Sha (Cyrillic)

Cyrillic letter Sha
The Cyrillic script
Slavic letters
АБВГҐДЂ
ЃЕЀЁЄЖЗ
З́ЅИЍІЇЙ
ЈКЛЉМНЊ
ОПРСС́ТЋ
ЌУЎФХЦЧ
ЏШЩЪЫЬЭ
ЮЯ
Non-Slavic letters
ӐА̄А̊А̃ӒӒ̄Ә
Ә́Ә̃ӚӔҒГ̧Г̑
Г̄ҔӺӶԀԂ
ԪԬӖЕ̄Е̃
Ё̄Є̈ӁҖӜԄ
ҘӞԐԐ̈ӠԆӢ
И̃ҊӤҚӃҠҞ
ҜԞԚӅԮԒԠ
ԈԔӍӉҢԨӇ
ҤԢԊО̆О̃О̄Ӧ
ӨӨ̄ӪҨԤҦР̌
ҎԖҪԌҬ
ԎУ̃ӮӰӰ́Ӳ
ҮҮ́ҰХ̑ҲӼӾ
ҺҺ̈ԦҴҶ
ӴӋҸҼ
ҾЫ̆Ы̄ӸҌЭ̆Э̄
Э̇ӬӬ́Ӭ̄Ю̆Ю̈Ю̈́
Ю̄Я̆Я̄Я̈ԘԜӀ
Archaic letters
ҀѺ
ОУѠѼѾ
ѢѤѦ
ѪѨѬѮ
ѰѲѴѶ

Sha ш; italics: Ш ш) is a letter of the Glagolitic and Cyrillic script. It commonly represents the voiceless postalveolar fricative /ʃ/, like the pronunciation of sh in "sheep" or the somewhat similar voiceless retroflex fricative /ʂ/ in Russian. More precisely, the sound in Russian denoted by ш is commonly transcribed as a palatoalveolar fricative but is actually a voiceless retroflex fricative. It is used in every variation of the Cyrillic alphabet for Slavic and non-Slavic languages.

In English, Sha is romanized as sh or as š, the latter being the equivalent letter in the Latin alphabets of Czech, Slovak, Slovene, Serbian, Croatian, Latvian and Lithuanian.

History

Sha has its earliest origins in Phoenician Shin and is linked closely to Shin's Greek equivalent: Sigma (Σ, σ, ς). (Note the similar form of the modern Hebrew Shin (ש), which is probably the origin of this letter, deriving 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/σ/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 is the same as the Greek alphabet but with 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 distinctly Cyrillic letter internationally 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 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.

The shuffle product is often denoted by ш.

Computing codes

Character Ш ш
Unicode name CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER SHA CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER SHA
Encodings decimal hex decimal hex
Unicode 1064 U+0428 1096 U+0448
UTF-8 208 168 D0 A8 209 136 D1 88
Numeric character reference Ш Ш ш ш
KOI8-R and KOI8-U 251 FB 219 DB
Code page 855 246 F6 245 F5
Code page 866 152 98 232 E8
Windows-1251 216 D8 248 F8
ISO-8859-5 200 C8 232 E8
Macintosh Cyrillic 152 98 248 F8
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