Шить

[damiel.livejournal.com]

I'm trying to reconcile the following two "spelling rules"

1. A vowel following the letter ш is always pronounced hard, irrespective of spelling;
2. A ь inserted between a consonant and a soft vowel indicates that the consonant is palatalized and the glide (й) is retained in the pronunciation of the vowel;

to make sense of how the verbal forms of шить (шью, шьёшь, ..., шьют) should be pronounced. To take the first person as an example, does it end up being something like /шу/ or /шы.у/ or /шы.йу/ or /щи.у/ or /щи.йу/ or ...? Also, how many syllables?

Thanks!

Comments

[damiel.livejournal.com]

Consonants and hard/soft signs don't make syllables on their own, they need a vowel.

I asked because I wasn't sure what the vowels (or how many) in the words in the question would be. However, the hard sign does indicate something about syllable boundaries. In a word like объём, the б is the coda to the first syllable, and not the onset to the second: объ.ём and not *о.бъём.