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Origin: Further Information:, ,, and

The document summarizes the origins and history of the letter S. It began as the Northwest Semitic letter shin, representing the sound /ʃ/. When adopted into Greek, it came to represent /s/ and was called sigma. Various Italic scripts derived from the Western Greek alphabet adapted it to their languages. The shape of the Latin S developed from the Greek sigma. The letter was widely used in medieval scripts before being replaced by round s in the 18th-19th centuries in most European languages. Today it represents /s/ or /z/ in many languages, and other sounds in some contexts.

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Yoel S Torres Colana
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39 views

Origin: Further Information:, ,, and

The document summarizes the origins and history of the letter S. It began as the Northwest Semitic letter shin, representing the sound /ʃ/. When adopted into Greek, it came to represent /s/ and was called sigma. Various Italic scripts derived from the Western Greek alphabet adapted it to their languages. The shape of the Latin S developed from the Greek sigma. The letter was widely used in medieval scripts before being replaced by round s in the 18th-19th centuries in most European languages. Today it represents /s/ or /z/ in many languages, and other sounds in some contexts.

Uploaded by

Yoel S Torres Colana
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Origin

Further information: Shin (letter), Sigma, San (letter), and Sho (letter)
Northwest Semitic šîn represented a voiceless postalveolar fricative /ʃ/ (as in 'ship'). It
originated most likely as a pictogram of a tooth (‫ )שנא‬and represented the phoneme /ʃ/ via
the acrophonic principle.[3]
Greek did not have a /ʃ/ phoneme, so the derived Greek letter sigma (Σ) came to represent
the voiceless alveolar sibilant /s/. While the letter shape Σ continues Phoenician šîn, its
name sigma is taken from the letter samekh, while the shape and position of samekh but
name of šîn is continued in the xi.[citation needed] Within Greek, the name of sigma was influenced
by its association with the Greek word σίζω (earlier *sigj-) "to hiss". The original name of
the letter "sigma" may have been san, but due to the complicated early history of the Greek
epichoric alphabets, "san" came to be identified as a separate letter, Ϻ.[4] Herodotus reports
that "San" was the name given by the Dorians to the same letter called "Sigma" by
the Ionians.[5]
The Western Greek alphabet used in Cumae was adopted by the Etruscans and Latins in
the 7th century BC, over the following centuries developing into a range of Old Italic
alphabets including the Etruscan alphabet and the early Latin alphabet. In Etruscan, the
value /s/ of Greek sigma (𐌔) was maintained, while san (𐌑) represented a separate
phoneme, most likely /ʃ/ (transliterated as ś). The early Latin alphabet adopted sigma, but
not san, as Old Latin did not have a /ʃ/ phoneme.
The shape of Latin S arises from Greek Σ by dropping one out of the four strokes of that
letter. The (angular) S-shape composed of three strokes existed as a variant of the four-
stroke letter Σ already in the epigraphy in Western Greek alphabets, and the three and four
strokes variants existed alongside one another in the classical Etruscan alphabet. In
other Italic alphabets (Venetic, Lepontic), the letter could be represented as a zig-zagging
line of any number between three and six strokes.
The Italic letter was also adopted into Elder Futhark, as Sowilō (ᛊ), and appears with four to
eight strokes in the earliest runic inscriptions, but is occasionally reduced to three strokes
(ᛋ) from the later 5th century, and appears regularly with three strokes in Younger Futhark.

Long s

Late medieval German script (Swabian bastarda, dated 1496) illustrating the use of long and
round s: prieſters tochter ("priest's daughter").

