Esh (letter)

Esh (majuscule: Ʃ Unicode U+01A9, minuscule: ʃ Unicode U+0283) is a character used in conjunction with the Latin script. Its lowercase form ʃ is similar to a long s ſ or an integral sign ∫; in 1928 the Africa Alphabet borrowed the Greek letter Sigma for the uppercase form Ʃ, but more recently the African reference alphabet 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 International Phonetic Alphabet, as well as in the alphabets of some African languages.

This article is about the letter ʃ ("esh"). For the IPA symbol, see voiceless postalveolar fricative. For the letter esh 𐑇 in the Deseret alphabet, see Deseret alphabet.

Not to be confused with the letter ſ (the "long s") or the integral symbol, ∫.

Not to be confused with ezh.

Ʃ
Ʃ ʃ
(See below)
Usage
Writing system	Latin script
Type	Alphabetic and Logographic
Language of origin	Latin language
Phonetic usage	[ʃ] /ˈɛʃ/
Unicode value	U+01A9, U+0283
History
Development	Σ σ ς ς 𐌔 S s S ſ Ʃ ʃ
Time period	1847 to present
Descendants	None
Sisters	Š ſ Ꚃ Ѕ С Ш Щ Ҫ Ԍ ש ش ܫ س ࠔ 𐎘 𐡔 ሠ ㅅ (disputed) ㅆ (disputed) Ս ս श स શ સ
Variations	(See below)
Other
Other letters commonly used with	s(x), sh, š

The letter esh can be inserted using unofficial "English (International)" layout: uppercase Ʃ can be inserted with AltGr+Shift/Caps Lock+F+S while lowercase ʃ is AltGr+F+S.

The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) uses U+0283 ʃ LATIN SMALL LETTER ESH to represent a voiceless palato-alveolar sibilant. Related obsolete IPA characters include U+01AA ƪ LATIN LETTER REVERSED ESH LOOP, U+0285 ʅ LATIN SMALL LETTER SQUAT REVERSED ESH, and U+0286 ʆ LATIN SMALL LETTER ESH WITH CURL.

U+AB4D ꭍ LATIN SMALL LETTER BASELINE ESH is used in the Teuthonista phonetic transcription system.[1]

Variations of esh are used for other phonetic transcription:[2] ᶋ ᶘ ᶴ.

See also

• Long s (the character ſ)
• Sigma (the Greek character σ)
• Sz (digraph)
• Sh (digraph)
• Sch (trigraph)
• Sci (trigraph)
• Sc (digraph)
• Ch (digraph)
• Š
• Ş
• Sha (the Cyrillic letter)
• ഽ (Praslesham)

References

1. Everson, Michael; Dicklberger, Alois; Pentzlin, Karl; Wandl-Vogt, Eveline (2011-06-02). "L2/11-202: Revised proposal to encode "Teuthonista" phonetic characters in the UCS" (PDF).
2. Constable, Peter (2004-04-19). "L2/04-132 Proposal to add additional phonetic characters to the UCS" (PDF).