What is the difference between Ш and Щ?

"sh" in English "ship" in phonetic terms is a voiceless palato-alveolar sibilant

If you start pronouncing "ship" but hold at the "sh" for a while, you will feel that the front part of your tongue is up near the top of your mouth. With reference to that sound getting to ш and щ represent two distinct changes.

ш is a voiceless retroflex sibilant

That means it's a sound a lot like "sh" but with only the tip of the tongue near the top of the mouth, not the whole front of the tongue like in "sh." Basically, just try to produce the "sh" sound just by pointing the tip of your tongue toward the top of your mouth [as if you were going to pronounce an American English "r": h/t va-diim], and I think you'll get close.

щ is a voiceless alveolo-palatal sibilant

Again, what that means isn't really the point here. But I'm putting the names just to give an idea of how closely they are related. The only difference between "sh" and щ is that the first is "palato-alveolar" and the second is "alveolo-palatal." Basically all that means is that you get even more of your tongue up near the top of your mouth than with "sh."

You might have heard of "palatalized" sounds in Russian. Well, the palate is the top of your mouth, "palatalized" just means the tongue is up by the palate. щ is the "palatalized" version of ш because the whole tongue is up by the palate, whereas for ш it's just the tip.

#Russian #pen4pals