Why was zh picked to represent ʒ , and where does it come from? Prior to that date, zh was used in the Albanian Bashkimi alphabet, but it represented [dʒ] in that spelling system Per the linked Wikipedia article, in the Bashkimi system, palatal and sibilant affricates are represented as c ts ch z zh = c~tɕ ts tʃ dz dʒ and sibilant fricatives are represented as s sh x xh = s ʃ z ʒ
zh vs. j. Are these pronounced in the same way? zh does not represent any single Arabic letter but is very occasionally used to represent the 'ǧīm' as pronounced by Arabic speakers in former French colonies -Lebanon Syria most especially That's not altogether proper orthography -it's normally transliterated as 'j'- but the closest rendering of how certain Levantines and N W Africans