Sh is a digraph of the

Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the ...

, a combination of S and H.

European languages

Albanian

In Albanian, sh represents . It is considered a distinct letter, named shë, and placed between S and T in the

Albanian alphabet The Albanian alphabet ( sq, alfabeti shqip) is a variant of the Latin alphabet used to write the Albanian language. It consists of 36 letters: ''Note:'' The vowels are shown in bold. The letters are named simply by their sounds, followed by ë ...

Breton

In Breton, sh represents . It is not considered a distinct letter and it is a variety of zh (e. g. ("older"). It is not considered as a diphthong in compound words, such as ''kroashent'' ("roundabout": ''kroaz'' ("cross") + ''hent'' ("way", "ford").

English

In English, usually represents . The exception is in compound words, where the and are not a digraph, but pronounced separately, e.g. ''hogshead'' is ''hogs-head'' , not ''*hog-shead'' . ''Sh'' is not considered a distinct letter for collation purposes. American Literary

braille Braille (Pronounced: ) is a tactile writing system used by people who are visually impaired, including people who are blind, deafblind or who have low vision. It can be read either on embossed paper or by using refreshable braille display ...

includes a single-cell contraction for the digraph with the dot pattern (1 4 6). In isolation it stands for the word "shall". In

Old English orthography Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5t ...

, the sound was written . In

Middle English Middle English (abbreviated to ME) is a form of the English language that was spoken after the Norman conquest of 1066, until the late 15th century. The English language underwent distinct variations and developments following the Old English ...

it came to be written or ; the latter spelling has been adopted as the usual one in Modern English.

Irish

In Irish ''sh'' is pronounced and represents the lenition of ; for example "my life" (cf. ''saol'' "life").

Ladino

In Judaeo-Spanish, sh represents and occurs in both native words (, ‘under’) and foreign ones (''shalom'', ‘hullo’). In the Hebrew script it is written ש.

Occitan

In Occitan, sh represents . It mostly occurs in the Gascon dialect of Occitan and corresponds with ''s'' or ''ss'' in other Occitan dialects: ''peish = peis'' "fish", ''naishença = naissença'' "birth", ''sheis = sièis'' "six". An ''i'' before ''sh'' is silent: ''peish, naishença'' are pronounced . Some words have ''sh'' in all Occitan dialects: they are Gascon words adopted in all the Occitan language (''Aush'' " Auch", ''Arcaishon'' "

Arcachon Arcachon ( ; ) is a commune in the southwestern French department of Gironde. It is a popular seaside resort on the Atlantic coast southwest of Bordeaux, in the Landes forest. It has a sandy beach and a mild climate said to be favourable for ...

") or foreign borrowings (''shampó'' "shampoo"). For s·h, see Interpunct#Occitan.

Spanish

In Spanish, sh represents almost only in foreign origin words, as ''flash'', ''show'', ''shuara'' or ''geisha''. Royal Spanish Academy recommends adapting in both spelling and pronunciation with s, adapting to common pronunciation in peninsular dialect. Nevertheless, in American dialects it is frequently pronounced

t͡ʃ The voiceless palato-alveolar sibilant affricate or voiceless domed postalveolar sibilant affricate is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The sound is transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet with , (formerl ...

Other languages

Somali

Sh represents the sound in the Somali Latin alphabet, Somali Latin Alphabet. It is considered a separate letter, and is the 9th letter of the alphabet.

Uyghur

Sh represents the sound in the Uyghur Latin script. It is considered a separate letter, and is the 14th letter of the alphabet.

Uzbek

In Uzbek, the letter sh represents . It is the 27th letter of the Uzbek alphabet.

Romanization

In the

Pinyin Hanyu Pinyin (), often shortened to just pinyin, is the official romanization system for Standard Mandarin Chinese in China, and to some extent, in Singapore and Malaysia. It is often used to teach Mandarin, normally written in Chinese fo ...

, Wade-Giles, and Yale romanizations of Chinese, sh represents retroflex . It contrasts with , which is written x in Pinyin, hs in Wade-Giles, and sy in Yale. In the Hepburn romanization of Japanese, sh represents . Other romanizations write as ''s'' before ''i'' and ''sy'' before other vowels.