U+0D36 "ശ" Malayalam Letter Sha Unicode Character

U+0D36 "ശ" Malayalam Letter Sha is a character in the Malayalam script, representing the voiceless retroflex sibilant sound /ʃ/, similar to the "sh" in English "ship." It belongs to the Brahmic family of scripts and is used primarily in writing the Malayalam language, which is spoken predominantly in the Indian state of Kerala and the union territory of Lakshadweep. As part of the Malayalam alphabet, this letter appears in the consonant inventory and is essential for accurately spelling native and loanwords that require the retroflex fricative sound. In Unicode, it was encoded in version 1.1 of the standard, which was released in 1993, to facilitate digital representation and processing of Malayalam text across modern computing systems.