Alphabet Letters
Sha Ш
Cyrillic Letters
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Origin Developed in the late ninth or early tenth century, after the death of Constantine-Cyril, in the First Bulgarian Empire
Sha is the twenty-seventh letter of Cyrillic and writes sh, the voiceless palato-alveolar fricative. The sound is native to Slavonic and had no Greek letter, so the sign was taken from Glagolitic and the letter has no numeral value. Its shape has been compared with the Hebrew shin since the nineteenth century, and the comparison is one of the standing arguments about where the non-Greek Slavic letters came from; it has never been settled, because a resemblance between two simple shapes is weak evidence either way. It is the base from which the letter for the cluster sht is built. It remains in use in every modern Cyrillic alphabet, unchanged in shape and in sound, which few of the Greek-derived letters can be said to be.
Facts
Attributions
Associated SoundThe consonant sh, a voiceless palato-alveolar fricative 1Tradition: Early Cyrillic, the alphabet of Church Slavonic Disputed
Historical OriginWhere the sign comes from is not agreed. Most readings derive it from the Glagolitic letter for the same sound; a comparison with Hebrew or Samaritan shin has been argued since the nineteenth century; a third position holds that a shape this plain cannot carry either derivation. 2Tradition: Early Cyrillic, the alphabet of Church Slavonic Three positions are held and all three can be read. No exemplar of either Slavic alphabet survives from the ninth century, when the choices were made, so every argument runs on comparison of shapes in later manuscripts and none can be checked against a witness of the period. Recorded as debated rather than unknown because the camps are real; what is missing is an agreed criterion for deciding between them, which is what the open question on this page asks for. Attestation
Meaning in the Attesting SourceSha remains unchanged in shape and sound in every modern Cyrillic alphabet, which is true of few of the Greek-derived letters in the same script. 1 Open Questions
Origin of the NameNot established for this letter's own name
Sha's own description discusses its shape's resemblance to Hebrew shin, not the origin of its name, and gives none. Covered by the already-live OpenQuestion, this cohort's own precedent (Fert, 736). Sense of the NameNot established for this letter's own name
Sha's own description gives no sense for its name at all. Covered by the already-live OpenQuestion. Identity
Script TypeAn alphabet: one letter to a sound, built on Greek uncial letterforms with additional signs, several of them taken from Glagolitic, for the Slavonic sounds Greek could not write 1 PositionThe twenty-seventh letter of the Early Cyrillic alphabet in the traditional order 1Tradition: Early Cyrillic, the alphabet of Church Slavonic Origins
Origin PeriodDeveloped in the late ninth or early tenth century, after the death of Constantine-Cyril, in the First Bulgarian Empire 2 Place of OriginThe First Bulgarian Empire, in the school of the disciples of Cyril and Methodius, with Preslav and Ohrid the two centres most often named 2 Learn More
Sha: The Letter With No Number and No Rival
Sha stands twenty seventh and writes sh, the voiceless palato-alveolar fricative. It carries no numeral value, because Greek had no letter for the sound and therefore no number attached to any sign that could be borrowed for it.
Among the letters supplied for Slavonic the sha is the least troubled. It has no doublet, so there are no distribution rules to learn; its sound never merged with anything, so no later reform found it redundant; and it appears in every modern Cyrillic alphabet in a shape essentially unchanged from the earliest manuscripts. Very few letters in this alphabet have had so uneventful a history.
It is also structurally productive. The letter for the cluster sht is built on it, whether as a ligature made inside Cyrillic or as a Glagolitic sign redrawn to match, and the resemblance between the two is visible at a glance.
The letterform is symmetrical about a vertical axis, which is rare in this script and has attracted comment from everyone who has compared it with other alphabets. That symmetry is the main reason it is the letter most often produced in the argument that some Cyrillic signs came from a Semitic source, and the argument is taken up in the companion article.
Sha and the Hebrew Shin
The best known of the arguments that Cyrillic drew on a Semitic script rests on this letter. Sha and the Hebrew shin write the same sound and look, to many eyes, similar: three uprights rising from a base. The comparison has been made since the nineteenth century and it has never gone away.
