Shcha

❧

Wikipedia

Shcha
Щ щ
Usage
Writing systemCyrillic
TypeAlphabetic
Language of originOld Church Slavonic
Sound values[ɕ], [ʃtʃ], [ʃt]
In UnicodeU+0429, U+0449
History
Development
Ⱋ ⱋ
  • Щ щ
TransliterationsShch shch, Šč šč, Ŝ ŝ
This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.
Shcha, from the Alphabet Book оf the Red Army Soldier (1921). The illustration depicts щук (shchuk), "pike" (acc. pl.).

Shcha (Щ щ; italics: Щ щ or Щ щ; italics: Щ щ), Shta, or Scha is a letter of the Cyrillic script.[1] In Russian, it represents the long (sometimes short) voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative /ɕː/, similar to the pronunciation of sh in 'sheep'. In Ukrainian and Rusyn, it represents the consonant cluster /ʃt͡ʃ/. In Bulgarian, it represents the consonant cluster /ʃt/, like the pronunciation of “scht” in Borscht. 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 /ʃ/, an approximation of the Russian pronunciation of the letter, and is often omitted when teaching those languages.

In English, Russian Shcha is romanized as ⟨shch⟩, ⟨ŝ⟩, ⟨šč⟩ or occasionally as ⟨sch⟩, all reflecting the historical Russian pronunciation of the letter (as a combined Ш and Ч).[2] 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

Cyrillic Щ (Early Cyrillic form: ) is derived from the Glagolitic letter shta Ⱋ,[3] which was a ligature of sha Ⱎ (= Cyrillic Ш, pronounced [ʃ]), and tverdo Ⱅ (= Cyrillic Т, pronounced [t]).[4] The original pronunciation, [ʃt], is maintained in Bulgarian.

This letter was also used in the Komi language as /t͡ʃ/, but it has fallen out of use in favour of digraph ⟨тш⟩.

Form

The form of the letter shcha is considered to have originated as a ligature of the letters Ш and Т.[5] 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 and used in several letters for non-Slavic languages, such as Ң and Қ.

Computing codes

Character information
PreviewЩщ
Unicode name CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER SHCHA CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER SHCHA
Encodingsdecimalhexdechex
Unicode1065U+04291097U+0449
UTF-8208 169D0 A9209 137D1 89
Numeric character referenceЩЩщщ
Named character referenceЩщ
KOI8-R and KOI8-U253FD221DD
Code page 855250FA249F9
Code page 86615399233E9
Windows-1251217D9249F9
ISO-8859-5201C9233E9
Macintosh Cyrillic15399249F9

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Cyrillic script". omniglot.com. Retrieved 2022-06-21.
  2. ↑ Maier, Ingrid (2021). "Russian Pronunciation Rules in the Alphabetum Russarum (Stockholm, Peter van Selow)". Slovo: Journal of Slavic Languages, Literatures and Cultures. 62: 39–60.
  3. ↑ Zhang, Xiangning; Zhang, Ruolin (July 2018). "Evolution of Ancient Alphabet to Modern Greek, Latin and Cyrillic Alphabets and Transcription between Them". Proceedings of the 2018 4th International Conference on Economics, Social Science, Arts, Education and Management Engineering (ESSAEME 2018). Atlantis Press. pp. 156–162. doi:10.2991/essaeme-18.2018.30. ISBN 978-94-6252-549-8.
  4. ↑ Schenker, Alexander M. (1995). The Dawn of Slavic: An Introduction to Slavic Philology. New Haven: Yale University Press. p. 179. ISBN 0-300-05846-2.
  5. ↑ Chodzko, Alexandre; Chodźko, Aleksander Borejko (1869). Grammaire paléoslave, suivie de textes paléoslaves (in French). [s. n.] – via Oxford University collection.
  • The dictionary definition of Щ at Wiktionary
  • The dictionary definition of щ at Wiktionary