Sho (letter)

{{short description|Letter of the Bactrian alphabet}}

{{distinguish|text=Þ, the Germanic letter thorn}}

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{{Greek Alphabet|Image=|letter=sho}}

The letter {{lang|xbc|ϸ}} (sometimes called sho or san) was a letter added to the Greek alphabet in order to write the Bactrian language.Everson, M. and Sims-Williams, N. (2002) “[http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n2411.pdf Proposal to add two Greek letters for Bactrian to the UCS]”，ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2 N2411. It was similar in appearance to the Anglo-Saxon and Icelandic letter thorn (þ), which has typically been used to represent it in modern print, although they are historically unrelated. It probably represented a sound similar to English "sh" ({{IPAblink|ʃ}}). Its conventional transliteration in Latin is {{Angle bracket|{{Transliteration|xbc|š}}}}.{{cite encyclopedia|encyclopedia=Concise encyclopedia of languages of the world|editor1-first=Keith|editor1-last=Brown|editor2-first=Sarah|editor2-last=Ogilvie|first=P. O.|last=Skjærvø|year=2009|title=Bactrian|page=115|place=Oxford|publisher=Elsevier|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=F2SRqDzB50wC&q=Bactrian+Kaniska+letter&pg=PA115|isbn=9780080877754}}

File:KanishkaCoin3.JPG, with the inscription ϷΑΟΝΑΝΟϷΑΟ ΚΑΝΗϷΚΙ ΚΟϷΑΝΟ (Šaonanošao Kanēški Košano): "King of Kings, Kanishka the Kushan".]]

File:Bactrian sh.svg

Its original name and position in the Bactrian alphabet, if it had any, are unknown. Some authors have called it "san", on the basis of the hypothesis that it was a survival or reintroduction of the archaic Greek letter San.{{cite book|title=The Greeks in Bactria and India

|first=William Woodthorpe|last=Tarn|page=508|place=Cambridge|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=1961|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=-HeJS3nE9cAC&q=Bactrian+%22letter+san%22&pg=PA508|isbn=9781108009416}} This letter {{lang|xbc|ϸ}} closely resembles, perhaps coincidentally, the letter {{Angle bracket|{{Script|Cari|𐊮}}}} of the Greek-based Carian alphabet which may have also stood for {{IPA|[ʃ]}}. The name "sho" was coined for the letter for purposes of modern computer encoding in 2002, on the basis of analogy with "rho" ({{Script|Grek|ρ}}), the letter with which it seems to be graphically related. Ϸ was added to Unicode in version 4.0 (2003), in an uppercase and lowercase character designed for modern typography.