Esh (

majuscule Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (or more formally ''majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (or more formally ''minuscule'') in the written representation of certain languages. The writi ...

: Ʃ

Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, ...

U+01A9, minuscule: ʃ Unicode U+0283) is a character used in conjunction with the

Latin script The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greece, Greek city of Cumae, in southe ...

, which represents the

voiceless postalveolar fricative A voiceless postalveolar fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The International Phonetic Association uses the term ''voiceless postalveolar fricative'' only for the sound , but it also describes the voiceless ...

(English ''sh'').

Form, usage, and history

Its lowercase form ʃ is similar to a

long s The long s , also known as the medial s or initial s, is an archaic form of the lowercase letter . It replaced the single ''s'', or one or both of the letters ''s'' in a 'double ''s sequence (e.g., "ſinfulneſs" for "sinfulness" and "poſ� ...

ſ or an integral sign ∫; in 1928 the Africa Alphabet borrowed the

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

letter

sigma Sigma (; uppercase Σ, lowercase σ, lowercase in word-final position ς; grc-gre, σίγμα) is the eighteenth letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 200. In general mathematics, uppercase Σ is used ...

for the uppercase form Ʃ, but more recently the

African reference alphabet An African reference alphabet was first proposed in 1978 by a UNESCO-organized conference held in Niamey, Niger, and the proposed alphabet was revised in 1982. The conference recommended the use of single letters for a sound (that is, a phoneme) ...

discontinued it, using the lowercase esh only. The lowercase form was introduced by Isaac Pitman in his 1847 Phonotypic Alphabet to represent the voiceless postalveolar fricative (English ''sh''). It is today used in the alphabets of some

African languages The languages of Africa are divided into several major language families: * Niger–Congo or perhaps Atlantic–Congo languages (includes Bantu and non-Bantu, and possibly Mande and others) are spoken in West, Central, Southeast and Southern ...

, as well as in the International Phonetic Alphabet. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) uses to represent a

voiceless palato-alveolar sibilant A voiceless postalveolar fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The International Phonetic Association uses the term ''voiceless postalveolar fricative'' only for the sound , but it also describes the voiceless ...

. Related obsolete IPA characters include , , and . is used in the

Teuthonista Teuthonista is a phonetic transcription system used predominantly for the transcription of (High) German dialects. It is very similar to other Central European transcription systems from the early 20th century. The base characters are mostly bas ...

phonetic transcription system. Variations of esh are used for other phonetic transcription: ᶋ ᶘ ^ʃ. and are used as

click letter Various letters have been used to write the click consonants of southern Africa. The precursors of the current IPA letters, , were created by Karl Richard Lepsius and used by Wilhelm Bleek and Lucy Lloyd, who added . Also influential were Dani ...

References

Latin-script letters Phonetic transcription symbols {{phonetics-stub

Form, usage, and history

See also

References