Scho

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Scho
pronunciation
antique [ ʃ ] ​​
modern [ - ] ​​
Equivalents
Latin Šš
Cyrillic Шш
Hebrew ש
Arabic ﺵ
Phoenician -
Armenian -
transcription
From the ancient world sch
From the modern -
Coding
Capitals
Unicode number U + 03F7
Unicode name GREEK CAPITAL LETTER SHO
HTML
HTML entity
Minuscule
Unicode number U + 03F8
Unicode name GREEK SMALL LETTER SHO
HTML
HTML entity

The Scho ( capitals Ϸ, minuscule ϸ) is a letter that was added to the Greek alphabet in order to be able to write some expressions in the Bactrian language . These are the phonetic value probably around the voiceless fricative postalveolar / ⁠ ʃ ⁠ / , according to the "sch" in German .

Origin and use

The Bactrian language is the only one in the family of Iranian languages that was written in the Greek script. The reason for this is the conquests of Alexander the Great in the late 4th century BC. Chr. And the subsequent him Seleucid rule in Bactria . After the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom in the late 2nd century BC. Chr. By the nomadic Yuezhi was conquered from the north, the new rulers kept the Greek as the official language. However, they later also switched to writing the local Bactrian language in Greek letters.

Kanishka's coin .

Bactrian has a sibilant sound - the voiceless postalveolar fricative - which does not exist in Greek and which therefore could not be written with the classical Greek letters. In Greek, the combination of at Sigma Σ σ and Chi Χ χ namely not to / ⁠ ʃ / ⁠ contracted, but as / σχ / exceptionally (example: σχῆμα schematic spoken / skʰɛmɐ / place / ʃɛmɐ /). Not least for the names of the Kuschana rulers - Kanischka , Huvischka and Vasischka - a letter was needed for this sibilant.

Bactrian manuscript with the letters Rho, Phi and Scho.

This letter looks very similar to the Phi Φ φ and the Rho Ρ ρ in Bactrian manuscripts . The capital case is written like a capital phi Φ without the bow on the left; the minuscule like a small rho ρ with an elongated vertical line. Furthermore, the letter looks very similar to the thorn Þ þ , an Icelandic additional letter to the Latin alphabet , but has no relationship whatsoever. The name Scho is used in modern research because the letter resembles the Rho. The Bactrian name of the letter is unknown.

It is unclear where the letter Scho was in the Graeco-Bactrian alphabet. It is conceivable that it had the same position as the pre-classical letter San Ϻ ϻ , which was adopted in the old Italian alphabet as She ? . So it belonged in alphabetical order after Pi Π π and before Qoppa Ϙ ϙ . However, some researchers place it at the end of the Greek alphabet after the letter Omega Ω ω instead . Others place it after the sigma Σ σ due to the Latin transcription (s for Sigma and š for Scho).

Character encoding

default Greek capital letter Scho (Ϸ) Greek Small Letter Scho (ϸ)
Unicode Codepoint U + 03F7 U + 03F8
Surname GREEK CAPITAL LETTER SHO GREEK SMALL LETTER SHO
UTF-8 CF B7 CF B8
XML / XHTML decimal Ϸ ϸ
hexadecimal Ϸ ϸ

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ William Woodthorpe Tarn : The Greeks in Bactria and India . (English)