It commonly represents the voiceless alveolar affricate /t͡s/, similar but not identical to the pronunciation of zz in "pizza" or ts in "cats".

In the standard Iron dialect of Ossetic, it represents the voiceless alveolar sibilant fricative /s/.

and titles it may also be rendered as ⟨c⟩ (which signifies the sound in Serbo-Croatian, Czech, Polish, Hungarian etc.

[1] It is unclear what Egyptian hieroglyph originated the letter Tse, possibly derived from an image of a fish hook or a papyrus plant.

It is used both in native Slavic words (and corresponds to Proto-Indo-European *k in certain positions) and in borrowed words: Unlike most other consonants (but like ⟨ж⟩ and ⟨ш⟩), ⟨ц⟩ never represents a palatalised consonant in Russian (except occasionally in foreign proper names with ⟨ця⟩ or ⟨цю⟩).