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Cyrillic letter Tse
Phonetic usage:	[ts]
Numeric value:	900
The Cyrillic script
Slavic letters
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
Non-Slavic letters
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
Archaic letters
? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?
List of Cyrillic letters Cyrillic digraphs
v t e

Tse (? ?; italics: ? ?), also known as Ce, is a letter of the Cyrillic script.

It commonly represents the voiceless alveolar affricate /ts/, like the pronunciation of zz in "pizza".

In the standard Iron dialect of Ossetic, it represents the voiceless alveolar sibilant fricative /s/. In other dialects, including Digoron, it has the same value as in Russian.

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 ?.

History

Tse is thought to have come from the Hebrew letter ?ade ???, via the Glagolitic letter Tsi (?).

The name of Tse in the Early Cyrillic alphabet is (tsi). New Church Slavonic and Russian spelling of the name is . In Ukrainian and Belorussian its spelling is tse ( and respectively).

In the Cyrillic numeral system, Tse has a value of 900.

Usage

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:

• as a match for the Latin ⟨c⟩ in words of Latin origin, such as ? (circus), (centre),
• for the German ⟨z⟩ and ⟨tz⟩, in words borrowed from German, such as ? (Zink), ? (Platz),
• ⟨⟩ may correspond to Latin ⟨ti⟩ (before vowels), such as ? (scintillation).

Unlike most other consonants (but like ⟨?⟩ and ⟨?⟩), ⟨?⟩ never represents a palatalised consonant in Russian (except occasionally in foreign proper names with ⟨⟩ or ⟨⟩). Since /i/ after unpalatalised consonants becomes [?], the combinations ⟨⟩ and ⟨⟩ are pronounced identically: [ts?]. A notable rule of Russian orthography is that ⟨?⟩ is seldom followed by ⟨?⟩, with the following exceptions:

• the ending -⟨?⟩ of the plural number or the genitive case ( nominative singular -> nominative plural or genitive singular),
• possessive suffix -⟨⟩ is spelled -⟨⟩ after ⟨?⟩ and only then, ?,
  • the suffix is very popular in Russian last names, but spelling varies and both -⟨⟩ and -⟨⟩ are possible, is an example,
• the ending of adjectives -⟨⟩ (that becomes -⟨⟩, -⟨⟩, -⟨⟩, -⟨⟩ in declension) such as or ,
• conjugation of a vulgar verb (, ?, ?, , ) and its prefixed derivatives,
• a few other word roots: , - (, ?), - (, , ?, -), ,
  • pre-1956 lists contain words such as , , ?, ?, , ?, , , ?, , , , , ? etc. (examples taken from Ya. S. Khomutov's spelling dictionary, 1927 but now all those words are spelled with --),
• Pinyin's ⟨ci⟩ becomes ⟨⟩, and ⟨qi⟩ becomes ⟨⟩.

Related letters and other similar characters

• ? : Hebrew letter Tsadi
• C c : Latin letter C
• ? ? : Latin letter T with comma below, used in Romanian to represent the [ts] sound
• ? ? : Latin letter T with cedilla, used in Gagauz to represent that very sound
• ? ? : Latin letter T with stroke

Computing codes

External links

• The dictionary definition of ? at Wiktionary
• The dictionary definition of ? at Wiktionary