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Sz is adigraph of theLatin script, used inPolish,[1]Kashubian andHungarian, and in various romanizations ofMandarin and theHong Kong government romanization ofCantonese.
InPolish orthography,sz represents avoiceless retroflex fricative/ʂ/. It usually corresponds toš orш in other Slavic languages. It is usually approximated by English speakers with the "sh" sound[1]: vi (and conversely, Polish speakers typically approximate the English digraphsh with the "sz" sound), although the two sounds are not completely identical.
Like other Polish digraphs, it is not considered a single letter for collation purposes.
sz should not be confused withś (or s followed by i), termed "soft sh", avoiceless alveolo-palatal fricative/ɕ/.
obszarⓘ (area, territory)
płaszczⓘ (coat, cloak)
Tomaszⓘ (Thomas)
Compareś:
świecaⓘ (candle)
iśćⓘ (to go)
sierpieńⓘ (August)
InKashubian,sz represents avoiceless postalveolar fricative/ʃ/, identical to the English "sh". It corresponds to thevoiceless retroflex fricative/ʂ/ in Polish.
Sz is the thirty-second letter of theHungarian alphabet. It represents/s/ and is called "esz"/ɛs/. Thus, names likeLiszt are pronounced/list/list.
In Hungarian, even if two characters are put together to make a different sound, they are considered one letter (a true digraph), and evenacronyms keep the letter intact.
Hungarian usage ofs andsz is almost the reverse of the Polish usage. In Hungarian,s represents/ʃ/ (a sound similar to/ʂ/). Therefore, the Hungarian capital ofBudapest is natively pronounced (/ˈbudɒpɛʃt/), rhyming with standard Englishfleshed rather thanpest.
There is also azs in Hungarian, which is the last (forty-fourth) letter of the alphabet, following z.
These examples are Hungarian words that use the lettersz, with the English translation following:
Both theYale romanization of Mandarin andMandarin Phonetic Symbols II use the digraphsz to represent the syllable/sɨ/ (pinyin:si;Wade–Giles:ssŭ).
In the unpublished romanisation scheme employed by the Hong Kong government,sz is sometimes used in combination withe to represent the syllable/siː/, as inSheung Sze Wan/sœːŋ˥.siː˥.waːn˥/ (Sēungsīwāan inYale romanization).
Sz also appears in the sequencetsz, representing the syllables/t͡siː/ and/t͡sʰiː/, as inTsz Tin Tsuen/t͡siː˧˥.tʰiːn˨˩.t͡sʰyːn˥/ andTsz Wan Shan/t͡sʰiː˨˩.wɐn˨˩.saːn˥/ (Jítìhnchyūn andChìhwàhnsāan respectively in Yale romanization).