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Shcha (Cyrillic)
Encyclopedia
Shcha is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet
. In Russian
, it represents the voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative /ɕɕ/, similar to the pronunciation of ⟨sh⟩ in sheep (but longer
); in Ukrainian
and Rusyn
it represents the consonant cluster /ʃt͡ʃ/; and in Bulgarian
, it represents the consonant cluster /ʃt/.
In English, Shcha is romanized
as ⟨shch⟩ or ⟨šč⟩ (with haček
s), both reflecting the historical Russian pronunciation of the letter. This can lead to some confusion, as the ⟨ch⟩ in the transcription may seem to indicate that Щ is a combination of Ш
and a strong Ч
, which is not true.
letter Shta (
).
The name of Shcha in the Early Cyrillic alphabet
was (šta). This name is preserved in the modern Bulgarian language
- it is pronounced "штъ".
Historically in Russian, Shcha represented the consonant cluster /ɕt͡ɕ/, like in the phrase "fresh cheese." Some Russian language primers still prescribe /ɕtɕ/.
(Ш ш) with a descender (cf. the Cyrillic letters De
(Д д), Tse
(Ц ц),
Ka with descender (Қ қ), and En with descender (Ң ң)).
Cyrillic alphabet
The Cyrillic script or azbuka is an alphabetic writing system developed in the First Bulgarian Empire during the 10th century AD at the Preslav Literary School...
. In Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
, it represents the voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative /ɕɕ/, similar to the pronunciation of ⟨sh⟩ in sheep (but longer
Gemination
In phonetics, gemination happens when a spoken consonant is pronounced for an audibly longer period of time than a short consonant. Gemination is distinct from stress and may appear independently of it....
); in Ukrainian
Ukrainian language
Ukrainian is a language of the East Slavic subgroup of the Slavic languages. It is the official state language of Ukraine. Written Ukrainian uses a variant of the Cyrillic alphabet....
and Rusyn
Rusyn language
Rusyn , also known in English as Ruthenian, is an East Slavic language variety spoken by the Rusyns of Central Europe. Some linguists treat it as a distinct language and it has its own ISO 639-3 code; others treat it as a dialect of Ukrainian...
it represents the consonant cluster /ʃt͡ʃ/; and in Bulgarian
Bulgarian language
Bulgarian is an Indo-European language, a member of the Slavic linguistic group.Bulgarian, along with the closely related Macedonian language, demonstrates several linguistic characteristics that set it apart from all other Slavic languages such as the elimination of case declension, the...
, it represents the consonant cluster /ʃt/.
In English, Shcha is romanized
Romanization of Russian
Romanization of the Russian alphabet is the process of transliterating the Russian language from the Cyrillic alphabet into the Latin alphabet...
as ⟨shch⟩ or ⟨šč⟩ (with haček
Caron
A caron or háček , also known as a wedge, inverted circumflex, inverted hat, is a diacritic placed over certain letters to indicate present or historical palatalization, iotation, or postalveolar pronunciation in the orthography of some Baltic, Slavic, Finno-Lappic, and other languages.It looks...
s), both reflecting the historical Russian pronunciation of the letter. This can lead to some confusion, as the ⟨ch⟩ in the transcription may seem to indicate that Щ is a combination of Ш
Sha
For other uses, see Sha .Sha is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet. It commonly represents the voiceless postalveolar fricative , like the pronunciation of ⟨sh⟩ in "sheep", or the somewhat similar voiceless retroflex fricative . It is used in every variation of the Cyrillic alphabet, for Slavic and...
and a strong Ч
Che (Cyrillic)
Che or Cha is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet.It commonly represents the voiceless postalveolar affricate , like the pronunciation of ⟨ch⟩ in "change"....
, which is not true.
