Shcha (Щ щ; italics: ''Щ щ''), Shta, or Scha is a letter of the

Cyrillic script The Cyrillic script ( ) is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic languages, Slavic, Turkic languages, Turkic, Mongolic languages, Mongolic, Uralic languages, Uralic, C ...

. In Russian, it represents the long voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative , similar to the pronunciation of one of the s in ''Welsh''-''sheep''. In Ukrainian and Rusyn, it represents the consonant cluster , something like ''cash-chest''. In Bulgarian, it represents the consonant cluster , like the pronunciation of “scht” in

Borscht Borscht () is a sour soup, made with meat stock, vegetables and seasonings, common in Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. In English, the word ''borscht'' is most often associated with the soup's variant of Ukrainian origin, made with red b ...

. Most 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 , an approximation of the Russian pronunciation of the letter, and is often omitted when teaching those languages. In English, Russian Shcha is

romanized In linguistics, romanization 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 transcription, ...

as , , 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 The Glagolitic script ( , , ''glagolitsa'') is the oldest known Slavic alphabet. It is generally agreed that it was created in the 9th century for the purpose of translating liturgical texts into Old Church Slavonic by Saints Cyril and Methodi ...

letter Shta (). The name in the

Early Cyrillic alphabet The Early Cyrillic alphabet, also called classical Cyrillic or paleo-Cyrillic, is an alphabetic writing system that was developed in Medieval Bulgaria in the Preslav Literary School during the late 9th century. It is used to write the Chur ...

was (''šta'') and is preserved in modern Bulgarian; it is pronounced . This letter was also used in Komi (⟨Ч⟩ was & still is used for /t͡ɕ/), which is now represented by the digraph .

Form

The form of the letter shcha is considered to have originated as a ligature of the letters Ш and Т. However in later orthographies it began to be depicted as the letter Cyrillic Sha (Ш ш) with a descender. The descender (also used in Ц) has been reinterpreted as a

diacritic A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacrit ...

and used in several letters for non-Slavic languages, such as Ң and Қ.

Related letters and other similar characters

*Ш ш : Cyrillic letter Sha *С́ с́ : Montenegrin Sje *Ŝ ŝ : Latin letter Ŝ *Ś ś : Latin letter Ś

Computing codes

References

External links