Sh is a digraph of the Latin alphabet, a combination of S and H.
European languages
Albanian
In Albanian, sh represents [ʃ]. It is considered a distinct letter, named shë, and placed between S and T in the Albanian alphabet.
Breton
In Breton, sh represents [s]. It is not considered a distinct letter and it is a variety of zh (e. g. koshoc'h ("older"). It is not considered as a digraph in compound words, such as kroashent ("roundabout": kroaz ("cross") + hent ("way", "ford").
English
In English, ⟨sh⟩ usually represents /ʃ/. The exception is in compound words, where the ⟨s⟩ and ⟨h⟩ are not a digraph, but pronounced separately, e.g. hogshead is hogs-head /ˈhɒɡz.hɛd/, not *hog-shead /ˈhɒɡ.ʃɛd/. Sh is not considered a distinct letter for collation purposes.
American Literary braille 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, the sound /ʃ/ was written ⟨sc⟩. In Middle English it came to be written ⟨sch⟩ or ⟨sh⟩; the latter spelling has been adopted as the usual one in Modern English.
Irish
In Irish sh is pronounced [h] and represents the lenition of ⟨s⟩; for example mo shaol [mə hiːɫ] "my life" (cf. saol [sˠiːɫ] "life").
Ladino
In Judaeo-Spanish, sh represents [ʃ] and occurs in both native words (debasho, ‘under’) and foreign ones (shalom, ‘hallo’). In the Hebrew script it is written ש.
Occitan
In Occitan, sh represents [ʃ]. 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 [ˈpeʃ, naˈʃensɔ]. Some words have sh in all Occitan dialects: they are Gascon words adopted in all the Occitan language (Aush "Auch", Arcaishon "Arcachon") or foreign borrowings (shampó "shampoo").
For s·h, see Interpunct#Occitan.
Spanish
In Spanish, sh represents [ʃ] 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].[1]
Other languages
Somali
Sh represents the sound [ʃ] in the Somali Latin Alphabet.[2] It is considered a separate letter, and is the 9th letter of the alphabet.
Uyghur
Sh represents the sound [ʃ] 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 [ʃ]. It is the 27th letter of the Uzbek alphabet.
Romanization
In the Pinyin, Wade-Giles, and Yale romanizations of Chinese, sh represents retroflex [ʂ]. It contrasts with [ɕ], which is written x in Pinyin, hs in Wade-Giles, and sy in Yale.
In the Hepburn romanization of Japanese, sh represents [ɕ]. Other romanizations write [ɕ] as s before i and sy before other vowels.
International auxiliary languages
Ido
References
- ↑ Royal Spanish Academy. Ortografía de la lengua española (2010). (in spanish), pp. 127-128
- ↑ David D., Laitin (1977-01-01). Politics, language, and thought: the Somali experience. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0226467910.