Editing Z (section)

===Latin===
The letter ''Z'' existed in more archaic versions of Latin, but at {{circa|300 BC}}, [[Appius Claudius Caecus]], the Roman [[Roman censor|censor]], removed the letter Z from the alphabet, because the appearance while pronouncing it imitated a grinning skull.<ref>Lindsay, Wallace Martin. The Latin Language: An Historical Account of Latin Sounds, Stems and Flexions. United Kingdom: Clarendon Press, 1894. "Martianus Capella tells us that the letter was removed from the alphabet by Appius Claudius Caecus the famous censor of 312 BC adding the curious reason that in pronouncing it the teeth assumed the appearance of the teeth of a grinning skull Mart Cap iii 261 z vero idcirco Appius Claudius detestatur quod dentes mortui dum expri mitur imitatur"</ref> A more likely explanation is that the {{IPAslink|z}} sound that it probably represented had disappeared from Latin after turning into {{IPAslink|r}} due to a [[rhotacism]] process,<ref>{{Cite web |title=Appius Claudius Caecus and the Letter Z |url=https://penelope.uchicago.edu/~grout/encyclopaedia_romana/miscellanea/zed.html}}</ref> making the letter useless for spelling Latin words.<ref>The Encyclopaedia Britannica: Franciscans-Gibson. United Kingdom: At the University Press, 1910. pg. 377 "G"</ref> Whatever the case may be, Appius Claudius's distaste for the letter Z is today credited as the reason for its removal. A few centuries later, after the [[Roman conquest of Greece|Roman Conquest of Greece]], Z was again borrowed to spell words from the prestigious Attic dialect of Greek.

Before the reintroduction of ''z'', the sound of zeta was written ''s'' at the beginning of words and ''ss'' in the middle of words, as in ''{{lang|la|sōna}}'' for {{lang|grc|ζώνη}} "belt" and ''{{lang|la|trapessita}}'' for {{lang|grc|τραπεζίτης}} "banker".

In some inscriptions, ''z'' represented a [[Vulgar Latin]] sound, likely an [[affricate consonant|affricate]], formed by the merging of the [[linguistic reconstruction|reflexes]] of [[Classical Latin]] {{IPAslink|j}}, {{IPA|/dj/}} and {{IPA|/gj/}}:{{fix|text=example needed|title=We need an example of /gj/ for completeness.}} for example, ''{{lang|la|zanuariu}}'' for ''{{lang|la|ianuariu}}'' "January", ''{{lang|la|ziaconus}}'' for ''{{lang|la|diaconus}}'' "deacon", and ''{{lang|la|oze}}'' for ''{{lang|la|hodie}}'' "today".<ref>Ti Alkire & Carol Rosen, ''Romance Languages: A Historical Introduction'' (Cambridge: [[Cambridge University Press]], 2010), 61.</ref><!--Alkire and Roen don't explicitly say that it was {{IPAslink|dʒ}}; they say "a slightly affricated /j/", whatever that is supposed to mean, and state that its medial outcome in Spanish was still /j/.--> Likewise, {{IPA|/di/}} sometimes replaced {{IPAslink|z}} in words like ''{{lang|la|baptidiare}}'' for ''{{lang|la|baptizare}}'' "to baptize". In modern Italian, ''z'' represents {{IPAslink|ts}} or {{IPAslink|dz}}, whereas the reflexes of ''{{lang|la|ianuarius}}'' and ''{{lang|la|hodie}}'' are written with the letter ''g'' (representing {{IPA|/dʒ/}} when before ''i'' and ''e''): ''{{lang|it|gennaio}}'', ''{{lang|it|oggi}}''. In other languages, such as [[Spanish language|Spanish]], further evolution of the sound occurred.