Russian here. щ is definitely not pronounced the way you did it at 1:10. Your attempt was much closer to ся than to ща. I believe Japanese has a very similar sound to щ in its shi syllable.
Editor here! Sorry about that! Usually how these go is that the letter is pronounced a few times to get the sound just right, so I must’ve chosen the wrong take! Mistakes like that happen from time to time, especially when it’s up late and you’re editing after six hours of college homework.
Agree. In Danish we have the same sound represented by /ɕ/ and we don't pronounce it like that either. We also don't pronounce it like Russian щ. When I had to learn to pronounce it, it was easier to regress from Ш than try to pronounce the Danish 'sj' digraph slightly differently. Must be down to the difference between tongue tip-up vs. tongue tip-down. Most Danes pronounce all their sibilants with the tongue tip down, and both Ш and щ are pronounced with the tongue tip up.
@@thegoldendragonacs That can't be the reason. At 2:14 he pronounces two different things and in both he uses the wrong sound. I guess he chose this sound by mistake, which is fine considering he doesn't speak any of the languages he's analysing.
Perhaps he really tried to make [ɕ], but it may be hard even to hear the difference between palatalized and not palatalized consonants or two similar palatalized ones if your language lacks the distinction. Also, to me his realisation of /ɕ/ doesn't sound 100% [sʲ] either, it's more like [s̠ʲ], like Finnish or Latin [s̠], but palatalized. It's halfway between [sʲ] and [ɕ] Again, for speakers of many languages the difference can be really minute /maɪˈnjut/
@@Fjordsss i dont think we can compare slavic languages to asian languages. when i hear the chinese or japanese way of pronouncing the "ɕ" it sounds more like russian "ся", which is a soft "s". but in russian щ is a soft "sh". but maybe in some chinese dialects they say it like the russian щ
The way russian "щ" pronounced in this video is incorrect. It sounded like "ся", not "ща". Also, the sound itself doesn't include vowel - "ща" is the letter's name. Interesting fact: although "щ" isn't the most common sound according to given calculations, it's used as a replacement of bunch of sounds in everyday form of a word "now". "Сейчас" is shorten to a simplier to pronounce "щас", so you literally hear the sound "щ" every day multiply times.
Funnily enough the funny o letter in most fonts has too few eyes: it should be three-four-three (ten "eyes"), instead of two-three-two (seven). Using it is actually very simple: If you're being extra while talking about the eyes of a thing with a lot of them, use it instead of the first "о" in the word for eyes. The whole letter has only been used once in all of history: "серафими многоꙮчитїи", "many-*e*yed seraphims". Check out the wikipedia page for "cyrillic O variants", because it's not alone.
i feel like you're making an assumption about the societies that designed these scripts "not having an understanding of linguistics" and "thinking that these sounds are phonemes". it's much more likely that e.g. greek decided to have a letter for /ks/ because they had a letter "left over" from Phoenician (samekh in that case) and repurposed it for a common consonant cluster to have a shorthand. also i'm like 90% sure that щ's original form with the "tail" in the middle originates from a scribal abbreviation for Ш and Т which makes perfect sense since that's the sound that it represented in OCS, for which the alphabet was created
Just one thing man, it definitely isn't pronounced in Russian how you're doing it here. You're saying /sʲ/ сь when you need to be saying /ɕ~ʃʲ/ щ. It's a pretty massive difference
Hey, no problem! We’ll continue to try and make things as clean as possible going forward (we’re all human, so we can’t always get things totally correct). I explained what MIGHT have happened in another reply, but ye! It’s probably my bad for choosing the wrong take for the pronunciation. You’d be shocked at how different those takes can be!
To be fair, most people don't know all the dialects and pronouciation variants of their home language, like linguists and ethnographists would, but it can be very surprisingly if you have a television version of the language blasted across several countries for many decades so you definitely would know, what it should sound on average, and then you hear the sound, that you never heard before - it can be somewhat grating. Understandable, but impossible to ignore. For me, closest english american equivalent to the Russian "Щ" would be something like "Sh" in the word SНIT.
It’s in 0.72% of words in Ukrainian, but a lot of this word are the most common, like «що» - what, «ще» - more, also, «якщо» - if, «щоб» - for (something), «щось» - something, «краще» - better, etc. It’s very frequently used! Without it our text will be much longer. Also its partially simplified so it sounds like one sound
In Bulgarian - що (what but also why, however we use more often какво), ще (I will), повече or още (more), също (also but исто exists in some dialects come from истина - truth, while this from съществува - it exists), ако or щом (as, if, but we have если which is archaic), за (for), нещо (something), по-добро (better). Краще reminds me of краище in Bulgarian (end or part of something). Also we have защо (why)
@@JustforFun132a.k.aNickjackHero "Краще reminds me of краище in Bulgarian (end or part of something)." It's a different root. "Краще" has the same root as "краса", I believe you have such root too, Russian "красота" sounds absolutely Bulgarian to me.
@@dmytronazaryk681yup. "Краище" has the same root as "Край", however. In fact they have the same meaning - "end [of something]" like in a "Край света" ("edge of the world") or "Край стола" ("end of the table").
