Shcha

Shcha (Щ щ; italics: Щ щ ), Shta, Scha, Šče or Sha with descender is a letter of the Cyrillic script. In Russian, it represents the long voiceless alveolo-palatal fricative, similar to the pronunciation of $⟨sh⟩$ in Welsh-sheep. In Ukrainian and Rusyn, it represents the consonant cluster, something like cash-chest. In Bulgarian, it represents the consonant cluster. Most other non-Slavic languages written in Cyrillic use this letter to spell the few loanwords that use it or foreign names; it is usually pronounced, an approximation of the Russian pronunciation of the letter, and is often omitted when teaching those languages.

In English, Russian Shcha is romanized as $⟨shch⟩$, $⟨ŝ⟩$, $⟨šč⟩$ (with háčeks) or occasionally as $⟨sch⟩$, all reflecting the historical Russian pronunciation of the letter (as a combined Ш and Ч). English-speaking learners of Russian are often instructed to pronounce it in this way although it is no longer the standard pronunciation in Russian (it still is in Ukrainian and Rusyn, as above). The letter Щ in Russian and Ukrainian corresponds to ШЧ in related words in Belarusian.

History
The Cyrillic letter Shcha was derived from the Glagolitic letter Shta.

The name in the Early Cyrillic alphabet was (šta) and is preserved in modern Bulgarian; it is pronounced штъ.

This letter was also used in Komi (⟨Ч⟩ was & still is used for /t͡ɕ/), which is now represented by the digraph $\langleтш\rangle$.

Form
The form of the letter Shcha is the letter Cyrillic Sha (Ш ш) with a descender. While the letter is considered to be a ligature of the letters Ш and Т, the descender (also used in Ц) has been reinterpreted as a diacritic and used in several letters for non-Slavic languages, such as Ң and Қ.

Related letters and other similar characters

 * Ш ш : Ш|Cyrillic letter Sha
 * С́ с́ : Montenegrin Sje
 * Ŝ ŝ : Latin letter Ŝ
 * Ś ś : Latin letter Ś