Main article: long s


The minuscule form ſ, called the long s, developed in the early medieval period, within
the Visigothic and Carolingian hands, with predecessors in the half-
uncial and cursive scripts of Late Antiquity. It remained standard in western writing
throughout the medieval period and was adopted in early printing with movable types. It
existed alongside minuscule "round" or "short" s, which was at the time only used at the
end of words.
In most western orthographies, the ſ gradually fell out of use during the second half of the
18th century, although it remained in occasional use into the 19th century. In Spain, the
change was mainly accomplished between the years 1760 and 1766. In France, the
change occurred between 1782 and 1793. Printers in the United States stopped using the
long s between 1795 and 1810. In English orthography, the London printer John
Bell (1745–1831) pioneered the change. His edition of Shakespeare, in 1785, was
advertised with the claim that he "ventured to depart from the common mode by rejecting
the long 'ſ' in favor of the round one, as being less liable to error....."[6] The Times of London
made the switch from the long to the short s with its issue of 10 September
1803. Encyclopædia Britannica's 5th edition, completed in 1817, was the last edition to use
the long s.
In German orthography, long s was retained in Fraktur (Schwabacher) type as well as in
standard cursive (Sütterlin) well into the 20th century, and was officially abolished in
1941.[7] The ligature of ſs (or ſz) was retained, however, giving rise to the Eszett, ß in
contemporary German orthography.

Use in writing systems


The letter ⟨s⟩ is the seventh most common letter in English and the third-most common
consonant after ⟨t⟩ and ⟨n⟩.[8] It is the most common letter in starting and ending
position.[citation needed]
In English and several other languages, primarily Western Romance ones
like Spanish and French, final ⟨s⟩ is the usual mark of pluralnouns. It is the regular ending
of English third person present tense verbs.
⟨s⟩ represents the voiceless alveolar or voiceless dental sibilant /s/ in most languages as
well as in the International Phonetic Alphabet. It also commonly represents the voiced
alveolar or voiced dental sibilant /z/, as in Portuguese mesa (table) or English 'rose' and
'bands', or it may represent the voiceless palato-alveolar fricative [ʃ], as in most Portuguese
dialects when syllable-finally, in Hungarian, in German (before ⟨p⟩, ⟨t⟩) and some English
words as 'sugar', since yod-coalescence became a dominant feature, and [ʒ], as in English
'measure' (also because of yod-coalescence), European Portuguese Islão (Islam) or, in
many sociolects of Brazilian Portuguese, esdrúxulo (proparoxytone) in some Andalusian
dialects, it merged with Peninsular Spanish ⟨c⟩ and ⟨z⟩ and is now pronounced [θ]. In some
English words of French origin, the letter ⟨s⟩ is silent, as in 'isle' or 'debris'.
The ⟨sh⟩ digraph for English /ʃ/ arises in Middle English (alongside ⟨sch⟩), replacing the Old
English ⟨sc⟩ digraph. Similarly, Old High German ⟨sc⟩ was replaced by ⟨sch⟩ in Early
Modern High German orthography.

Related characters
Descendants and related characters in the Latin alphabet
 ſ : Latin letter long S, an obsolete variant of S
 ẜ ẝ : Various forms of long S were used for medieval scribal abbreviations[9]
 ẞ ß : German Eszett or "sharp S", derived from a ligature of long s followed by either s
or z
 S with diacritics: Ś ś Ṡ ṡ ẛ Ṩ ṩ Ṥ ṥ Ṣ ṣ S̩ s̩ Ꞩ ꞩ Ŝ ŝ Ṧ ṧ Š š Ş ş Ș ș S̈ s̈ ᶊ Ȿ ȿ ᵴ[10] ᶳ[11]
 ₛ : Subscript small s was used in the Uralic Phonetic Alphabet prior to its formal
standardization in 1902[12]
 ˢ : Modifier letter small s is used for phonetic transcription
 ꜱ : Small capital S was used in the Icelandic First Grammatical Treatise to
mark gemination[13]
 Ʂ ʂ : S with hook, used for writing Mandarin Chinese using the early draft version
of pinyin romanization during the mid-1950s[14]
 Ƨ ƨ : Latin letter reversed S (used in Zhuang transliteration)
 IPA-specific symbols related to S: ʃ ɧ[citation needed] ʂ
 Ꞅ ꞅ : Insular S
Derived signs, symbols, and abbreviations
 $ : Dollar sign
 ₷ : Spesmilo
 § : Section sign
 ℠: Service mark symbol
 ∫ : Integral symbol, short for summation

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