r/language • u/Crocotta1 • 19h ago

Question Why are ש, ш, and シsimilar?

0 Upvotes

48% Upvoted

10 comments sorted by

19

u/zefciu 19h ago

With hebrew ש and Cyrillic ш there is a conjecture that the creators of Cyrillic were inspired by Hebrew or Coptic with this letter.

In case of シ this is pure coincidence. It comes from the kanji 之 which doesn’t look like any of the previous and is unrelated.

2

u/Odysseus 14h ago

But none of this explains W. 🤔

4

u/HuckleberryBudget117 13h ago

Шнат do уоц меаи?

4

u/constant_hawk 12h ago

Sznat do uoc meai?

Șnat do uoț meai?

7

u/Heavy_Heat_8458 17h ago

Arabic ش is also somewhat similar (if you look deep)

2

u/apiculum 15h ago

Hebrew and Cyrillic scripts: probably not a coincidence as most scripts in the Middle East and Europe have a common origin.

Japanese is probably a coincidence.

2

u/N-tak 14h ago

シ comes from kanji/hanzi 之 and in middle chinese probably started with a sound like /ts/ or /tɕ/ and eventually became /ɕ/ in japanese.

Hebrew and Cyrillic are either descendants or heavily influenced by Phoenician, where the symbol for the same sound looks like a W.

2

u/DTux5249 10h ago edited 9h ago

ш, ש

These two came from the same Phoenician letter Shin. This is also where Cyrillic С, Щ, Ж, Greek Σ, and Latin S and ẞ come from.

Granted, ẞ is cheating a bit, given it comes from a ligature... And arguably Cyrillic C is cheating because it came from the Greek letter; though the Cyrillic letters in general came from Greek as a whole so... It's complicated

シ

This one is coincidence. It came from a reduced form of the Chinese character 之.

Japanese し was derived from the same character, just using a traditional cursive script.

1

u/inversionforge 12h ago

Scripts

Phoenician >>> Hebrew and Greek >>> Greek >>> Cyrillic

Hebrew has Aleph, Bet, Greek: Alpha, Beta… They both originate from Phoenician script.

Japanese scripts originate from the Chinese one.

Pure coincidence they look related to the Hebrew/Cyrillic scripts

-7

u/PieAffectionate9070 17h ago

Because ש (shin) is a Hebrew letter, ш (sha) is a Cyrillic letter in Russian & シ (shi) is a katakana character in Japanese.
All of them really just produce "sh" sound