Ș
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5a/Latin_letter_S_with_comma_below.svg/220px-Latin_letter_S_with_comma_below.svg.png)
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/10/Virguli%C5%A3a_%C5%9Fi_sedila.svg/180px-Virguli%C5%A3a_%C5%9Fi_sedila.svg.png)
S-comma(majuscule:Ș,minuscule:ș) is a letter which is part of theRomanian Alpha bet,used to represent the sound/ʃ/,thevoiceless postalveolar fricative(likeshinshoe). S-comma consists of an s with adiacritical commaunderneath it, and is distinct froms-cedilla.
History
[edit]![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/80/S_signo_mediae_lunulae_in_Lexicon_de_Buda.png/400px-S_signo_mediae_lunulae_in_Lexicon_de_Buda.png)
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b3/%C5%9E%2C_%C5%A3_and_cedilla_in_Ortografia_limbei_rom%C3%A2ne_1895.png/400px-%C5%9E%2C_%C5%A3_and_cedilla_in_Ortografia_limbei_rom%C3%A2ne_1895.png)
The letter was proposed in theBuda Lexicon,a book published in 1825, which included two texts byPetru Maior,Orthographia romana sive latino-valachica una cum claviandDialogu pentru inceputul linbei române,introducing ș for/ʃ/and ț for/ts/.[1]
Unicode support
[edit]S-comma was not initially supported in earlyUnicodeversions, nor in the predecessors likeISO/IEC 8859-2andWindows-1250.Instead,Ş(S-cedilla), a character available since Unicode 1.1.0 (1993), was used for digital texts written in Romanian. In some contexts, like with low-resolution screens and printouts, the visual distinction betweenșandşis minimal. In 1999, at the request of theRomanian Standardization Association [citation needed],S-comma was introduced in Unicode 3.0. Nevertheless, encoding for the S-comma was not supported in retail versions ofMicrosoftWindows XP,but a later European Union Expansion Font Update provided the feature. While digital accessibility to S-comma has since improved, both characters continue to be used interchangeably in various contexts likepublishing.
The letter is part of Unicode'sLatin Extended-Brange, under "Additions for Romanian", titled as "Latin capital letter S with comma below" (U+0218) and "Latin small letter s with comma below" (U+0219).[2]InHTML,these can be encoded byȘ
andș
,respectively.
Use of the comma with the letterS
[edit]Șș | |
---|---|
S-comma |
- Romanian
- TheRomanianletterȘ/ș(S with comma) represents thevoiceless postalveolar fricative/ʃ/(as in "show "). On outdated systems which do not support the glyph, the symbolŞ/ş(S with cedilla) is used. Example word:Timișoara.
Character encoding
[edit]Preview | Ș | ș | ||
---|---|---|---|---|
Unicode name | LATIN CAPITAL LETTER S WITH COMMA BELOW | LATIN SMALL LETTER S WITH COMMA BELOW | ||
Encodings | decimal | hex | dec | hex |
Unicode | 536 | U+0218 | 537 | U+0219 |
UTF-8 | 200 152 | C8 98 | 200 153 | C8 99 |
Numeric character reference | Ș |
Ș |
ș |
ș |
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^Marinella Lörinczi Angioni, "Coscienza nazionale romanza e ortografia: il romeno tra alfabeto cirillico e alfabeto latino",La Ricerca Folklorica,No. 5, La scrittura: funzioni e ideologie. (Apr., 1982), pp. 75–85.
- ^Unicode code charts.Latin Extended-B: Range 0180–024F