Sh sh
«sh» is a digraph of the Uzbek script, read as “sh as in ship”. The English sh, always spelled with two marks: s and h. For example, in the word “shahar” — city. The Uzbek alphabet has 29 letters in total. Read it as one sound and two letters: shahar is "sha-har", a city — not "s-h-a-har". It appears, for example, in the word “Yaxshimisiz?” — how are you?
In short
| Character | Sh sh |
| Sound | sh as in ship |
| What it is | a digraph |
In our course the character comes 27th of 30: the order here is not alphabetical but from familiar to unfamiliar, its neighbours in the course are gʻ and ch, appears in 702 words of this site.
How it sounds
The English sh, always spelled with two marks: s and h.
The character in a word
A lone character is hard to remember: memory holds on to meaning, and a letter has none. The word it stands in provides that anchor.
- city
The character in the “sh, ch, ng — three digraphs, no surprises” group
Each is one letter of the alphabet spelled with two marks. sh and ch sound like English "sh" and "ch"; ng is a nasal n, air out through the nose. There is no letter c in the alphabet — it lives only inside ch; w is not a letter at all.
Words with this character
How to remember this character
A single letter is the hardest thing to remember: memory has nothing to hold on to — a character has no meaning. A three-step loop works: see the character, try to recall the sound (for «sh» it is “sh as in ship”, as in the word “shahar”), see the right answer.
And come back to it the next day, not in an hour: a check a day or two later beats a check the same day. Nobody holds the whole alphabet — 29 letters — at once.
- It is better to test yourself the next day than at the end of the same session. That is why a word comes back to you tomorrow.checked many timesAdesope, Trevisan & Sundararajan, 2017, Review of Educational Research 87(3) · g = 0.82 when tested a day or two later, against 0.56 on the same day.
- Studying a little every day gets more into your head than spending the same total time in one sitting.checked many timesDonovan & Radosevich, 1999, Journal of Applied Psychology 84(5) · 63 studies compared, difference d = 0.46 — a sizeable figure for a learning effect.
Frequently asked
How does the Uzbek character sh read?
As “sh as in ship” — it is a digraph of the Uzbek script. The English sh, always spelled with two marks: s and h. For example, in the word “shahar” — city.