Shcha (Щ щ; italics:
''Щ щ''), Shta or Sha with descender is a letter of the
Cyrillic script. In
Russian, it represents the
voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative , similar to the pronunciation of in ''sheep'' (but
longer). In
Ukrainian and
Rusyn
Rusyn may refer to:
* Rusyns, Rusyn people, an East Slavic people
** Pannonian Rusyns, Pannonian Rusyn people, a branch of Rusyn people
** Lemkos, a branch of Rusyn (or Ukrainian) people
** Boykos, a branch of Rusyn (or Ukrainian) people
* Rusyn l ...
, it represents the consonant cluster . In
Bulgarian, it represents the consonant cluster . Other non-Slavic languages written in Cyrillic use this letter to spell the few loanwords that use it or foreign names; it is usually pronounced and is often omitted when teaching those languages.
In English, Shcha is
romanized
Romanization or romanisation, in linguistics, is the conversion of text from a different writing system to the Roman (Latin) script, or a system for doing so. Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written text, and ...
as or (with
háčeks) or occasionally as , all reflecting the historical Russian pronunciation of the letter (as a combined ''Ш'' and ''Ч''). English-speaking learners of Russian are often instructed to pronounce it in this way although it is no longer the standard pronunciation in Russian (it still is in Ukrainian and Rusyn, as above). The letter Щ in Russian and Ukrainian corresponds to ШЧ in related words in Belarusian.
History
The Cyrillic letter Shcha was derived from the
Glagolitic letter Shta ().
The name in the
Early Cyrillic alphabet was (''šta'') and is preserved in modern
Bulgarian; it is pronounced "штъ".
This letter was also used in
Komi (harder than ''ч''), which is now represented by the
digraph ''тш''.
Form
The form of the letter Shcha is the letter
Cyrillic Sha (Ш ш) with a descender (cf. the Cyrillic letters
De (Д д),
Tse (Ц ц),
Ka with descender (Қ қ), and
En with descender
En with descender (Ң ң; italics: ) is a letter of the Cyrillic script. Its form is derived from the Cyrillic letter En (Н н) by adding a descender to the right leg.
It commonly represents the velar nasal , like the pronunciation o ...
(Ң ң).
Related letters and other similar characters
*Ш ш :
Cyrillic letter Sha
*С́ с́ :
Montenegrin Cyrillic letter Sje
*Ŝ ŝ :
Latin letter Ŝ
*Ś ś :
Latin letter Ś
Computing codes
See also
*
Transliteration table for romanization of Russian, provides versions (note
circumflex
The circumflex () is a diacritic in the Latin and Greek scripts that is also used in the written forms of many languages and in various romanization and transcription schemes. It received its English name from la, circumflexus "bent around"a ...
vs. caron/háček in ),
References
External links
*
*{{Wiktionary-inline, щ