can spell but we actually still can’t.
So the letters have been invented but nobody has bothered to add them to a keyboard for people to type. Well this is just terrific.
I’m frigid with rage!
I’ve got no time for rage. I’ve made two new keys out of plasticine and I’m trying to work out how to attach them to my keyboard. Once I figure this out I’ll by typing them like Billy-O.
Billy Ocean?
Yep. I’ll be typing them like Billy Ocean. He had a very idiosyncratic style when seated at the typewriter.