Ș
S-comma (majuscule: Ș, minuscule: ș) is a letter which is part of the Romanian alphabet, used to represent the sound /ʃ/, the voiceless postalveolar fricative (like sh in shoe). S-comma consists of an s with a diacritical comma underneath it, and is distinct from S-cedilla.
History
[edit]The letter was proposed in the Buda Lexicon [de], a book published in 1825, which included two texts by Petru Maior, Orthographia romana sive latino-valachica una cum clavi and Dialogu pentru inceputul limbei române, introducing ș for /ʃ/ and ț for /ts/.[1][2]
Unicode support
[edit]S-comma was not initially supported in early Unicode versions, nor in the predecessors like ISO/IEC 8859-2 and Windows-1250.[3] 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 between ș and ş is minimal. In 1999, at the request of the Romanian Standardization Association [ro][4], S-comma was introduced in Unicode 3.0.[5] Nevertheless, encoding for the S-comma was not supported in retail versions of Microsoft Windows XP, but a later European Union Expansion Font Update provided the feature.[6] While digital accessibility to S-comma has since improved, both characters continue to be used interchangeably in various contexts like publishing.
The letter is part of Unicode's Latin Extended-B range, 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).[7] In HTML, these can be encoded by Ș and ș, respectively.
Usage
[edit]The letter represents the voiceless postalveolar fricative /ʃ/ (as in "show") in Romanian language.[8] On outdated systems which do not support the glyph, the symbol Ş/ş (S with cedilla) is used.[9] Example word: Timișoara.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.
- ↑ Chivu, Gheorghe (2000). Istoria limbii române literare: Epoca modernă (in Romanian). Editura Academiei Române. ISBN 978-973-27-0749-4.
- ↑ Sala, Marius (1989). Enciclopedia limbilor romanice (in Romanian). Editura Științifică și Enciclopedica. ISBN 978-973-29-0043-7.
- ↑ Andriescu, Cristian (1999). Proposal to add Latin characters with comma below to ISO/IEC 10646 (PDF) (Technical report). ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2. N1980.
- ↑ Andriescu, Cristian (1999). Proposal to add Latin characters with comma below to ISO/IEC 10646 (PDF) (Technical report). ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2. N1980.
- ↑ "European Union Expansion Font Update". Microsoft Docs. Microsoft. Retrieved 22 October 2020.
- ↑ Unicode code charts. Latin Extended-B: Range 0180–024F
- ↑ Saramandu, Nicolae (2003). Limbă și cultură română în context european (in Romanian). Editura Academiei Române. ISBN 978-973-27-0985-6.
- ↑ Sala, Marius (1989). Enciclopedia limbilor romanice (in Romanian). Editura Științifică și Enciclopedica. ISBN 978-973-29-0043-7.