Sha

For other uses, see (disambiguation)}}}.

Sha (Ш, ш) is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, representing the consonant sound /ʃ/ or /ʂ/. It is roughly equivalent to sh in English, ch in French, sch in German, ş in Turkish, or sz in Polish. In most Latin-alphabet Slavic languages (Czech, Slovak, Slovene, Croatian) this sound is written š, and linguists have adopted this symbol to transliterate ш into the Latin alphabet.

The printed Sha looks something like a W or, more exactly, like an E lying on its back. It is used in virtually every national variation of the Cyrillic alphabet, for Slavic and non-Slavic languages. In mathematics, the Tate-Shafarevich group is denoted Ш, a notation first suggested by Cassels. (Previously it had been unimaginatively 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 sound /ʃ/ is described as a voiceless postalveolar fricative. The postalveolar fricatives are the major reason why the Glagolitic and later the Cyrillic alphabet were invented, because they can not be written with a simple Roman or Greek letter without diacritics or digraphs. Slavic languages are rich in postalveolar fricatives and affricates, and Sha is one of the most typical letters of the Cyrillic alphabet.

Sha has its earliest origins in Hebrew Shin (ש), and is linked closely to Shin's Greek equivalent, Sigma (Σ, σ). 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, Glagolitic Sha was adopted unchanged.

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