Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2019 January 28

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January 28

Greek and Russian alphabets

At the bottom of the Greek alphabet table, there are a few footnotes that say that some letters have sounds taught to anglophones that mismatch the real ancient Greek sound. These are theta, phi, chi, and omega.

But how about Russian alphabet?? There is one such letter; this is shcha. It is taught to anglophones as shch as in "fresh cheese" said as one word, but its actual sound is simply a funny form of English sh. Any thoughts on this?? Georgia guy (talk) 21:17, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

And the question is? Henry^Flower 22:25, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

Can anyone put similar footnotes for the Russian alphabet table?? (Talk pages don't get paid attention to as much as reference desks, as an important fact that I want anyone who wants to make a comment saying that this is better for the article's talk page.) Georgia guy (talk) 22:27, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

Georgia_guy -- [ʃtʃ] was the older pronunciation of Щ (applying to other languages using the Cyrillic alphabet), while [ʃː] (basically) is the modern Russian pronunciation... AnonMoos (talk) 00:01, 29 January 2019 (UTC)

No it's not [ʃː] at all; see the IPA column in the table in Russian alphabet. There are plenty of minimal pairs for /ш/ vs. /щ/, e.g. зашита "sewn, mended" vs. защита "protection"; the difference is in the quality of the consonant, not at all in its quantity. --194.29.32.132 (talk) 12:13, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

I never claimed that there was homophony between Ш and Щ, so I don't know why you're denying it. In the "Russian" article in The World's Major Languages ISBN 0-19-506511-5, it's said that Щ is pronounced as a geminated š, but where the "š" has an additional acute accent over it (in addition to the hachek mark), so I went with that. I can never remember what the IPA [ɕ] symbol is supposed to stand for, so it conveys almost no meaning to my mind, and I related it to a very similar (though of course not identical) easier-to-understand sound. (This is another example where Americanist Phonetic Notation has some superiority over IPA...) AnonMoos (talk) 13:52, 31 January 2019 (UTC)

Look, it's simple: [ɕ] is the Polish ś, [ʂ] is the Polish sz, and [ʃ] is something in between. — Kpalion^(talk) 16:45, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

Why can't you put the footnote there, Georgia Guy? Wikipedia doesn't require permission. WP:SOFIXIT is a cornerstone policy. WP:DEMANDOTHERPEOPLEFIXIT is notably a red link. --Jayron32 02:04, 29 January 2019 (UTC)