RZHEV  , or RzHov, a

town of Russia, in the government of Tver, 76 m . S.W. of the town of Tver, occupying the bluffs on both banks of the Volga (here 350 ft. wide) near the confluence of the Vazuza . Pop . (1900) 31,514• It is the terminus of a branch line (85 m.) from the St Petersburg & Moscow railway, and is the centre of a large transit trade between Orel, Kaluga and Smolensk and the ports of St Petersburg and Riga . In the 12th century Rzhev belonged to the principality of Smolensk . Under the rulers of Novgorod it became from 1225 a subordinate principality, and in the 15th century the two portions of the town were held by two independent princes . S the twenty-first letter of the Phoenician alphabet, is one of the four sibilants which that alphabet possesses . In the Phoenician alphabet it takes a form closely resembling the English W, and this when moved through an angle of go° is the ordinary Greek sigma In Phoenician itself and in the other Semitic alphabets the position of the middle legs of the W is altered so that the symbol takes such forms as or V or ~u ,ultimately ending sometimes in aform like K laid sideways, N4 . In Greek, where is the twentieth letter of the alphabet, or, if the merely numerical r and s' are excluded, the eighteenth, another form t or S according to the direction of the writing is also widespread . This, which is the only form of the earliest period at Cumae, where it is also found more rounded 5, is the origin of the Latin S and its descendants . The development from the angular to the curved shape of S may be seen in its occurrences on the early cippus found in the Roman Forum in 1899 . Apart from doubtful instances it is there six times clearly engraved; four of the instances are angular, the other two are more or less rounded .

The Semitic name of the symbol is shin; the Greek name sigma may mean merely the hissing letter and may be a genuine Greek derivative from the verb vt~ w, hiss . Some, however, see in it a corruption of the Semitic name samekh, the letter which corresponds in alphabetic position and in shape to the Greek (x) . The Dorian Greeks, however, as

Herodotus tells us (i . 139), called that letter san which the Ionian Greeks called sigma; san seems more likely to be an attempt to reproduce the Semitic name . Herodotus says nothing of a difference in shape, but most authorities regard the form M, which with the value of s is practically confined to Doric areas, as being san . In the compound Qaµ¢opas, san like koppa (Kolnrarias) was known to the Athenians as a brand for highbred horses (cf . Aristophanes, Clouds, 122, 1298, 23, 438) . For the symbol T which' was used at Ephesus and other places in Asia Minor and elsewhere for the sound represented by -vv- in Ionic Greek, by -TT- in Attic, see ALPHABET . Further points of difficulty in connexion with the sibilants are discussed under X and Z . The pronunciation of s was originally unvoiced: in English it is often used for the voiced sound as well, compare lose with loose, house with houses . At the end of words the voiced sound is often written with -s, the unvoiced with -ss as in his and hiss . In other cases the pronunciation can be ascertained only from the context, as in use, unvoiced for the substantive, voiced for the verb .

Sometimes a difference of meaning is indicated by difference of spelling though the sounds in the two words are identical, as in furs and

furze . The voiced form of s (i.e. z) readily passes into r in many languages: compare the Eng. hare with the Ger . Hase, the Eng. ear and Lat. auris with the Gothic auso and Lithuanian ausis, " ear." . Here also should be mentioned the sound sh, which, like th, is not a combination of sounds though written with two symbols . Hence in transcription from foreign languages and in works on phonetics it is represented by s or The difference in formation between s and s is that the former is dental or alveolar, the latter is produced farther back and has at least two varieties . In the usual Eng. sh the tip of the tongue is bent backwards so that the tongue becomes spoon-shaped . The voiced sound to this is generally written z as in azure, but sometimes s as in pleasure . The sound of sh is also sometimes represented by s, as in sure, sugar . This is occasioned by the y-sound with which u now begins, and is carried further in dialect than in the literary language, sue and suit, for example, being pronounced in Scotland like the Eng. shoe and shoot . The sh sound is sometimes not even written with a sibilant, as in the pronunciation of the ci and ti of words like rhetorician and nation . (P .