1:55: Yes, but ... St. Cyril and his bro Methodius designed the Glagolitic script. The Cyrillic script was designed by the Preslav Literary School from Greek, with a few Glagolitic characters added.
As a russian id say the sound represented by the letter щ is much closer to the english ʃ with slight palatalisation. your pronunciation seemed closer to ся, and id suggest making it more palatal rather than postalveolar like you pronounced. in any case, great video as always!!
ться in Russian mostly occurs at the end of reflexive verbs, so it's actually two separate things (...ть verb ending + ся reflexive suffix) and it makes more sense to write it this way.
As a Bulgarian I can hardly believe ш is the third least often used letter in our alphabet,If you read a sentence you usually find it at least twice in it
@@DanyyyyyJPF ''Що'' also exist in Bulgarian and it also means what but nowadays we more prefer to use ''какво'' for what. ''Що'' can also be shorter form of ''защо'' (why).
@@JustforFun132a.k.aNickjackHero I've noticed that some languages have the word "why" literally meaning "for what" like in italian Perchè, spanish porque and also as you said in Bulgarian защо
Bro Cyril didn't design the Cyrillic script. It was designed by his students after the glagolithic was deemed too hard and named after Cyril to honor him.
Yep. Ш is hard sh, and Щ is soft sh. Very close to English sh. And in Ukrainian it is sort of vice versa, but really depends on wovels that do after these letters
Yes. In the Ukrainian language, the letter "щ" is generally used in the word "що," which means "what." As you can understand, it's one of the most commonly used words.
ещё - also/furthermore/yet щас (informal for сейчас, common pronunciation) - now/right now/never (sarcastically) вещь/вещи - thing/item; stuff/items/belongings мощь/мощный - power/strength; powerful щенок - puppy/sucker (derogatory) Щ is also used for forming present tense active participles(🤓) Скучающий парень - bored (experiencing boredom) guy Ищущий следователь - searching (he searches and does it right now) investigator
@@user-cmcumm In Bulgarian: още - more вещ/вещи (same as Russian. Before 1945 мощ, вещ used to be written as мощь, вещь) понастоящем - at this moment/right now мощ/мощен (same as Russian) щене - puppy скучаещ човек - bored (experiencing boredom) person търсещ следовател - searching investigator
Честно говоря, ему не обязательно всё правильно выговаривать, но да, я знаю, иностранцам скорее всего хочется услышать правильное произношение. Ему бы лучше включить нормальное русское произношение из интернета, с гугл переводчика или чего-то такого.
@@Андрій-е9ф Кстати, очень хорошее подспорье для тренировки произношения, да и в целом в освоении языка (причем можно самостоятельно составлять интересные для себя фразы). Но возможны смысловые ошибки (иногда самые потешные)). Произносительные тоже бывают, но редко.
I would argue its not necessarily that people in the past didn't understand phonology and phonotactics, just that the people who made the script traditions read combinations of phonemes together were trying to save space. Z and X going zd/st/ts and ks/kh respectively is useful, not inaccurate. Why is that a revelation we're allowed to have now by saying "it makes the script feel alive" but the people who invented it "just didn't know what they were doing".
Proto-Slavic had a pair of phonemes reconstructed as /ɟ/ and /c/. These have different reflexes in the different branches of the slavic languages: 1) /(d)z/ & /ts/ in West Slavic 2) /(d)ʒ/ & /tʃ/ in East Slavic 3) /j/ & /tʃ/ in Slovenian 4) /dʑ/& /tɕ/ in SCBM 5) /ɟ/ & /c/ in Macedonian 6) /ʒd/ & /ʃt/ in Bulgarian The Glagolitic script used two distinct letters for the two sounds while the Old Cyrillic had no letter for the voiced one. The Old Church Slavonic language represents dialects used by speakers in Thrace and Bulgaria (variant 6). As the Church Slavonic language and alphabet spread to other Slavic speaking areas it was adjusted in some (but not all) ways to local dialects. Thus, in the East Slavic (Old Russian/Old Ruthenian) dialect region, the letter Щ was used both for the CS words and for the similar sounding consonant clusters in Old East Slavic
As many of the people here noted, your pronunciation of "ща" sounds closer to "ся". I think the closest sound for "ща" could be found in japanese words that start with しゃ, like しゃべる、しゃかい etc.
I'm Japanese and I once had a thought that Japanese sh sound kind of sounds like soft sh sound in Russian, so these two might be close to one another. By the way in Japanese sh sound is pronounced with your tongue attached to the dent of your bottom gum, and just saying sh.
@@tcy2485 as a Russian who studied Japanese in uni, that’s exactly what I was thinking all along. Still a bit confused why the standard Japanese-Russian transliteration system uses си for theしsound and its derivatives when щ is right there.
the way you pronounced the Russian letter щ makes me so mad as it sounds like u are pronouncing its as сь and i am even more sensitive about this because we also have that sound in polish and I often hear people calling ś sj and it make me so mad please pronounce it correctly as I know u know the IPA
@@krasnalthegreat Yeah, I get it because many people confuse it with soft S. I mean Montenegrin tried to add ś/с́ as version of sj/сj just like with ź/з́ for zj/зj. But in Polish these are different sounds. si/zi in Serbo-Croatian is си/зи (no palatalization between them).
