Es (С с; italics:С с orС с; italics:С с) is a letter of theCyrillic script. It commonly represents thevoiceless alveolar fricative/s/, like the pronunciation of⟨s⟩ in "sand".
Coptic icon ofSt. Mark, clearly showing examples of lunate sigma from which the Cyrillic Es was derived
The Cyrillic letter Es is derived from a variant of theGreek letter Sigma known aslunate sigma (Ϲ ϲ), in use in the Greek-speaking world in early medieval times. “Es” (Cyrillic: С) is related to the Latin letter “C” (C c),visuo-phono-semantically due to being ahomoglyph and having similar roots, which C is a descendant of the Greek letter Gamma (Γ γ), and therefore С is related to the Latin C and Latin G. While the Cyrillic “С” represents the /s/ sound, many languages apply the value of/s/ to the Latin letter “C,” especially before front vowels like ‘‘e’’ and ‘‘i’’ (examples include English, French, Portuguese, andLatin American Spanish). This distinction between “hard” and “soft” C reflects historical phonetic shifts. As its name suggests, “Es” is also related to the Latin letter “S.”
In the modern Latinized Cyrillic fonts in use today, the Cyrillic letter Eslooks exactly like theLatin letter C, being one of six letters in the Cyrillic alphabet that share appearances with Latin alphabet letters but are pronounced differently (or at least differently from the most common pronunciation). This fact has been frequently abused byplagiarism detector circumventors.
