{{short description|Cyrillic letter}} {{distinguish|text=the International Phonetic Alphabet letter ħ or the Reduced Planck constant <math display="inline">\hbar</math>}} {{for|the trigraph and the digraph|Tsh (trigraph)|Tj (digraph)}} {{Redirect|Cje||CJE (disambiguation)}} {{Redirect|Ć (Cyrillic)|the Cyrillic character С́|Sje}} {{Infobox grapheme | script = Cyrillic | type = Alphabet | typedesc = ic | name = Tshe (Tje) | image = Cyrillic letter Tshe - uppercase and lowercase.svg | imageclass = skin-invert-image | imagealt = | phonemes = {{IPAslink|t͡ɕ|audio=yes}} | number = | fam1 = Ꙉ ꙉ | letter = Ћ ћ | language = Serbian, Montenegrin | children = Ђ ђ }}

thumb|Handwritten cursive forms of ''Tshe''|class=skin-invert-image

'''Tshe''' (or '''{{Not a typo|Tje}}''') (Ћ&nbsp;ћ; italics: <span style="font-family: times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: larger">''Ћ&nbsp;ћ''</span>) is a letter of the Cyrillic script, used in the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet and Montenegrin Cyrillic alphabet, where it represents the voiceless alveolo-palatal affricate {{IPA|/tɕ/}}, somewhat like the pronunciation of {{angle bracket|ch}} in "'''ch'''ew"; however, it must not be confused with the letter Che (Ч&nbsp;ч), which represents the voiceless retroflex affricate {{IPA|/ʈ͡ʂ/}} and also exists in Serbian Cyrillic script. The sound of Tshe is produced from the voiceless alveolar plosive {{IPA|/t/}} by iotation. Tshe is the 23rd letter in the Serbian alphabet and 25rd letter in the Montenegrin alphabet. It was first used by Dositej Obradović as a revival of the old Cyrillic letter Djerv (Ꙉ), and was later adopted in the 1818 Serbian dictionary of Vuk Stefanović Karadžić.<ref name="Maretić">{{cite book|last=Maretić|first=Tomislav|title=Gramatika i stilistika hrvatskoga ili srpskoga književnog jezika|year=1899}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|first1=George L.|last1=Campbell|first2=Christopher|last2=Moseley|title=The Routledge Handbook of Scripts and Alphabets|edition=2nd|publisher=Routledge|year=2013|isbn=978-1135222963|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6lQwRD2Cb8EC&pg=PA85|page=85}}</ref> The equivalent character to Tshe in Gaj's Latin alphabet is Ć.<ref>{{cite book|author=Duško Vitas|display-authors=etal|title=The Serbian Language in the Digital Age|publisher=Springer|year=2012|isbn=978-3642307553|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=E6aD30BIUowC&pg=PA53|page=53}}</ref>

Despite being a Cyrillic letter, Tshe was also used in Latin-based Slovincian phonetic transcriptions with the same value as in Serbian.{{citation needed|date=April 2022|reason=Used in Slovinzisches Wörterbuch (e.g. on page 1244, skipped over in chapter I's alphabet) and other works of Lorentz, but needs a secondary source other than that}}

Being part of the most common Serbian last names, the transliteration of Tshe to the Latin alphabet is very important; however, there are many ways to transliterate it. It is typically transliterated as {{angle bracket|ć}}, as per the Serbo-Croatian Latin alphabet or, without the diacritic, as {{angle bracket|c}}; less frequent transliterations are {{angle bracket|tj}}, {{angle bracket|tsh}}, {{angle bracket|ty}}, {{angle bracket|cj}}, {{angle bracket|cy}}, {{angle bracket|ch}} (also used for Che), and {{angle bracket|tch}}, {{angle bracket|ts}} (the last one in Hungarian only, but {{angle bracket|cs}} and {{angle bracket|ty}} are more common). It looks similar to the Shha (Һ һ) but stroked.

As it is one of the letters unique to the Serbian Cyrillic alphabet, and also the first letter of the Serbian word for Cyrillic ({{lang|sr|ћирилица}}), Tshe is often used as the basis for logos for various groups involved with the Cyrillic alphabet.{{Citation needed|date=July 2013}}

The letter is also used in the Tat and Judeo-Tat alphabets in Azerbaijan.<ref name="Juhuri">Genik Isakov. [https://stmegi.com/upload/iblock/907/9070555acc266095d83c687ab7b300d7.pdf Primer Juhuri (Judeo-Tat language). A guide to learning the Juhuri language for preschool and primary school children]. Charitable Foundation STMEGI, 2020. p. 72. {{ISBN|978-5-7164-1077-0}}</ref>

== Other uses == The capital Tshe has seen uses in the English language as a symbol for the definite article ''The''—similarly to the Ampersand & At sign—due to it appearing as a ligature of the Latin script letters ''uppercase T'' & ''lowercase H''—which are the first 2 letters of the English word ''The.'' However, unlike common symbols such as the ampersand & at sign, the use of the capital Tshe as a symbol in English is not widely known or recognized.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Greenawalt |first=Tyler |date=2013-07-14 |title=Why A Symbol For 'The' Probably Won't Take Off |url=https://npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2013/07/14/200739101/why-a-symbol-for-the-probably-wont-take-off |access-date=2023-05-22 |website=NPR}}</ref>

==Related letters and other similar characters== *Т т : Cyrillic letter Te *Ч ч : Cyrillic letter Che *Ђ ђ : Cyrillic letter Dje *Һ һ : Cyrillic letter Shha *Ќ ќ : Cyrillic letter Kje *Ć ć : Latin letter C with acute *Ħ ħ : Latin letter H with stroke

{{anchor|Code positions}}

==Computing codes== {{charmap |040B|name1=Cyrillic Capital Letter Tshe |045B|name2=Cyrillic Small Letter Tshe |map2=Code page 855 |map2char1=95 |map2char2=94 |map4=Windows-1251 |map4char1=8E |map4char2=9E |map5=ISO-8859-5 |map5char1=AB |map5char2=FB |map6=Macintosh Cyrillic |map6char1=CB |map6char2=CC |map7=ENO encoding |map7char1=000040B |map7char2=000045B }}

==References== {{Reflist}}

==External links== *{{Wiktionary-inline|Ћ}} *{{Wiktionary-inline|ћ}}

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Category:South Slavic languages Category:Serbian letters