As a Russian, you're not really pronouncing /ɕ(ː)/ (щ) correctly. Your pronounciation is more like /sʲja/ (сья) It's pronounced kinda like a palatalized version of /ʂ/ (ш) (still a cool video nonetheless)
because he is trying to pronounce it like the letter its usually written with, which is completely wrong like i literally cant name a single reason why its so common to misuse ipa characters in russian
@@irp3ex Phonetic vs phonemic transcription + which symbols were (thought to be) easier to typeset. Like the Polish Wiktionary transcribes ⟨mysz⟩ as /mɨʃ/ (and also puts it in square brackets for whatever reason), while the English one has that as /mɘʂ/ which is just so much more accurate. The idea is that if you're working with a particular language and know which sounds it uses you will e.g. know that /ʃ/ mean [ʂ] in Polish. This kinda makes sense I guess, but constantly backfires in any multilingual setting and basically defeats the purpose of the IPA. Honestly, the rule should be that you can only use phonemic transcription to drop diacritics, because otherwise you're just introducing pointless confusion.
I think that the rarety of a letter shouldn't be measured only by percentage of words it's used in. It might be used in a word that's on itself is used very often. For example, in Ukranian Щ is used in що (what) and борщ (borsch), so you stumble on Щ all the time
Bulgarian also uses щ often. However the difference is that in Ukrainian is боршч, шчо (борштш, штшо) while in Bulgarian is 1 sound difference - боршт, што. Even though they are written as ''борщ, що''
@@fanOfMinecraft-UAs_channel Yes. ШЧ is written separately like ''кошче'' (little basket). But if you think about шт and шч aren't far off. шч is like штш (1 sound difference). Although only 1 word exists with шт and that is ''пустошта'' (the wasteland), since it's the only feminine word that ends with ш. While other words end with щ like нощта (the night), otherwise it will be written as ноштта (which is ugly imo).
A few corrections. The Cyrillic alphabet was created in the Preslav literary school after Cyril's death. The name Cyrillic is actually a few centuries younger than the alphabet itself. The letter щ actually used to be a single phoneme at least in its proto slavic form. It is entirely likely that during the alphabet's creation some dialects treated it as a single sound and some as a double sound. For exame the OCS word for night нощь, was derived from the proto-slavic not'i (with a pallatalized t' at the end.)
Great video, as always. However, when talking about Cyrillic in general, I'd suggest using all 49 letters used when writing Slavic languages, and not just the Russian alphabet, as they aren't the same thing, and it causes confusion when you talk about other languages (like in this video). Unlike the Latin script, which has barely any letters which aren't just other letter with diacritics, there are many letters, predominately from the Balkans, which are completely unrelated to all Russian letters (Ђ, Ѕ, Ћ, Џ, еtc.).
"Just how did a single letter end up with 3 pronunciations across 3 separate languages ?" Bro, wait until you hear from "c" or "z" in Spanish, Italian, and French (and English), or "r" in virtually every European language, or most letters in most alphabets in the world 👀 Honestly, I'd find it more interesting to see a video of how we went from /g/ to /χ/ in Spanish but /ʒ/ in French rather than /sʲtʲ/ to /ʂt͡ʂ/ 👀
@@enricobianchi4499 Well, some Slavic languages have no schwa at all like Polish. Kashubian has it but Polish doesn't. Russian has it a lot with unstressed O sound. Serbo-Croatian like Czech and Slovak is mostly limited to L and R sound. Slovene has it with E and the consonant clusters. Macedonian has like the rest of Ex-Yugoslavia but they write it as ' However it's rarely seen like some words like ''ф'стак'' - pistachio which in Bulgarian ''фъстък'' is peanut, while pistachio is ''шамфъстък.''
Guys, he's making a sci-pop video, I think most ppl can't properly pronounce the whole IPA, it's hard for a non-native person to handle Slavic languages. It's not a pronunciation guide, it's just a review of a linguistic phenomenon. Doubting his competence in linguistics by his mispronunciations and his accent is giving me so much "toxic traumatized prescriptivistic Russian linguist allies with American Karens" vibes tbh...
I'd generally agree with you; but also, I'm not sure he did a fair amount of research considering he just says "lol old slavic people were stupid so thats why the languages are like this rn" and doesn't actually go much into the history of it
Or may be he should've done a bit more research before making this video? As a Russian, I know that Щ is there for preservation reasons. It sounds like a soft "ш" in modern Russian, and could be easily replaced with a Ш in most words. Words "щётка" and "шётка" sound identical. Щ is used to show that there once used to be "st" in this word. ПИЩА
(0:20) How is Cyrillic simpler than Latin? They're both random scribbles that describes sounds. What you showed there was the Russian orthography, which is simpler than English orthography perhaps, but that says nothing about the scripts themselves. The Latin script as used in Hawaiian seems straight forward.
Compared to Latin it's indeed more simple. Take for example French they write so many letters for 1 sound. And yes, Russian Cyrillic is the least phonetic one, but Serbian Cyrillic is the most phonetic Cyrillic like 1 letter, 1 sound.
@@JustforFun132a.k.aNickjackHeroYou're talking about orthography. French isn't Latin. I'm talking about the Latin script. How is the Cyrillic _script_ simpler than the Latin _script_ sans language?
