Sentence examples for z sound from inspiring English sources
W. H. Auden once promised his readers he'd never again rhyme an "s" sound and a "z" sound, however concordant they might look on the page (dose, rose).
(If you're wondering about the last part, the word sacrifice has historically had a variant pronunciation ending in the "z" sound).
In the sound system of American English, for example, some speakers pronounce greasy with an "s" sound, while others pronounce it with a "z" sound.
In Polish, the only purpose of an r preceding a hard consonant is to soften it, from a "z" sound to a "zh" sound, for example.
Assamese also has s for earlier c and ch sounds and a z sound for j and jh; e.g., Assamese kas "glass," Bengali kac; Assamese azi "today," Oriya aji, Bengali, Hindi aj.
Most English nouns have plural inflection in (-e s, but that form shows variations in pronunciation in the words cats (with a final s sound), dogs (with a final z sound), and horses (with a final iz sound), as also in the 3rd person singular present-tense forms of verbs: cuts (s), jogs (z), and forces (iz).
"Or how about 'Gonslinger'?" And then somebody else suggested, "What about 'Genzlinger,' with a Z? Sounds nerdier".
Flies drop in scores from their "winter quarters in the curtains / and sizzle as they fall": the obligatory "z" sounds imitate their buzzing, but the word "sizzle" adds an unsettling association with breakfast.
Those densely thatched rows of s and z sounds can prove a stumbling block even for native speakers, as in the famous tongue twister that starts W Szczebrzeszynie chrząszcz brzmi w trzcinie ("In the town of Szczebrzeszyn a beetle buzzes in the reeds").
Also of note is the way that the two adjectives in the fourth line — paphladzonta, the "roiling" waves, and polyphloisboio, the "greatly-roaring" sea — replicate each other's consonants: the "p s, the "ph s, the "l"s, the soft "s"s and "z" sounds.
I must have said something in Spanish because she exclaimed, "Usted es de Espańa!" She said she could hear the accent from Spain (though I don't do the z sounds before vowels or used "vale" for "bien," or "vos").
