Shcha

Shcha (Щ щ; italics: Щ щ), Shta, or Scha is a letter of the Cyrillic script. In Russian, it represents the long voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative /ɕː/, similar to the pronunciation of one of the ⟨sh⟩s in Welsh-sheep. In Ukrainian and Rusyn, it represents the consonant cluster /ʃt͡ʃ/, something like cash-chest. 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). 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.

The Cyrillic letter Shcha was derived from the Glagolitic letter Shta

The name in the Early Cyrillic alphabet wasшта (šta) and is preserved in modern Bulgarian; it is pronounced штъ.

This letter was also used in Komi /t͡ʃ/ (⟨Ч⟩ was & still is used for /t͡ɕ/), which is now represented by the digraph ⟨тш⟩.

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

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

• Mama ŠČ!
• Transliteration table for romanization of Russian, provides versions ⟨ŝ⟩ (note circumflex vs. caron/háček in ⟨šč⟩), ⟨shh⟩

• The dictionary definition of Щ at Wiktionary
• The dictionary definition of щ at Wiktionary