@@JustforFun132a.k.aNickjackHero It's not hard. I'm not saying Latin is simpler either. They're just random scribbles. If you draw it like B or Б, P or П, neither is simpler. However there's an argument that Slavic Latin is simpler where you have C Ц, S С, Z З, that when turned postalveolar becomes Č Ч, Š Ш, Ž Ж. The Latin letters show relation to their alveolar forms, which Cyrillic doesn't. Then we got palatal: Ć Ћ, Ś Щ, Ź ЖЬ, and retroflex: Ċ ЧЪ, Ṡ ШЪ, Ż ЖЪ (using the common way these sounds are written in languages when not allophones) and Cyrillic is struggling here. But I'll be fair, Cyrillic can also be written: Ц С З / Ч Ш Ж / Ҷ Щ Җ /Ӵ Ш̈ Ӝ, but it's still a bit clunky. Also Ц already has a descender and it ruins the pattern.
Не уверен, что буквы добавляли из-за незнания фонетики (хотя они действительно могли её не знать, но, просто дело не в этом, как мне кажется). У них просто не было социального идеогического стремления к IPA-идее "Одна фонема - одна буква". В целом, субъективное убеждение, что каждая фонема обязательно должна писаться одной буквой. На практике было бы удобнее, частые сочетания букв писать короче, что бы писать было удобнее и экономнее. К примеру, слово and в английском пишут как & - потому что так удобнее.
This video is wrong on so many levels...the letter щ comes from what used to be a palatalized t' in proto-slavic which was a separate phoneme. Not much of an oopsie
The best thing about щ is that it is typically transcribed as schtsch in German, making words so much longer than in Cyrillic. For example, борщ (4 letters) becomes Borschtsch (10 letters) and Хрущёв (6 letters) becomes Chruschtschow (13 letters)
Yeah, what's going on with German digraphs, trigraphs and so on? SCH, TSCH, DSCH, SCHTSCH... Holy crap you overcomplicate things so much! My mind blew once when I saw the word "Chechen" written in German: RU: Чечен DE: *Tschetschenische* Seriously what the hell?
@@osasunaitor I mean German writes Ч sound as how it's literally. Ч is the opposite of Џ which is made from ДЖ in other Slavic languages and since д, ж are the voiced consonants of т, ш, German spells it like тш (if it existed in Slavic languages). Sch makes the ш sound, tsch makes the ч sound and dsch makes the дж/џ sound. Now let's compare it to the famous Grzegorz Brzęszczykiewicz in German will be Gschegosch Bschentschischtschikewitsch while in Russian Гжегож Бженщищикевич. Polish is also quite crazy since Чечен will be Czeczeń in Polish.
@@JustforFun132a.k.aNickjackHero no, German doesn't describe the sound literally, there's some inconsistency: [ch] is used for the sound /x/ or /ç/, but then an s is added [sch] for the sound /ʃ/, although /ʃ/ is not equivalent to the combinations /sx/ or /sç/. And then more letters are added to the already inconsistent [sch]. If /ʃ/ was represented by something simpler, such as [š] or [ş] for instance, then those long combinations would be shorter and still make sense: [tš,dš...], [tş, dş...] etc.
@@osasunaitor I mean Russian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian, Belarus don't even have proper sound for the sound of English J. Although Serbian and Macedonian have Џ still Serbian in Latin alphabet they write it as 2 letters like these 4 - dž/дж. And only Macedonian has letter for the дз sound which is s. Although it comes from the Old Cyrillic alphabet which was used to be written as ꙁ, they changed it to a Latin s, just like how both use Latin j instead of й or ь, although ь can be only seen as the glued together љ, њ (ль, нь). What's interesting is that Macedonian has depalatalization version of these letters unlike Serbian which are written as лj, нj, just like how Serbian writes them as lj, nj in the Latin alphabet version.
3:05 I really appreciate you pronouncing the Belarusian language the proper way. I enjoyed listening to you saying the names of the other languages the way they are originally pronounced, like Qazaq, Adyghe, and all other languages with the thrilling r sound. W
Can’t speak for the other languages mentioned but the pronunciation of the Russian Щ was incorrect. Also Saint Cyril being the inventor of the Cyrillic script is likely a myth.
Cyril and Methodius didn't invent the Cyrillic they invented the Glagolic script. Then after the death of Cyril in his honour, his students mainly Naum and Kliment made the Cyrillic alphabet.
@1:35 Wrong! Saint Cyril created Glagolitic alphabet, not Cyrillic. Cyrillic alphabet was created by disciples of disciples of saint Cyril after his death.
Would you be so kind to check who, when and where invented the Cyrillic alphabet(min 1:36), since to the best of my knowledge as someone who has studied history, st Cyril was already long dead by the time of its invention. Also I don't get it how can you make a linguistics video and pronounce Greek letters psi and ksi as "sai" and "zi" like they are some part of English randomly included in the Alphabet.
@@chingizzhylkybayev8575 I thought you are referring to the first sentence. However it is common sense to name the things with their real names and since when the English pronunciation of anything is the correct version of it when we are talking Linguistics?
