Shcha

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lang}} (shchuk), "pike".

Shcha (Щ щ; italics: Щ щ), Shta, or Scha is a letter of the Cyrillic script.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> In Russian, it represents the long voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative {{#invoke:IPA|main}}, similar to the pronunciation of one of the Template:Angbrs in Welsh-sheep. In Ukrainian and Rusyn, it represents the consonant cluster {{#invoke:IPA|main}}, something like cash-chest. In Bulgarian, it represents the consonant cluster {{#invoke:IPA|main}}, 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 {{#invoke:IPA|main}}, an approximation of the Russian pronunciation of the letter, and is often omitted when teaching those languages.

In English, Russian Shcha is romanized as Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr, Template:Angbr or occasionally as Template:Angbr, all reflecting the historical Russian pronunciation of the letter (as a combined Ш and Ч).<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> 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.

HistoryEdit

The Cyrillic letter Shcha was derived from the Glagolitic letter Shta Template:Script (File:Glagolitic shta.svg).<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

The name in the Early Cyrillic alphabet was Template:Script (šta) and is preserved in modern Bulgarian; it is pronounced {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}.

This letter was also used in Komi {{#invoke:IPA|main}} (⟨Ч⟩ was & still is used for /t͡ɕ/), which is now represented by the digraph Template:Angle bracket.

FormEdit

The form of the letter shcha is considered to have originated as a ligature of the letters Ш and Т.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> 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.