What is "sho"

Etymology 1 adv. 1 (lb en Southern US African American Vernacular English) (eye-dialect of sure English) 2 (context childish English) (eye-dialect of so English) Etymology 2

n. A Japanese free reed musical instrument similar to the sheng. Etymology 3

n. A letter of the Greek alphabet used to write the Bactrian language: uppercase Ϸ, lowercase ϸ.

The is a Japanese free reed musical instrument that was introduced from China during the Nara period (AD 710 to 794). It is modeled on the Chinese sheng, although the shō tends to be smaller in size. It consists of 17 slender bamboo pipes, each of which is fitted in its base with a metal free reed. Two of the pipes are silent, although research suggests that they were used in some music during the Heian period.

The instrument's sound is said to imitate the call of a phoenix, and it is for this reason that the two silent pipes of the shō are kept—as an aesthetic element, making two symmetrical "wings". Like the Chinese sheng, the pipes are tuned carefully with a drop of wax. As moisture collected in the shō's pipes prevents it from sounding, performers can be seen warming the instrument over a small charcoal brazier when they are not playing. The instrument produces sound when the player's breath is inhaled or exhaled, allowing long periods of uninterrupted play. The shō is one of the three primary woodwind instruments used in gagaku, Japan's imperial court music. Its traditional playing technique in gagaku involves the use of tone clusters called aitake (合竹), which move gradually from one to the other, providing accompaniment to the melody.

A larger size of shō, called u (derived from the Chinese yu), is little used although some performers, such as Hiromi Yoshida, began to revive it in the late 20th century.

A detailed book in English on the shō and the gagaku (court orchestra music) it is associated with is titled Music of a Thousand Autumns: The Togaku style of Japanese Court Music by Robert Garfias.

The letter (sometimes called "sho" or "san") was a letter added to the Greek alphabet in order to write the Bactrian language. It was similar in appearance to the Anglo-Saxon and Icelandic letter thorn (þ), which has typically been used to represent it in modern print, although both are historically quite unrelated. It probably represented a sound similar to English "sh" . Its conventional transliteration in Latin is "š".

Its original name and position in the Bactrian alphabet, if it had any, are unknown. Some authors have called it "san", on the basis of the hypothesis that it was a survival or reintroduction of the archaic Greek letter San. It closely resembles, perhaps coincidentally, a letter of the Greek-based Carian alphabet which may have also stood for . The name "sho" was coined for the letter for purposes of modern computer encoding in 2002, on the basis of analogy with "rho" (ρ), the letter with which it seems to be graphically related. Ϸ was added to Unicode in version 4.0 (2003), in an uppercase and lowercase character designed for modern typography.

Appearance

Code points

Name

Ϸ

U+03F7

GREEK CAPITAL LETTER SHO

ϸ

U+03F8

GREEK SMALL LETTER SHO

Shō or Shou is a Japanese given name.

Sho or SHO may refer to:

• Sho (board game), a Tibetan board game with dice, also called Tibetan BackGammon.
• Sho - a historical Tibetan currency unit (see historical money of Tibet)
• Shodo, a Japanese calligraphy
• Sho (letter), a letter of the Greek alphabet used to write the Bactrian language
• Sho?, a Dubai-based rock band
• an informal greeting in South Africa, usually incorporated in tsotsitaal.

Shō is the romanization of the Japanese surname . It is derived from the Chinese surname Zhuang ( trad. , simp. ).

"Sho", in the United States, had fewer than one hundred bearers during the 1990 census and being ranked 127,046th during the year 2000 census.

Sho ( Tibetan : ཤོ ) is a traditional race game in Tibet. Its name is simply the Tibetan word for " dice". It is traditionally played for money and by men, with two to four players - three being the most common. With four players, the usual variant is to play as two teams of two, with the partners sitting opposite each other.