@@velizarmarchovski7262 calling things by their original names isn't as widespread as it might seem. Would you like to call Greece Ellatha just for the sake of science?
I don't think the statistics of frequency of щ in Russian don't represent the real picture. Those statistics are most likely calculated on the basis of someting like a vocabulary of all Russian words, which most likely includes singular nominative nouns/adjectives and infinitive verbs. But щ is used in every single 1st participle of a verb in Russian, and those are used pretty commonly.
if you think that this letter is in any way surprising/weird or inconsistent across languages then LET ME INTRODUCE YOU TO THE LETTER X IN THE LATIN ALPHABET LOL
Bro, cool video. The research is there, but for a video about the syllable, we have to hear the actual sound, and that part lacked a bit. At least for Russian, the щ is not pronounced like that, you sounded more like ся.
The idea of adopting Cyrillic by russian language is just ridiculous. In fact firstly they adopted script itself and only afterwards constructed a language around it
also щ in russian may be thought of as palatalized version of ш (though its not correct history-vise). so russian could potentially use soft/hard vowels to distinguish these sounds, like with the rest of its phonemes.
In Russian yes, but Ukrainian and Bulgarian is not itself palatalized, although in Bulgarian щ can be soften, but not ш. Mostly with я like ''щях'' (I would have).
Except that it's always geminated, so it's more like a palatalized version of шш. And historically it comes from a different process than the usual palatalization.
ɕ it's really "щ", but it doesn't sound like it does in the video. To be honest, I have seen articles with an example of this sound and it sounds different in different languages. In this case, it’s not entirely clear to me why IPA is needed if it cannot accurately determine the sound.
Thank you for this video, but I think you could tell us more.For example, the way that this letter appears in some forms of verb.for examples, in russian "простить" (to forgive) doesn't have a щ, while "прощу" (I will forgive you) That's all due to an sound shift in proto-slavic called "Йотация".It's basically palatalization, but in certain environment and with certain peculiarities.Also, your pronunciation of /ɕ/ is closer to "сь".You can improve it by moving your tongue backwards to the point where it acquires a shushing sound
Bulgarian has щ like in ''да прощавам'' (to forgive) while I will forgive will be ''ще простя'' Bulgarian actually uses щ the most. For example the Russian ''я хочу'' which in Modern Bulgarian is ''аз искам'' we have archaic form from OCS which is ''аз хощу'' where soft чь in Russian and Serbian becomes шт in Bulgarian.
@@JkaBG Yes it is. But I wanted to point out it was actually ''азъ хощу'' that form of ''азъ'' was used until 1945 before communists removing the ers like ъ, ь at the end of words, except in some Turkish names it's kept like Аслъ for example. For Serbian ''искам'' sounds archaic for them, they use ''jа хоћу'' instead of ''jа искам.'' In Old Bulgarian ''искам'' used to mean search also but that was replaced with ''търся.''
If Polished used cyrylic then the letter щ would definitely be used more often than in Russian or Ukrainian, as the cluster "szcz" pronounced /ʂt͡ʂ/ is pretty common. But going with that logic we would probably need a letter for the /ɕt͡ɕ/ cluster as well
Polish doesn't use Cyrillic for the same reasons why we don't use the Arabic script. But yeah, it would be the closest to Belarusian one. Technically Belarusian is the closest of being ''Cyrillic Polish.'' Like dobry dzień - добры дзень.
In Belarusian, where the letter "щ" does not exist in the alphabet (the combination of letters "шч" are used instead) the cluster (combination) of sounds "ʂtʂ" is used here and there. And these sounds is the same as in Polish. Of course, there is not the combination of several sound in the contemporary Russian in the places where the letter "щ" is used. There is used the single sound "ɕ:" instead. And the combinanation of two sounds are used in Ukrainan in the place where the letter "щ" is. But the Ukrainian sounds are not identical to those which is in the similar Polish and Belarusian cluster. So, the letter " щ" is pronounced as "ʃt͡ʃ" in Ukrainian.
