Sh (digraph)


Sh is a digraph of the Latin alphabet, 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.

Breton

In Breton, sh represents. It is not considered a distinct letter and it is a variety of zh. It is not considered as a diphthong in compound words, such as kroashent + hent.

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 includes a single-cell contraction for the digraph with the dot pattern. In isolation it stands for the word "shall".
In Old English orthography, the sound was written. In Middle English it came to be written Sch | 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 s; for example mo shaol "my life".

Ladino

In Judaeo-Spanish, sh represents and occurs in both native words and foreign ones. 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 or foreign borrowings.
For s·h, see Interpunct#Occitan.

Other languages

Kazakh

In the 2018 amendment of Kazakh Latin alphabets, the letter sh was represented and was the 31st letter of the Kazakh Latin alphabet. It has been replaced by Ş during 2020 amendment.

Somali

Sh represents the sound in the 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, 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.

International auxiliary languages

Ido

In Ido, sh represents.