Shcha, from theAlphabet Book оf the Red Army Soldier (1921). The illustration depictsщук (shchuk), "pike" (acc.pl.).
Shcha (Щ щ; italics:Щ щ orЩ щ; italics:Щ щ),Shta, orScha is a letter of theCyrillic script.[1] InRussian, it represents thelong (sometimes short)voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative/ɕː/, similar to the pronunciation of sh in 'sheep'. InUkrainian andRusyn, it represents the consonant cluster/ʃt͡ʃ/. InBulgarian, it represents the consonant cluster/ʃt/, like the pronunciation of “scht” inBorscht. 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 isromanized as⟨shch⟩,⟨ŝ⟩,⟨šč⟩ or occasionally as⟨sch⟩, all reflecting the historical Russian pronunciation of the letter (as a combinedШ andЧ).[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.
Cyrillic Щ (Early Cyrillic form:) is derived from theGlagolitic lettershtaⰛ,[3] which was a ligature ofshaⰞ (= Cyrillic Ш, pronounced[ʃ]), andtverdoⰕ (= Cyrillic Т, pronounced[t]).[4] The original pronunciation,[ʃt], is maintained inBulgarian.
This letter was also used in theKomi language as/t͡ʃ/, but it has fallen out of use in favour ofdigraph⟨тш⟩.
The form of the letter shcha is considered to have originated as aligature of the letters Ш and Т.[5] However in later orthographies it began to be depicted as the letterCyrillic Sha (Ш ш) with adescender. The descender (also used inЦ) has been reinterpreted as adiacritic and used in several letters for non-Slavic languages, such asҢ andҚ.
