Tshe

Tshe (or Tje) (Ћ ћ; italics: Ћ ћ) 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 /tɕ/, somewhat like the pronunciation of ⟨ch⟩ in "chew"; however, it must not be confused with the letter Che (Ч ч), which represents the voiceless retroflex affricate /ʈ͡ʂ/ and also exists in Serbian Cyrillic script. The sound of Tshe is produced from the voiceless alveolar plosive /t/ by iotation. Tshe is the 23rd letter in the Serbian alphabet and 25th 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. The equivalent character to Tshe in Gaj's Latin alphabet is Ć.

Despite being a Cyrillic letter, Tshe was also used in Latin-based Slovincian phonetic transcriptions with the same value as in Serbian.

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 ⟨ć⟩, as per the Serbo-Croatian Latin alphabet or, without the diacritic, as ⟨c⟩; less frequent transliterations are ⟨tj⟩, ⟨tsh⟩, ⟨ty⟩, ⟨cj⟩, ⟨cy⟩, ⟨ch⟩ (also used for Che), and ⟨tch⟩, ⟨ts⟩ (the last one in Hungarian only, but ⟨cs⟩ and ⟨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 (ћирилица), Tshe is often used as the basis for logos for various groups involved with the Cyrillic alphabet.

The letter is also used in the Tat and Judeo-Tat alphabets in Azerbaijan.