History
The Cyrillic letter Shcha was derived from the GlagoliticGlagolitic alphabet
The Glagolitic alphabet , also known as Glagolitsa, is the oldest known Slavic alphabet. The name was not coined until many centuries after its creation, and comes from the Old Slavic glagolъ "utterance" . The verb glagoliti means "to speak"...
letter Shta (
).The name of Shcha in the Early Cyrillic alphabet
Early Cyrillic alphabet
The Early Cyrillic alphabet is a writing system developed in the First Bulgarian Empire in the 9th or 10th century to write the Old Church Slavonic liturgical language...
was (šta). This name is preserved in the modern Bulgarian language
Bulgarian language
Bulgarian is an Indo-European language, a member of the Slavic linguistic group.Bulgarian, along with the closely related Macedonian language, demonstrates several linguistic characteristics that set it apart from all other Slavic languages such as the elimination of case declension, the...
- it is pronounced "штъ".
Historically in Russian, Shcha represented the consonant cluster /ɕt͡ɕ/, like in the phrase "fresh cheese." Some Russian language primers still prescribe /ɕtɕ/.
Form
The form of the letter Shcha is the letter Cyrillic ShaSha
For other uses, see Sha .Sha is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet. It commonly represents the voiceless postalveolar fricative , like the pronunciation of ⟨sh⟩ in "sheep", or the somewhat similar voiceless retroflex fricative . It is used in every variation of the Cyrillic alphabet, for Slavic and...
(Ш ш) with a descender (cf. the Cyrillic letters De
De (Cyrillic)
De is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet.De commonly represents the voiced dental plosive , like the pronunciation of ⟨d⟩ in admit.De is romanized using the Latin letter D.-History:...
(Д д), Tse
Tse (Cyrillic)
Tse is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet.It commonly represents the voiceless alveolar affricate , like the pronunciation of ⟨ts⟩ in "cats".In English, Tse is commonly romanized as ⟨ts⟩...
(Ц ц),
Ka with descender (Қ қ), and En with descender (Ң ң)).
Related letters and other similar characters
- Ш ш : Cyrillic letter Sha
Computing codes
| character | Щ | щ | ||
| Unicode name | CYRILLIC CAPITAL LETTER SHCHA | CYRILLIC SMALL LETTER SHCHA | ||
| character encoding | decimal | hex | decimal | hex |
| Unicode Unicode Unicode is a computing industry standard for the consistent encoding, representation and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems... |
1065 | 0429 | 1097 | 0449 |
| UTF-8 UTF-8 UTF-8 is a multibyte character encoding for Unicode. Like UTF-16 and UTF-32, UTF-8 can represent every character in the Unicode character set. Unlike them, it is backward-compatible with ASCII and avoids the complications of endianness and byte order marks... |
208 169 | D0 A9 | 209 137 | D1 89 |
| Numeric character reference Numeric character reference A numeric character reference is a common markup construct used in SGML and other SGML-related markup languages such as HTML and XML. It consists of a short sequence of characters that, in turn, represent a single character from the Universal Character Set of Unicode... |
Щ | Щ | щ | щ |
| KOI8-R KOI8-R KOI8-R is an 8-bit character encoding, designed to cover Russian, which uses the Cyrillic alphabet. It also happens to cover Bulgarian, but is not used since CP1251 is accepted. A derivative encoding is KOI8-U, which adds Ukrainian characters... and KOI8-U KOI8-U KOI8-U is an 8-bit character encoding, designed to cover Ukrainian, which uses the Cyrillic alphabet. It is based on KOI8-R, which covers Russian and Bulgarian, but replaces eight graphic characters with four Ukrainian letters Ґ, Є, І, and Ї in both upper case and lower case.In Microsoft Windows,... |
253 | FD | 221 | DD |
| Code page 855 Code page 855 Code page 855 is a code page used under MS-DOS to write Cyrillic script. This code page is not used much.-Code page layout:... |
250 | FA | 249 | F9 |
| Code page 866 Code page 866 Code page 866 is a code page used under MS-DOS to write Cyrillic script. It is based on the "alternative character set" of GOST 19768-87... |
153 | 99 | 233 | E9 |
| Windows-1251 Windows-1251 Windows-1251 is a popular 8-bit character encoding, designed to cover languages that use the Cyrillic alphabet such as Russian, Bulgarian, Serbian Cyrillic and other languages... |
217 | D9 | 249 | F9 |
| ISO-8859-5 | 201 | C9 | 233 | E9 |
| Macintosh Cyrillic | 153 | 99 | 249 | F9 |