Es (С с; italics:
''С с'') is a letter of the
Cyrillic script
The Cyrillic script ( ), Slavonic script or the Slavic script, is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking c ...
.
It commonly represents the
voiceless alveolar fricative , like the pronunciation of in "sand".
History
The Cyrillic letter Es is derived from a variant of the
Greek letter Sigma known as ''
lunate sigma'' (Ϲ ϲ), in use in the Greek-speaking world in early medieval times. It has no connection to the
Latin letter C (C c), which is a descendant of the
Greek letter Gamma (Γ γ); however, many languages (for different reasons) apply the value of to the Latin letter C, especially before
front vowels
Front may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Films
* ''The Front'' (1943 film), a 1943 Soviet drama film
* ''The Front'', 1976 film
Music
*The Front (band), an American rock band signed to Columbia Records and active in the 1980s and ea ...
''e'' and ''i'' (examples being English, French,
Mexican Spanish
Mexican Spanish ( es, español mexicano) is the variety of dialects and sociolects of the Spanish language spoken in Mexican territory. Mexico has the largest number of Spanish speakers, with more than twice as many as in any other country in ...
); see
hard and soft C
In the Latin-based orthographies of many European languages, including English, a distinction between hard and soft occurs in which represents two distinct phonemes. The sound of a hard often precedes the non-front vowels , and , and is that ...
. As its name suggests, Es is related to the Latin
S.
The name of Es in the
Early Cyrillic alphabet was (''slovo''), meaning "word" or "speech".
In the
Cyrillic numeral system
Cyrillic numerals are a numeral system derived from the Cyrillic script, developed in the First Bulgarian Empire in the late 10th century. It was used in the First Bulgarian Empire and by South and East Slavic peoples. The system was used in ...
, Es had a value of 200.
Form
In the modern Latinized Cyrillic fonts in use today, the Cyrillic letter Es
looks exactly like the
Latin letter C, being one of six letters in the Cyrillic alphabet that share appearances with Latin alphabet letters but are pronounced differently (or at least differently from the most common pronunciation). This fact has been frequently abused by
plagiarism detector circumventors.
Usage
As used in the alphabets of various languages, Es represents the following sounds:
*
voiceless alveolar fricative , like the pronunciation of in "sand"
*
palatalized voiceless alveolar fricative
The pronunciations shown in the table are the primary ones for each language; for details consult the articles on the languages.
Related letters and other similar characters
*Σ σ/ς :
Greek letter Sigma
*S s :
Latin letter S
*Ѕ ѕ :
Cyrillic letter Ѕ
*C c :
Latin letter C
Computing codes
External links
*
*
References
{{Reflist