шь & щ

[ugly-boy.livejournal.com]

Are шь and щ the same? Also, is this analogy correct:

щ : ш :: тщ : ч

Does the sound "тщ" (presumably as in Mandarin q) exist?

Comments

[yay4pikas.livejournal.com]

тщ : ч

I wouldn't think so -- both щ and ш are 'sh' sounds, while ч is more of a 'ts', but I am not a native speaker, so I'm not 100% sure.

[ugly-boy.livejournal.com]

I've always read that ч = ch, but that could be wrong, since a lot of places say that щ = shch which is completely insane ;).

[xantha.livejournal.com]

ч = cheh

but ц = tseh

[some fonts show ц looking more like ч... my husband the native speaker has even gotten confused by fonts in the past.]

Щ is really more like schyah in practice (though my russian prof taught us shch as well).

[bobthedog.livejournal.com]

How is that insane?

[ugly-boy.livejournal.com]

Well it's not really pronounced as the English sounds "shch" right next to each other. It's more like sy or shy.

[bobthedog.livejournal.com]

It is for me and my family and many people I've known. I've always thought that the pronunciaton you speak of is lazy. But as an adult I accept that it's sound change. Not that I would use it, due to what I was taught at home. But, it seems that students of Russian think that no one at all still pronounces it the more formal way.

My two cents

[nale.livejournal.com]

"шь" и "щ" are not the same from any point of view, though you were talking about phonetics, I guess.

"шь" sounds exactly like "ш". "ь" serves only grammatical purposes, like indicating feminine gender in nouns (мышь - mouse vs камыш - reed, etc.) - but it doesn't affect the pronunciation of "ш".

Re: My two cents

[ugly-boy.livejournal.com]

Good to know, thank you.

[moon-aka-sun.livejournal.com]

"Щ" is rather a long and soft form of "ш". "Ш" itself is hard. Even as "шь" in e.g. "лишь", "спишь" etc. "Ч" is close to "тш" and is always soft. But I'm not a linguist. Just in case you need an urgent answer :)

[ugly-boy.livejournal.com]

Nah, nothing urgent, I was just curious.

[beowabbit]

As it was described to me, some Russian speakers pronounce it as шьч; i.e., a very palatalised/soft sh+t+sh; other Russian speakers pronounce it as a prolonged шь (a very palatalised/soft sh, pronounced about twice as long as ш). I gather the first pronunciation is more careful/formal, but that there are also regional differences and differences from speaker to speaker.

(I'm not a native Russian speaker by any means, so take this with a grain of salt.)

While щ as spoken by some speakers is a phonetically a lengthened, palatalised analogue of ш, the two phonemes are completely distinct; they don't form a pair the way (say) т and ть do. So the ь that's written after ш in some words has no effect on the pronunciation; ш and шь are pronounced identically (both quite hard/unpalatalised).

And by the way, Russian ч is very palatalised, so it's already pretty similar to Mandarin q. Pronounce чего and Mandarin Qin and compare where your tongue hits the roof of your mouth; I think you'll find them pretty close.

[beowabbit]

I should clarify that in my first paragraph above I was using ь as a phonetic symbol to indicate palatalisation of the sound written before it, even after ш. That's done sometimes in phonetics textbooks, but it's not what ь means after ш in normal written Russian.

[ugly-boy.livejournal.com]

OK, thank you.

[yers.livejournal.com]

Russian phonetics textbooks published in Russia always use the apostrophe to indicate palatalisation. At least, all the ones I've seen. Because the symbol ь in Russian phonetic transcription is what it originally was, the soft yer (a reduced vowel, such as е in страдалец).

[ugly-boy.livejournal.com]

Thanks.

Of course the 'e' in чего adds to the palatalization. Would you spell Qin as Чин in Russian?

[beowabbit]

Of course the 'e' in чего adds to the palatalization.

Actually, no, it doesn't. Just as ш is always hard in Russian, ч is always soft.

Would you spell Qin as Чин in Russian?

That would be a good representation of the sound, but I don't know if it's a standard way of transcribing it. (Just as neither Zhang nor the older Chang is a very intuitive transcription of the Chinese name, I wouldn't be surprised if transcription of Chinese into Russian is often "idiosyncratic".)

I believe I've seen Chinese words with q- transcribed into Russian with тсь in an old dictionary, but I have no idea how common that transcription is now.

[noser.livejournal.com]

No, ч is always soft(aka palatalized), regardless of anything. Russian transcription of Chinese is completely broken. Qin is spelt Тсинь, which is pretty far. There is no sound exactly like q in Russian. ш is Chinese sh, щ is very close to x (in Beijing dialect, at least), and there is no ч in Chinese; however, it shouldn't be a problem for you, as Russian ч is exactly English ch. :)

[noser.livejournal.com]

Man, you are wrong. There's more difference between ч and q, than ч and English ch. See my comment below.

[noser.livejournal.com]

Actually, above :)

[cema.livejournal.com]

шь is indeed the same as ш. As to щ, let me remind you that it was originally derived from what was pronounced as шч (in Peterburgian dialect, one would say щекотка as шчекотка and счастье as шчастье, but the latter did not contract), and that in some dialects it is even pronounced as шт (eg шти for щи), but I do not recomend that.

Is Russian the only language in which ш and щ are distinct?

[yers.livejournal.com]

Is Russian the only language in which ш and щ are distinct?
If you're referring the presence of both a hard and a soft alveolar sibilant, then I think it's one of two. Polish has sz and ś, both of which are sh-like sounds, one hard and the other soft. Naturally, the Polish ś is not related historically to щ, it's rather сь gone completely soft.

[noser.livejournal.com]

> Does the sound "тщ" (presumably as in Mandarin q) exist?

There is no single sound "тщ", however, there are words with those two together. It does not sound like "q". More palatalized.

[constpd.livejournal.com]

Lot of people have already said on шь.
In Russian the best explanation for щ is that it is the palatalized ш. Though ь never palatalizes ш itself. I mean that the letter ш always indicates the “hard” sound and щ always indicates “soft” sound. The explanation of щ as of shch is not correct for standard Russian but is true for speakers in some Russian regions, Belorussia and Ukraine.
Ч indicates palatalized and very integral ch. It is really very close to тщ but the sound doesn’t break apart.

...

[37greenbeans.livejournal.com]

It's amazing how confusing you people can be.

Re: ...

[cema.livejournal.com]

And it's confusing how amazing we are!