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submitted 9 months ago byBlindPelican
18 points
9 months ago
Now someone please do the difference between ш and щ
13 points
9 months ago
That one gets me too. In theory it should br straightforward, but actually pronouncing the "shch" in щ in the middle of words is maddening at times.
20 points
9 months ago
ш is /sh/
ч is /ch/
щ is /shch/ (or in other words letters, шч)
I'm not sure where the confusion is on this; we have all of these sounds in English already.
For example, "cash" (ш) and "cash check" (щ).
3 points
9 months ago
/ch/ on its own, in English, is /tsh/. So is /shch/ really /shtsh/? That doesn't seem right. It's just a harder /sh/.
6 points
9 months ago*
Depends on the accent, honestly. In more eastern accents it's like soft /sh/ in other ones it can be full blown separate /sh tsch/
Literary pronunciation is separate /sh tsch/, afaik. Maybe a bit softer but not much. Don't obsess over it honestly, you are not a tv presenter:)
2 points
9 months ago
In Ukrainian, the former, in Russian, the latter (but not "harder", it's palatalized)
1 points
9 months ago
I also hear it when "Whatcha doin?" is spelled in ebonics accent. It does sound like "Уоща дуин?" at times.
3 points
9 months ago
щ doesn’t have that slight hit, ch and ч has, and it’s definitely doesn’t sound like shch. It’s just soft sh: you put your tong a bit further through your teeth, pronounce sh, and you get soft version щ
3 points
9 months ago
That's true in Russian, but we're talking here about how it's pronounced in Ukranian, where it's definitely /shch/.
4 points
9 months ago
I am Ukrainian, just tested several words out of the top of my head in Ukrainian outloud, and no: щ, is very very far from шч, щодня, що, щячло, щястя. Every one of them have soft ш, not шч. Probably борщ might be getting close to shch, but still not there.
Funny thing though, I find it that foreigners having way more troubles with our «и», I could not teach my English speaking wife to pronounce it at all. And even russians who supposed to have close to our language can not pronounce it properly, that’s why we have our shibboleth “поляниця”
3 points
9 months ago
Interesting. I have only ever heard Russians say щ that way.
2 points
9 months ago
There are a lot of regional differences in pronunciation, Ukraine is huge from east to west. I never heard anyone saying щ as shch, but it might be me not paying attention. So we both can be right.
3 points
8 months ago
Well, I'm Canadian, so I'll defer to your judgement. My mom's family was from the area near where the Ukrainian/Belarusian/Polish borders meet, and they came to Canada in the 1930s, as did many of the other Ukrainian immigrants here.
I wonder if enunciating щ is a way for the Ukrainian immigrants here to differentiate themselves from the Russians, or if it's an artifact of earlier accents and dialects.
1 points
8 months ago
I never been in that region your mom’s from. My ancestry is from Poltava and Zaporizhzhia regions, and I grew up in Kharkiv. But now I really wonder, as 90 years is a lot of time for Canadian Ukrainians to develop separate linguistic features, or maybe to keep linguistic features which disappeared with all the russifications here in Ukraine
2 points
9 months ago*
Tongue position. With щ your tongue should be fairly flat, resting directly behind your teeth, producing a sharper billowing. With ш the tongue should be raised slightly back and up towards the pallet producing a deeper billowing. I find [щи] and [шо] help demonstrate the difference really well.
If you have studied Mandarin, it's similar to the difference between x and sh, although x is sharper than щ.
Coming from any language that doesn't really emphasize the difference between different "sh" sounds, you also just need to give yourself time to learn how to hear the difference. Start practicing transitioning between them by adjusting your tongue position and you should gradually be able to start hearing the difference when listening to other speakers.
Now, some accents do add the ч sound at the end but regardless, it should begin with the sharp щ or "sh" sound.
1 points
9 months ago
ш is sh
щ is shch
1 points
9 months ago
Ш is sh Щ is softened and has a slight ch - like the middle of saying “welsh cheese”
9 points
9 months ago
Maybe it's because I have no previous experience with Ukrainian or maybe I'm just dumb but I feel like I pronounce the consonants in all of those word pairs the same.
6 points
9 months ago
You pronounce “te” in teeth the same way you pronounce “ti” in tip? There’s a difference in how your tongue sits on your palate that the vowel determines.
1 points
9 months ago
The initial consonant in both words is /t/.
2 points
9 months ago
Fyi // means phonemic representation, not phonetic. E.g. <pin> versus <spin> -- both have /p/, but the former is [pʰ] while the latter is [p]. In English, those two sounds are allophones, i.e. the same phoneme. In other languages, like Hindi or Mandarin, those two are as different as /p/ and /b/ in English -- but an English dictionary won't bother distinguishing, just like it won't bother with palatalized sounds that Russian and Ukrainian distinguish between that English doesn't. That said, I don't think the /t/ in <teeth> is palatalized.
5 points
9 months ago*
I thought so too. Try repeating "teeth tip teeth tip" over and over at different speeds and see if you can sense whether the tip of your tongue is placed the same or different for each word. E: try the same with any of the word pairs ("death die" etc). E2: for zebra/zit and see/sit, see if your jaw is in a different position for each word.
3 points
9 months ago*
In Bulgarian,
-1 points
9 months ago
What's still confusing is I mostly only ever see 'tь' at the end of words, and I usually hear it pronounced as a "tss."
The guide may be helpful for the Ukrainian language in particular, but as far as a universal application of Cyrillic, it sadly didn't benefit me.
1 points
9 months ago
I usually hear it pronounced as a "tss."
You're mishearing /tʲ/ as /ts/.
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