Sha

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Look up Ш or ш in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Cyrillic letter Sha
Unicode (hex)
majuscule: U+0428
minuscule: U+0448
Cyrillic alphabet
А	Б	В	Г	Ґ	Д	Ђ
Ѓ	Е	Ѐ	Ё	Є	Ж	З
Ѕ	И	Ѝ	І	Ї	Й	Ј
К	Л	Љ	М	Н	Њ	О
П	Р	С	Т	Ћ	Ќ	У
Ў	Ф	Х	Ц	Ч	Џ	Ш
Щ	Ъ	Ы	Ь	Э	Ю	Я
Non-Slavic letters
Ӑ	Ӓ	Ә	Ӛ	Ӕ	Ғ	Ҕ
Ӻ	Ӷ	Ԁ	Ԃ	Ӗ	Ӂ	Җ
Ӝ	Ԅ	Ҙ	Ӟ	Ԑ	Ӡ	Ԇ
Ӣ	Ҋ	Ӥ	Қ	Ӄ	Ҡ	Ҟ
Ҝ	Ԟ	Ԛ	Ӆ	Ԓ	Ԡ	Ԉ
Ԕ	Ӎ	Ӊ	Ң	Ӈ	Ҥ	Ԣ
Ԋ	Ӧ	Ө	Ӫ	Ҩ	Ҧ	Ҏ
Ԗ	Ҫ	Ԍ	Ҭ	Ԏ	Ӯ	Ӱ
Ӳ	Ү	Ұ	Ҳ	Ӽ	Ӿ	Һ
Ҵ	Ҷ	Ӵ	Ӌ	Ҹ	Ҽ	Ҿ
Ӹ	Ҍ	Ӭ	Ԙ	Ԝ	Ӏ
Archaic letters
Ҁ	Ѻ	ОУ	Ѡ	Ѿ	Ѣ	ІѢ
IA	Ѥ	Ѧ	Ѫ	Ѩ	Ѭ	Ѯ
Ѱ	Ѳ	Ѵ	Ѷ	Ын
List of Cyrillic letters
Cyrillic digraphs

Sha (Ш, ш, italics: Ш, ш) is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, representing the consonant sound /ʃ/ or /ʂ/. It is roughly equivalent to sh in English, ch in French, sch in German, ش in Arabic, ש in Hebrew, ş in Turkish, sz in Polish, s in Hungarian, or x in Galician. In most Latin-alphabet Slavic languages (Czech, Slovak, Slovene, Croatian) this sound is written š, and linguists have adopted this symbol to transliterate ш into the Latin alphabet.

The printed Sha looks something like a W or, more exactly, like an E rotated anticlockwise 90 degrees. It is used in virtually every national variation of the Cyrillic alphabet, for Slavic and non-Slavic languages.

The sound /ʃ/ is described as a voiceless postalveolar fricative. The postalveolar fricatives are the major reason why the Glagolitic and later the Cyrillic alphabet were invented, because they cannot be written with a simple Roman or Greek letter without diacritics or digraphs. Slavic languages are rich in postalveolar fricatives and affricates, and Sha is one of the most typical letters of the Cyrillic alphabet.

Sha has its earliest origins in Proto-Canaanite Shin and is linked closely to Shin's Greek equivalent: Sigma (Σ, σ). (Note the similar form of the modern Hebrew Shin (ש) which also derives from the same Proto-Canaanite source). Sha already possessed its current form in Saints Cyril and Methodius's Glagolitic alphabet. Most Cyrillic letter-forms were derived from the Greek, but as there was no Greek sign for the Sha sound (modern Greek uses simply "σ" to spell the sh-sound in foreign words and names), Glagolitic Sha was adopted unchanged. There is a possibility that Sha was taken from the Coptic alphabet, which was the same as the Greek alphabet but had a few letters added at the end, including one called "shai" which somewhat resembles both sha and shcha (Щ, щ) in appearance.

Use in mathematics

Ш has the distinction of being the only Cyrillic letter commonly used in mathematics:

In algebraic geometry, the Tate-Shafarevich group of an Abelian variety A over a field K is denoted Ш(A/K), a notation first suggested by J. W. S. Cassels. (Previously it had been unimaginatively denoted TS.)

In a different mathematical context, some authors allude to the shape of the letter Sha when they use the term Shah function for what is otherwise called a Dirac comb.

In popular culture

In Ian Fleming's first James Bond novel Casino Royale, an operative from the Soviet counterintelligence agency SMERSH carves the Cyrillic letter Sha into the back of Bond's right hand, to mark Bond as a "špion" (шпион), Russian for "spy".

See also

• Š, Latin letter s with a háček
• Esh, the phonetic sign ʃ
• Shcha, Cyrillic щ
• Shin, Hebrew שׂ, Arabic ﺵ
• Voiceless retroflex fricative
• Voiceless postalveolar fricative