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Tse (Cyrillic)

Tse (Ц, ц) is a letter in the Cyrillic alphabet. It looks somewhat like U with square corners and a "pig tail" on the bottom right. It represents a voiceless alveolar affricate /ʦ/, like the ts in "cats."

It is the 23rd letter of the Russian alphabet, and is thought to have come from the Hebrew letter Tsadi (צ) (Arabic:Tsad ص), via the Glagolitic letter Tsi:

Usage in Russian

It is used both in native Slavic words and borrowed words: as a match for the Latin C in words of Latin origin, for example цирк (circus), центр (center); and for the German Z in words borrowed from German, for example плац (Platz), цинк (Zink).

Russian words starting with ц, such as tsar, are rare, and almost none of them are of Slavic origin.

A notable rule of Russian orthography is that ц is seldom followed by 'ы', with the exception of the ending -ы of the plural number (танец–танцы) and some declensions (девица–девицы). The very few words with цы inside or at the beginning are learned by school children by heart: цыган, цыкать, цыпленок, цыпочки, цып-цып, цыц. Also, there are some obsolete usages, seen in old texts, such as цынга (цинга), цыновка (циновка), панцырь (панцирь) etc.

Transliteration

A regular transliteration of ц into English is ts. However, in proper names (personal names, toponyms, etc.) and titles it may also be rendered as c, z, cz or tz.

See Also

• C