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 writing ...

: 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 Greek city of Cumae, in southern ...

, 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 "po� ...

ſ or an integral sign ∫; in 1928 the

Africa Alphabet The Africa Alphabet (also International African Alphabet or IAI alphabet) was developed by the International Institute of African Languages and Cultures in 1928, with the help of some Africans led by Diedrich Hermann Westermann, who served as di ...

borrowed the Greek letter sigma 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 phonem ...

discontinued it, using the lowercase esh only. The lowercase form was introduced by

Isaac Pitman Sir Isaac Pitman (4 January 1813 – 22 January 1897) was a teacher of the :English language who developed the most widely used system of shorthand, known now as Pitman shorthand. He first proposed this in ''Stenographic Soundhand'' in 183 ...

in his 1847 Phonotypic Alphabet to represent the voiceless postalveolar fricative (English ''sh''). It is today used in the alphabets of some African languages, as well as in the

International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standardized representation ...

. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) uses to represent a voiceless palato-alveolar sibilant. Related obsolete IPA characters include , , and . is used in the Teuthonista phonetic transcription system. Variations of esh are used for other phonetic transcription: ᶋ ᶘ ^ʃ. and are used as click letters.

References

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

Form, usage, and history

See also

References