Re: Russian/Ukrainian "shch" and Polish

Philip Newton scripsit:

> From what I have heard, this is not accurate, or at least not in all
> cases; I've heard shch described as being always "soft", and the
> pronunciation I've heard doesn't have two separate segments (fricative
> and affricate) but only one, fricative, one.

These reflect two different dialects. In the Leningrad pronunciation,
shch is indeed [StS_j]; in the Moscow pronunciation it is [S_j:].
The first became standard in the teaching of Russian in the West,
probably strongly influenced by Polish; the latter is now dominant
in Russia itself.

> But AFAIK there are also letters which are always palatalised. ISTR
> that either )Bц or ч also fell into this group.

The letters zh, ts, and sh are always hard; the letters ch and shch
are always soft. In either case, only the vowels a, ye, i, o, and u
are written after them.

--
John Cowan jcowan@... http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
Most languages are dramatically underdescribed, and at least one is
dramatically overdescribed. Still other languages are simultaneously
overdescribed and underdescribed. Welsh pertains to the third category.
--Alan King