Numeric value: 900 | ||
Tse (Ц ц; italics: Ц ц) is a letter of the Cyrillic script.
Contents
It commonly represents the voiceless alveolar affricate /ts/, like the pronunciation of ⟨zz⟩ in "pizza".
In English, Tse is commonly romanized as ⟨ts⟩. However, in proper names (personal names, toponyms, etc.) and titles it may also be rendered as ⟨c⟩ (which signifies the sound in Serbo-Croatian, Czech, Hungarian etc.), ⟨z⟩ (which signifies the sound in Italian and German), ⟨cz⟩ or ⟨tz⟩. Its equivalent in the modern Romanian Latin alphabet is ⟨ț⟩.
History
Tse is thought to have come from the Hebrew letter Ṣade ⟨⟩, via the Glagolitic letter Tsi ⟨⟩.
The name of Tse in the Early Cyrillic alphabet is ци (tsi). New Church Slavonic and Russian spelling of the name is цы.
In the Cyrillic numeral system, Tse has a value of 900.
Russian
It is the 24th (if Yo is included) letter of the Russian alphabet. It is used both in native Slavic words (and corresponds to Proto-Indo-European *k in certain positions) and in borrowed words:
Unlike most other consonants (but like ⟨ж⟩ and ⟨ш⟩), ⟨ц⟩ never represents a palatalised consonant in Russian (except occasionally in foreign proper names with ⟨ця⟩ or ⟨цю⟩). Since /i/ after unpalatalised consonants becomes [ɨ], the combinations ⟨ци⟩ and ⟨цы⟩ are pronounced identically: [tsɨ]. A notable rule of Russian orthography is that ⟨ц⟩ is seldom followed by ⟨ы⟩, with the following exceptions: