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Sz is a digraph of the Latin script, used in Polish, [1] Kashubian and Hungarian, and in various romanizations of Mandarin and the Hong Kong government romanization of Cantonese.
In Polish orthography, sz represents a voiceless retroflex fricative /ʂ/. It usually corresponds to š or ш in other Slavic languages. It is usually approximated by English speakers with the "sh" sound [1] : vi (and conversely, Polish speakers typically approximate the English digraph sh with the "sz" sound), although the two sounds are not completely identical.
Like other Polish digraphs, it is not considered a single letter for collation purposes.
sz should not be confused with ś (or s followed by i), termed "soft sh", a voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative /ɕ/.
In Kashubian, sz represents a voiceless postalveolar fricative /ʃ/, identical to the English "sh". It corresponds to the voiceless retroflex fricative /ʂ/ in Polish.
Sz is the thirty-second letter of the Hungarian alphabet. It represents /s/ and is called "esz" /ɛs/. Thus, names like Liszt are pronounced /list/list.
In Hungarian, even if two characters are put together to make a different sound, they are considered one letter (a true digraph), and even acronyms keep the letter intact.
Hungarian usage of s and sz is almost the reverse of the Polish usage. In Hungarian, s represents /ʃ/ (a sound similar to /ʂ/). Therefore, the Hungarian capital of Budapest is natively pronounced (/ˈbudɒpɛʃt/), rhyming with standard English fleshed rather than pest.
There is also a zs in Hungarian, which is the last (forty-fourth) letter of the alphabet, following z.
These examples are Hungarian words that use the letter sz, with the English translation following:
Both the Yale romanization of Mandarin and Mandarin Phonetic Symbols II use the digraph sz to represent the syllable /sɨ/ (pinyin :si; Wade–Giles :ssŭ).
In the unpublished romanisation scheme employed by the Hong Kong government, sz is sometimes used in combination with e to represent the syllable /siː/, as in Sheung Sze Wan /sœːŋ˥.siː˥.waːn˥/ (Sēungsīwāan in Yale romanization).
Sz also appears in the sequence tsz, representing the syllables /t͡siː/ and /t͡sʰiː/, as in Tsz Tin Tsuen /t͡siː˧˥.tʰiːn˨˩.t͡sʰyːn˥/ and Tsz Wan Shan /t͡sʰiː˨˩.wɐn˨˩.saːn˥/ (Jítìhnchyūn and Chìhwàhnsāan respectively in Yale romanization).