Sergei writes:
I still hope to be helpful on the issues of Pskov
district dialects (the region where some of my ancestors come
from).
Sergei,
There are indeed a few question I'd like to ask.
The traditional Western transliteration of Russian <ш,
ж, ч, щ> as
<š, ž, č,
šč> often makes foreigners take it for granted, erroneously,
that these symbols represent a uniform place-of-articulation series. Yet while
š, ž are completely depalatalised (to the
point of being "dark" consonants), č and šč
remain palatoalveolar. Here are my questions:
1. Do you know of any historical explanation for
this asymmetry?
2. What's the pronunciation of historical
šč in your native accent?
3. Does your accent have a voiced counterpart of
šč?
Piotr