Es (С с; italics: С с) is a letter of the Cyrillic script.
It commonly represents the voiceless alveolar fricative pronounced as //s//, like the pronunciation of (s) in "sand".
The Cyrillic letter Es is derived from a variant of the Greek letter Sigma known as lunate 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 a homoglyph 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 pronounced as //s// to the Latin letter “C,” especially before front vowels like ‘‘e’’ and ‘‘i’’ (examples include English, French, Portuguese, and Latin 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.”
The name of Es in the Early Cyrillic alphabet was (slovo), meaning "word" or "speech".[1]
In the Cyrillic numeral system, Es had a value of 200.
In the modern Latinized Cyrillic fonts in use today, the Cyrillic letter Es looks exactly like the Latin 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 by plagiarism detector circumventors.
As used in the alphabets of various languages, Es represents the following sounds:
The pronunciations shown in the table are the primary ones for each language; for details consult the articles on the languages.
| Language | Position in alphabet | Pronunciation | |
|---|---|---|---|
| align=center | 19th | pronounced as //s//, pronounced as //sʲ// | |
| align=center | 18th | pronounced as //s//, pronounced as //sʲ// | |
| align=center | 22nd | pronounced as //s// | |
| align=center | 19th | pronounced as //s//, pronounced as //sʲ// | |
| align=center | 21st | pronounced as //s// | |
| align=center | 22nd | pronounced as //s//, pronounced as //sʲ// | |
| Ossetic (Iron) | align=center | 23rd | pronounced as //ʃ~s̠// |