Russians are not authors of Cyrillic script, so how they read щ is completely unimportant. Cyrillic script is really the 'Old Bulgarian Greek alphabet' (if you don't believe me go into Wikipedia article called "Old English Latin alphabet" = Latin alphabet + additional letters; now go to the article "Early Cyrillic alphabet" = Greek alphabet + additional letters). When Cyrillic was made, Slavs already were splitting for >400 years and MIXING with speakers of different languages, from this we have West, East and South Slavs. Their ancestors had two sounds, the Proto-Slavic voiceless *ť /c/ (no, it's not the *c /ts/ as in *ovĭca 'a sheep') and the voiced *ď /ɟ/. Proto-Slavic: *dŭŤeri 'daughters', *goręŤĭ 'hot, burning', *noŤĭ 'night', *peŤi 'to bake', *peŤĭ 'oven', svěŤa 'candle', ŤuĎĭ 'foreign', meĎa 'boundary', rŭĎa 'rust', ryĎĭ 'of red colour', saĎa 'soot' West Slavs: - Czech: dCery, hoříCí, noC, peCT, peC, svíCe, CiZí, meZ, reZ, ryZí, saZe - Polish: Córy, gorąCy, noC, pieC, pieC, świeCa, CuDZy, mieDZa, rDZa, ryDZ, saDZa East Slavs: - Russian: doČjeri, gorjaČij, noČ', pjeČ', pjeČ', svjeČa, ČuŽoj, mjeŽa, rŽa, ryŽij, saŽa - Ukrainian: doČky (dim.), harjaČyj, niČ, peKTý, piČ, sviČka (dim.), ČuŽyj, meŽa, (i)rŽa, ryŽyj, saŽa South Slavs: - Old Church Slavonic (Old Bulgarian): dŭŠTeri, goręŠTii, noŠTĭ, peŠTi, peŠTĭ, svěŠTa, ŠTuŽDĭ, meŽDa, rŭŽDa, ryŽDĭ, saŽDa - Modern Bulgarian: dǎŠTeri, goreŠT, noŠT, peKa (lack of infinitive, it's 1st person singular), peŠT, sveŠT, ČuŽD, meŽDa, rǎŽDa, ryŽ, saŽDi South Slavs live in mountainous area so their common speech has tendency to dialectisation, that's why they needed a letter (Ⱋ - Glagolitic, щ - Cyrillic) that could be read differently depending on the dialect, e.g. Bulgarian sveŠT, rǎŽDa; Macedonian: sveḰa, ‘rǴa; Serbo-Croatian: sv(ij)eĆa, rĐa; Slovene: sveČa, rJa. Why there was not voiced letter in Cyrillic? Because Cyrillic was never made as "Slavic" script, but as Balkan sprachbund script. And when Old Greek /zd/~/dz/ (represented with Ζζ (zeta)) become /z/, there was a tendency to writing any ZD as separate letters. Heck, Early Cyrillic /dz/~/z/ (represenred with Ѕ ѕ) also became obsolete. Big chunk of Greek letters were kicked out from Cyrillic, so now majority of modern Slavic speakers using Cyrillic wouldn't know what "ѕѣлѡ" is. ------- Could you tell us from where did this statement came: "If Polished used cyrylic then the letter щ would definitely be used more often than in Russian or Ukrainian, as the cluster "szcz" pronounced /ʂt͡ʂ/ is pretty common." Because I'm sure that there was zero research ;) 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 If we go, let's say into Wikipedia article about Poland ("Polska") you will have 113 "szcz" - yes, we can say that it's used 'often', but "gd" is used 77 times (should there be a special letter for it?), "sc" (not "sch") x283, "sp" x376, "prz" x507, "ść" (+ści) x522, "sk" x1747 (ok, bias), "st" x2114. For comparison "ź" is the least used letter in the Polish alphabet (0.061%), there is x121 "ź" in the article ;) The consonant cluster "szcz" is soooo common in Polish, that Poles need ASAP some special letter for it🤣🤣🤣. Russian is highly influenced by Bulgarian via text, so it reads щ in it's own way..., e.g. Proto-Slavic obĭŤĭ 'common', vs. Polish obCy vs. borrowed by Russians obŠČij 'common' (and bazillion others). I'm sorry, but you know that words in Slavic languages inflect, right? So there is something called present participle for imperfective verbs, e.g. drinking, reading, sleeping, placing... Polish: pijąCy, czytająCy, śpiąCy, kładący Russian: p'juŠČij (Bulgarian pieŠT), čitajuŠČij (BG čitaŠT), spjaŠČij (BG spjaŠT), kladuŠČij (BG kladjaŠT) - some also function as adjectives (also as short adjectives that end with -ŠČ) Ukrainian: p'juČy čytajuČy, spljaČy(j), kladuČy Belarusian: p'juČy, čytajuČy, spjaČy, kladuČy Then you can make nouns from adjectives, there is -CZYK in Polish (e.g. Albańczyk "Albanian'), but Russian -ŠČIK in as in naturščik 'model', zastrójščik 'developer' does not exist. I should also mention comparative degree of adjectives/adverbs that end with -ST-, Polish częSTSZy/częŚCIej, gęSTSZy/gęŚCIej, tłuSTSZy/tłuŚCIej, proSTSZy/proŚCIej Russian čaŠČe/čaŠČe, guŠČe/guŠČe, tolŠČe/tolŠČe, proŠČe/proŠČe Ukrainian čaSTIŠyj/čaSTIŠe... I'm sorry, my knowledge about Ukrainian is poor. I agree that we have tendency to do words more pleasing to our ears, and sometimes we also make SZCZ from CZ, e.g. Polish SZCZeżuja, pSZCZoła vs. Russian Češuja, pČela. But I still think that when we are on this delusional stage of thinking that making one letter for some random consonant cluster is not highly stupid idea, we should have some special letter with GRZ/GŻ ;), as we also add G, e.g. Polish GŻeGŻółka, rozGRZeszyć vs. Ukrainian ZoZulja, Russian razRešítʹ 🤣🤣 Regards.
Your pronunciation of the palatal fricatives is wrong. You are pronouncing them as alveolar fricatives with a yod following them or with palatalization, but they are supposed to be fricatives pronounced at the place of articulation of yod. I would recommend, to pronounce the sound more accurate, you hold a yod and the move the mid/back of your tongue into the place you feel the airflow, this should create a high-hissing sound, this when pronounced fast is the correct way of pronouncing the palatal fricatives, activate voice box to voice it.
