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Sha Ⱎ

Glagolitic Letters

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Origin Devised about 863 CE for the Moravian mission of Constantine the Philosopher, later Saint Cyril, and his brother Methodius

Sha is the thirtieth letter of Glagolitic and writes sh, the voiceless palato-alveolar fricative. Like zhivete, tsi and chrivi it records a sound Greek had no letter for, so it belongs to the group of signs the alphabet supplied for Slavonic itself. Its Cyrillic counterpart has the same name and a shape often compared with the Hebrew shin, a comparison that has been made since the nineteenth century and that neither side of the argument about the sources of the Slavic letters has been able to settle. It is the base from which the letter for the cluster sht is built in both scripts. It carries no numeral value, standing beyond the end of the run of letters that Glagolitic counts.

Facts
Open Questions
Origin of the Name
Not established for this letter's own name
Sha's own description discusses its shape's resemblance to Hebrew shin, not its name's origin, and gives none. Sha is one of the letters the already-live OpenQuestion names by name.
Sense of the Name
Not established for this letter's own name
Sha's own description gives no sense for its name at all. Sha is one of the letters the already-live OpenQuestion names by name.
Attributions
Associated Sound
The consonant sh, a voiceless palato-alveolar fricative 1Tradition: The Glagolitic alphabet of Old Church Slavonic
Origins
Origin Period
Devised about 863 CE for the Moravian mission of Constantine the Philosopher, later Saint Cyril, and his brother Methodius 2
Place of Origin
Byzantium and Great Moravia; the letters were made in Constantinople or Thessalonica and carried north for the mission 2
Identity
Script Type
An alphabet: each letter writes a single sound, consonant or vowel, with no inherent vowel and no vowel diacritics 1
Position
The thirty-first letter of the Glagolitic alphabet in the traditional order 1Tradition: The Glagolitic alphabet of Old Church Slavonic
Attestation
Meaning in the Attesting Source
Sha's Cyrillic counterpart shares its name and has a shape often compared to the Hebrew letter shin, a comparison argued since the nineteenth century and never settled by either side; the same base letter is used to build the sign for the cluster sht in both scripts. 1
Learn More
Sha: The Glagolitic Letter

Sha writes the consonant sh and carries no numeral value, standing at the Slavic end of the order beyond the counted series. It is among the letters that had to be devised rather than borrowed, since Greek has no sign for the sound and no letter that could be pressed into service for it.

The sound arose in Slavic from the softening of an original s and from certain consonant clusters, and it is frequent, appearing in common endings and in a large share of the vocabulary. That makes the letter one of the more visible shapes on a page and one of the ones a reader of the script learns early despite its position near the end of the alphabet.

The name is opaque, and no etymology has been established for it in either Slavonic script.

The shape is the single most discussed Glagolitic form in the argument about where the letters came from, because it resembles the Hebrew letter shin closely enough that the resemblance has been remarked on for a very long time, and because both letters write a sh sound. The atlas records that as a debated relation, with the competing explanations named, and does not treat the resemblance as a demonstration.

The Cyrillic letter for the same sound is generally described in the same terms, so whatever is decided about one sign has consequences for the other. That is a recurring feature of this stretch of the alphabet: the two Slavonic scripts had the same problem to solve, solved it in the same place in the order, and the evidence for how either of them solved it is thin.

Sha and the Question of a Semitic Source

The similarity between the Slavonic letter for sh and the Hebrew letter shin is the oldest and most frequently cited piece of evidence for a Semitic component in the design of the Slavonic alphabets. Both letters write the same sound, both are three-pronged in their common forms, and the correspondence is close enough that it has been noticed independently by many readers.

What it proves is another matter. Two arguments run against taking it as a settled derivation. The first is that visual resemblance between letters of unrelated scripts is common and easy to over-read, and palaeography has a long record of resemblances that dissolved when the intermediate forms were examined. The second is that the same Slavonic letter has been explained in other ways, as a form composed for the purpose or as an adaptation of a Greek cursive shape, and those explanations account for the same evidence.

What is not in doubt is that a Byzantine scholar of Constantine's education could have known a Semitic alphabet. The sources describe him as a learned man sent on missions to peoples outside the Greek world before the Moravian journey, and knowledge of Hebrew would not be surprising in such a figure. That establishes opportunity and not much else. The atlas records the link as debated, names the camps and leaves the question where the evidence leaves it.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Derived From

Shin ש, Alphabet Letters

Why this is disputed. Glagolitic Sha writes a Slavonic sh sound Greek had no letter for, so the Greek-cursive derivation claimed for the core alphabet cannot explain its shape. One theory traces Sha's form to the Hebrew and Samaritan letter Shin, a resemblance noted since the nineteenth century and consistent with Cyril's documented time among Hebrew and Samaritan speakers on his mission to Cherson. The rival idiographic school holds the resemblance is coincidental, since Glagolitic draws its whole alphabet from a small set of basic shapes, cross, circle and triangle, that could converge on a Semitic letterform by chance rather than by borrowing.

Source The World's Writing SystemsPeter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.)

Derived from This

Sha Ш, Alphabet Letters

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.

Source Byzantine Missions Among the Slavs: SS. Constantine-Cyril and MethodiusFrancis Dvornik

Originates in Language

Old Church Slavonic, Languages

Glagolitic was devised in the 860s so that Greek scripture and liturgy could be read in Slavonic, and Sha belongs to the alphabet of Old Church Slavonic, the language of that translation and of the earliest Slavonic books.

Source Byzantine Missions Among the Slavs: SS. Constantine-Cyril and MethodiusFrancis Dvornik

Related To

Cyril of Thessalonica, Historical Figures
Source Byzantine Missions Among the Slavs: SS. Constantine-Cyril and MethodiusFrancis Dvornik
Sha Ш, Alphabet Letters

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.

Source The World's Writing SystemsPeter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.)
Sha Ш, Alphabet Letters

Sha answers to Glagolitic Sha: the same sound and the same place in the Slavonic alphabet. Neither script numbers the letter.

Source The World's Writing SystemsPeter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.)
Sources
1. The World's Writing Systems
Peter T. Daniels and William Bright (eds.), Oxford University Press, 1996on the Slavic alphabets, their letters and their numeral systemsView the Source
2. Byzantine Missions Among the Slavs: SS. Constantine-Cyril and Methodius
Francis Dvornik, Rutgers University Press, 1970on the Moravian mission and the making of the Slavic lettersView the Source
The Unicode Standard
The Unicode Consortium, The Unicode Consortiumon the encoded characters, their names and their block assignmentView the Source
Open Questions (1 open question)
Did the opaque Glagolitic letter names, fritu, heru, tsi and sha among them, ever carry a sense in Slavonic?

The first twenty letter names of Glagolitic are ordinary Slavonic words and read together as connected sentences, from azu buky vede, I know letters, through ritsi slovo tvrido, say the word firmly. From fritu onwards the names stop meaning anything recoverable, and the reference literature records them as of uncertain or unknown origin without offering a reading. This is an absence rather than a disagreement: no camps hold rival etymologies for these names, and no investigation has settled whether they are corrupted Slavonic words, reflexes of Greek letter names, or labels that never carried a sense. The same gap stands over the corresponding Cyrillic names, which are the same names.

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 the plain lists do not. A demonstration that the names never carried a sense would close 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
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The atlas records no dated fact of its own for this entry, so there is no other year to choose.