The letter “Z” is cropping up on a lot of things lately, evidently as a pro-Ukraine Invasion thing in Russia. I’ve seen two articles about it so far, reporting on its showing up everywhere (including an Olympic gymnast’s uniform), and speculating on all the things it might stand for. Stephen Colbert even mentioned it in his monologue (Colbert had played the letter “Z” for some Sesame Street thing)
Ironic, because the movie Z is highly critical of generals.
There is a movie called “World War Z”.
Markings are normal for military vehicles, but the Z things all appear to be sloppily hand painted. It’s like all Russian vehicles lined up on the Ukrainian border and people went up and down the line with cans of whitewash, slapping Zs everywhere. Seeing how they messed up almost everything else, it was probably supposed to be an N but the top guy looked at the message sideways.
And damn right Zorro would be pissed. His Z was elegant and looked exactly the same each time. His estate should look into lawsuit possibilities. His reputation is clearly being tainted by association with the invasion.
Zorglub must be pissed off too…
Wear a “Z”? check
Aggressive dictator? check
Controlling medias? check
Seconding el Zorro being pissed. I would if I was him. And the letter Z is not even in the cyrillic alphabet, the sound “z” like in pizza is written ц (more or less, accents vary and local varieties abound). Still GRRR! in the name of el Zorro.
Cyrillic also has “З” (not to be confused with the number 3 or the letter Э), which appears to be the equivalent of the Greek Z letter – even in about the same position in their respective alphabets. The whole Cyrillic alphabet is basically just the Greek alphabet with some variations and additions.
Very few English-speakers would refer to the sound in “pizza” as “the sound ‘z’”.
And this is especially odd, given that the much-revered leader of Ukraine has a name starting with Z (at least, when Latinized). If anything, I’d expect the letter to be used in support of him.