Tse (Ц ц; italics: Ц ц) is a letter of the Cyrillic script.
It commonly represents the voiceless alveolar affricate /ts/, like the pronunciation of ⟨ts⟩ in "cats".
In English, Tse is commonly romanized as ⟨ts⟩. However, in proper names (personal names, toponyms, etc.) and titles it may also be rendered as ⟨c⟩ (which signifies the sound in Serbian, Czech, Hungarian etc.), ⟨z⟩ (which signifies the sound in Italian and German), ⟨cz⟩ or ⟨tz⟩.
Tse is thought to have come from the Hebrew letter Tsadi ⟨צ⟩, via the Glagolitic letter Tsi ⟨Ⱌ⟩.
The name of Tse in the Early Cyrillic alphabet is ци (tsi). New Church Slavonic and Russian spelling of the name is цы.
In the Cyrillic numeral system, Tse has a value of 900.
Tse is the 23rd letter of the Russian alphabet. It is used both in native Slavic words (where in mostly corresponds to Proto-Indo-European *k in certain positions) and in borrowed words:
Russian words starting with ⟨ц⟩, such as царь (tsar), are rare, and very few of them are of Slavic origin (the example is usually explained as derived from Latin caesar).