Hey, I don't have a formal training in linguistics so I might be wrong, but I thought the letter "щ" was created for the purpose of unifying the dialects. I believe the sound comes from the first palatalization of the sound cluster /skʲ/ which shifted to /ʃtʃ/, and later to /ʃt/, but not in all dialects. I won't argue that Bulgarian having a particularly frequent occurrence of /ʃt/ didn't play a role, though. Awesome video :)
Another important point about the Russian щ is that it's geminated "out of the box". It's always geminated because it originates from merging a consonant cluster.
Now this makes sence as to why other slavic speakers think I'm weird when I pronounce it as shch just because I'm used to the church Slavonic pronunciation
Ξ ksee and Ψ psee are considered double letters in Greek. They are very frequent, so it makes sense to save space and write them as one letter instead of two.
5:28 It's pronounced /dɔpɔ'bɑt͡ʃɛ̝nʲ:ɑ̈/ if my IPA is correct. The idea is that the «ба» syllable is stressed in this word in Ukrainian, not the «че». Stress on «че» makes it sound like Polish 😁
Well, Ь can also like act as that. But in Ukrainian and Belarusian it's ' while in Bulgarian Ъ makes a sound as schwa sound, like in Macedonian with '. Try to pronounce the word ''пъдпъдъкът'' (the quail) and you will of a sudden lose your knowledge about Russian and Slavic language.
You can explain Ъ quite fine, if you just imagine you can simply replace it by Й :D The Ь on the other hand.. It palatalizes the consonant before, unless it's Ш or Ж, and if there's a vowel after it, it also adds j sound inbetween
@@ptero That's for Russian Bulgarian is different. Try to pronounce ''пъдпъдъкът'' using your Russian logic and then you will realise that you mispronounced it.
@@JustforFun132a.k.aNickjackHero you can also see this in some medieval Russian writing, where Ъ is pronounced as a devoiced O. If you know that, it is easier
At 0:40 ,All of these letters are still in use in Old Church Slavonic, Theta is either normal Theta or F, Izhe is a very interesting letter since when between 2 Vowels it makes a V sound, Jat' is just a retextured "e" now, Jan" makes a "ja" sound and Jod" makes a "jo" sound, You should do a video on Old Church Slavonic infact.
A little note (which I suppose most of you would know): The strict rule of pronouncing this letter - particularly in Ukrainian in that case - should be applied if you work as a TV news anchor, and therefore need to speak the standardized Ukrainian. But that doesn't always work in living colloquial language. As as with other letters for that matter. Regional dialects can change that, things of that nature.
My parents were born in Latvia during the soviet union and were taught Russian. I've since studied and learned Russian myself and my parents say that щ is pronounced as "Sh-Ch", so that's what I've always done
This letter is actually very powerful! Look at the same exact word in different Slavic languages. Russian "ещё" (3 letters), Ukrainian "іще" (again 3) or "ще" (even 2, without the first vowel), but Belarusian "яшчэ" (4 letters) and Polish "jeszcze" (7!!!). Polish uses FOUR letters to denote the same consonant cluster that is written "Щ"!
Meanwhile the digraph 'ch' having completely different pronunciations in english, french, german, etc, the 'sz' and 's' being opposite if each other in polish and hungarian, even just the letter 'c' having all those different pronunciation variants in position before i/e, and furthermore being used for even more different sounds in eastern european languages and another one in turkish; the letter z having at least 3 different sounds across german, spanish and then others. And also x, and j, and all those letters used for click sounds in south african languages, and q in pingying, and more
The good part about щ is that it helps a lot in recognizing words in foreign languages when the pronunciations have diverged. But i still think the bolsheviks made a mistake in keeping it in russian, and in removing it from belarussian. How it works in ukrainian is nice though, especially with the dialect continuum
Just curious, by frequency are you talking about words in the dictionary? If so, it would also be interesting to know the frequency in normal text, as there are some very common words that use it. It also appears in many verb conjugations but not in the infinitive.
Standard Ukrainian is based on central dialects, shch is most clearly pronounced there imo, but it's also common in north and west. Meanwhile in russified regions in the east and south it's more commonly pronounced as sh'.
So we can say that in the beginning the letter Щ was created to represent a consonat cluster "shch" which was very common in Proto Slavic and Old Church Slavonic languages, and in this period it makes a more sence to represent a consonant cluster "shch" as a one letter, rather than two letters. And nowadays when in Ukrainian and Bulgarian this letter is still used to writing a consonant cluster, in Russian paradoxally this consonant cluster become a one sound, in fact this sound in Russian is very similar to Polish sound "Ś" but in Polish "Ś" is a short consonant, and in Russian Щ is like a long Polish Ś. So in Russian nowadays the letter Щ became a one sound. In Ukrainian and Bulgarian this letter might be written as a two letters шч (shch) in Ukrainian and шт (sht) in Bulgarian, but it exits in these languages for historic and cultural reasons.
Bulgarian has only 1 word with ''шт'' and that is ''пустошта'' otherwise this is why ''щ'' is for, although this is an exception since the word is in feminine and ends with ш not щ. And unlike ш, щ can be soften. Similarly like Russian щ can be soften in - щях, щял, пощя, изтрещя, while ш is always hard in Bulgarian. Same for ж, ч, дж as well.