The case for it is not only visual. Whoever assembled the alphabet was working in a milieu where Hebrew was not unknown, and the Slavonic accounts of Constantine credit him with an interest in other scripts and with disputation involving Jewish scholars. A scholar who needed a sign for a sound Greek lacked, and who knew an alphabet that had one, might reasonably take it.
The case against is that the argument proves too little. A shape made of three strokes on a base is one of the simplest a pen can produce, and simple shapes coincide. Glagolitic already had a letter for sh, and a maker of Cyrillic had every reason to use the sign already fitted to the language rather than reach further. And the Semitic hypothesis, extended to the other non-Greek letters, produces matches of steadily worse quality, which is what one expects from a method that finds resemblances rather than descent.
What would settle it is evidence of a kind nobody has: an exemplar from the period, or a statement by someone who was there. Both camps are working from later manuscripts and from shape comparison. The atlas therefore records the derivation as debated rather than picking the side with the better story.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Derived From
Why this is disputed. Sha writes sh, a sound Greek had no letter for, and its square, comb-like shape is one of the more distinctive Cyrillic signs. The mainstream paleographic view derives it from the Glagolitic sha, itself often traced to the Hebrew letter shin; a rival, minority view holds the resemblance to shin is coincidental and that Glagolitic sha, and so Cyrillic sha behind it, was an original design with no outside model, a live disagreement in Slavic script history.
Derived from This
Shta is built on sha, whether as a ligature of sha and tverdo or as a Glagolitic sign redrawn to match sha. That it is built on sha is agreed; which of the two accounts is right is recorded on the Glagolitic link.
Originates in Language
Sha is a letter of the Early Cyrillic alphabet, which was assembled to write Old Church Slavonic and which takes its letter names from that language.
Related To
Cyrillic Sha writes the same sound and stands in the same place in the Slavonic alphabet. Neither script numbers the letter. Which of the two Slavonic scripts came first, and how much either owes the other, is argued rather than settled.
Sha answers to Glagolitic Sha: the same sound and the same place in the Slavonic alphabet. Neither script numbers the letter.
Sources
Open Questions (2 open questions)
Did the opaque letter names at the end of the Slavic alphabets, fert, kher, tsy and sha among them, ever carry a sense in Slavonic?
The first twenty letter names of both Slavic alphabets are ordinary Slavonic words and read together as connected sentences, from azu buky vedi, I know letters, through rtsy slovo tverdo, say the word firmly. After that point the names stop meaning anything recoverable. The reference literature records them as of uncertain or unknown origin and offers no reading. This is not a disagreement between scholars with rival etymologies; it is an absence. Nobody has established whether these names are corrupted Slavonic words, reflexes of Greek letter names, or labels that never meant anything at all, and the question has not been taken up.
What would resolve this A systematic etymological study of the full set of Slavic letter names, working from the earliest abecedaria and from the acrostic alphabet poems of the Old Church Slavonic tradition, which arrange the names in verse and may preserve senses that the plain lists do not. A finding that the names are demonstrably meaningless would settle the question as firmly as a set of etymologies would.
Slavic historical linguistics; Old Church Slavonic philologyPeter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.), The World's Writing Systems
Did the Cyrillic letters for the sounds Greek lacked come from Glagolitic, from a Semitic script, or from neither?
Roughly a dozen Early Cyrillic letters have no Greek model. The majority reading derives them from Glagolitic, which is older and already fitted to Slavonic. A second reading compares sha, tsy and zhivete with Hebrew or Samaritan letters, an argument made since the nineteenth century. A third holds that shapes this simple cannot support either claim. No exemplar of either alphabet survives from the ninth century, when the choices were made, so every argument runs on shape comparison against later manuscripts.
What would resolve this A dated exemplar of either alphabet from the period of composition, or a decisive argument from the internal structure of the two letter sets rather than from resemblance between individual shapes. Failing either, a rigorous statistical treatment of shape similarity that establishes what level of resemblance would count as evidence at all.
Slavic palaeography, with Semitic epigraphy for the comparative claimsFrancis Dvornik, Byzantine Missions Among the Slavs: SS. Constantine-Cyril and Methodius
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