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

[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 :)