Tshe



Tshe (or The) (Ћ ћ; italics: Ћ ћ ) is a letter of the Cyrillic script, used only in the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet, where it represents the voiceless alveolo-palatal affricate, somewhat like the pronunciation of $\langlech\rangle$ in "chew"; however, it must not be confused with the voiceless retroflex affricate Che (Ч ч), which represents  and which also exists in Serbian Cyrillic script. The sound of Tshe is produced from the voiceless alveolar plosive by iotation. Tshe is the 23rd letter in the Serbian alphabet. It was first used by Dositej Obradović as a revival of the old Cyrillic letter Djerv (Ꙉ), and was later adopted in the 1818 Serbian dictionary of Vuk Stefanović Karadžić. The equivalent character to Tshe in Gaj's Latin alphabet is Ć.

Despite being a Cyrillic letter, Tshe was also used in Latin-based Slovincian phonetic transcriptions with the same value as in Serbian.

Being part of the most common Serbian last names, the transliteration of Tshe to the Latin alphabet is very important; however, there are many ways to transliterate it. It is typically transliterated as $\langleć\rangle$, as per the Serbo-Croatian Latin alphabet or, without the diacritic, as $\langlec\rangle$; less frequent transliterations are $\langletj\rangle$, $\langletsh\rangle$, $\langlety\rangle$, $\langlecj\rangle$, $\langlecy\rangle$, $\langlech\rangle$ (also used for Che), and $\langletch\rangle$, $\langlets\rangle$ (the last one in Hungarian only, but $\langlecs\rangle$ and $\langlety\rangle$ are more common). It looks similar to the Shha (Һ һ) but stroked.

As it is one of the letters unique to the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet, and also the first letter of the Serbian word for Cyrillic (ћирилица), Tshe is often used as the basis for logos for various groups involved with the Cyrillic alphabet.

Other uses
The capital Tshe has seen uses in the English language as a symbol for the definitive article The—similarly to the Ampersand & At sign—due to it appearing as a ligature of the Latin script letters uppercase T & lowercase H—which are the first 2 letters of the English word The. However, unlike common symbols such as the ampersand & at sign, the use of the capital Tshe as a symbol in English is not widely known or recognized, and uppercase thorn (Þ) is often used instead.

Related letters and other similar characters

 * Т т : Т|Cyrillic letter Te
 * Ч ч : Ч|Cyrillic letter Che
 * Ђ ђ : Ђ|Cyrillic letter Dje
 * Һ һ : Һ|Cyrillic letter Shha
 * Ќ, ќ : Ќ|Cyrillic letter Kje
 * Ć ć : Ć|Latin letter C with acute
 * Ħ ħ : Ħ|Latin letter H with stroke