Esh (majuscule: Ʃ Unicode U+01A9, minuscule: ʃ Unicode U+0283) is a character used in phonology to represent the voiceless postalveolar fricative (English ⟨sh⟩, as in "ship").

Form, usage, and history

Its lowercase form ⟨ʃ⟩ is similar to an integral sign ⟨ʃ⟩ or a long s ⟨ſ⟩ with an extra leftward hook at the bottom; in 1928 the Africa Alphabet borrowed the Greek letter sigma for the uppercase form ⟨Ʃ⟩. The lowercase form was introduced by Isaac Pitman in his 1847 Phonotypic Alphabet to represent the voiceless postalveolar fricative (English sh). It is today used in the alphabets of some African languages, as well as in the International Phonetic Alphabet. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) uses to represent a voiceless palato-alveolar sibilant. Related obsolete IPA characters include, , and. is used in the Teuthonista phonetic transcription system. Variations of esh are used for other phonetic transcription: ⟨ᶋ⟩, ⟨ᶘ⟩, ⟨ʃ⟩. and are used as click letters.