5:29 when your pronunciation of russian "до свидания" is pretty good but in Ukrainian "до побачення" you stress the wrong vowel, it should be "до побÁчення". Also never knew that "щ" is pronounced different in Ukrainian and russian, and even when it's pretty uncommon in words, in Ukrainian words "шо" / "що" play the role of English "what" / "wot" words in common speech, when in russian its mostly and only as i know "что". Can't wait to see another video about Slavic languages
@@luciefrka124_ Of course Ukrainians know Russian and Ukrainian only, despite Bulgarian is spoken there but mainly in Odessa. You understand it because you know Russian and it is a Slavic language too, despite being in the minority spoken in Ukraine.
@@luciefrka124_ Bulgarian also has ''що'' like Ukrainian but it's pronounced like the Russian ''что.'' Funny that in some very southern Bulgarian dialects also have ''что'' (like how you see it is pronounced), but nowadays we use more often ''какво'' than ''що.'' Also ''до свидания'' and ''до побачення'' in Bulgarian is ''довиждане.'' While the Russian one sounds like ''до свиждане'' in Bulgarian which means ''till meeting someone in hospital, military in specific hour'' which in some way is related to the Russian one but it not exactly the same thing.
@@JustforFun132a.k.aNickjackHero I and my friends (youngers) also use word "каво" (without к in the middle) but it more used in negative context, like when you hear some unpleasant news or just something that very unexpected. At the same time "шо / що" is more neutral or an answer when you didn't hear something
Weird, I speak a Dialect in France, my family emigrated frrom Russia 100 years ago, I always say "shch" for this letter, My grandmother too and she used to translate Russian for the USSR and ESA
0:30 As a Ukrainian speaker, I'm unsure if it's the case. The terminology we are taught at school is a little different but in some instances where a voiceless consonant is in front of a voiced one, it becomes voiced. For example, бороТьба sounds like бороДьба(pronunciation changes from T to D) or проСьба sounds like проЗьба(pronunciation changes from S to Z). But I'm not a linguist, so maybe you meant something different from what I'm describing.
Ukrainian is like Serbo-Croatian where you are the only ones which don't have devoicing and В changing to W sound as Slovak and Slovene at consonant clusters or at the end of the words.
I like the cyrillization of Szczecin > Щецин so I’ve never struggled too much with it. Ь , Э vs Е, and when the Ё is written without umlauts but you just have to know that’s the letter the sign was going for (context my A1 brain cannot keep straight) are my big Cyrillic stumbling blocks.
When you pronounce english word "sheet", you'll get how russian "Щ" sounds. In comparison with sounding of word "ship", where you can hear the difference between hard "Ш" and soft "Щ" in the previous word.
@@JustforFun132a.k.aNickjackHero Emm, did I text smth about other slavic languages or that it's applicable for any language, which use cyrillic alphabet as a base?
@@johngalt6931 You think Russia created the Cyrillic or you really lack of knowledge. The answer is Ukrainian, Rusyn, Belarusian, Russian, Bulgarian, Macedonian, Serbian, Montenegrin and sometimes Bosnian.
@@JustforFun132a.k.aNickjackHero No, only you decide that I think something and text your conclusions, without even asking my true thoughts. Usually, people who prefer to be guided by logic don't make such things. I advise you to free your mind from prejudices, this will help you perceive the world directly and without far-fetched ideas about the knowledge or position of the people you judge, especially when you don't know them.
The pronunciation of "щ" in Russian is same as the pronunciation of "k" or "tj" in Swedish words "kött" or "tjuv". (However, in Finland Swedish the pronunciation is not "щ" but "ч".)
as a ukrainian I noticed a while ago that I sometimes pronounce the letter as [ɕ], and this pronunciation isn't too uncommon here in bukovyna however most commonly it's replaced with [ʃ], meaning that що, "what", is usually pronounced as шо. tbh this change is nearly universal and it's kinda weird how it's not official, tho tbf the official pronunciation is kinda fucked up anyways
Just like how ''ще'' (I will) is often pronounced as ''ше.'' ''Що'' as ''шо'' here is more common in ''щото'' being pronounced as ''шото'' But we use more often ''какво'' and the short forms - ''к'во, к'о'' than ''що.'' ''Що'' is often used as short from of ''защо'' (why). And we have ''защото'' (because), ''каквото/к'вото'' (whatever)
Makes sense, it's how the modern Russian щ happened in the first place - шч is kind of a mouthful, and if you get even a little bit lazy with the pronunciation it blends into a single sound
As a Russian, I think that the letter Щ (sh') is completely pointless in modern Russian. It and Ш (sh) have special rules which specify when to write one of them over the other and which letters to write after them. But if you toss Щ and all of those rules, you will realize that Ш can do everything Щ does when treated like most other consonants. We don't have separate letters for Бь, Рь, Нь, etc., so no point in having one for Шь either.
@@JustforFun132a.k.aNickjackHero Correct, but those ь don't do their purpose of palatalizing the letter before them. They exist only grammatically and can be tossed as well. No one will cry for them.
