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'Shcha' or 'Shta' (Щ, щ) is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet, representing the consonant or in Russian, or in Ukrainian, and the consonant cluster in Bulgarian. Originally, this letter was a ligature of sha and te (Ш + Т = Щ), with the descender in the middle of the sha, and is descended from the Glagolitic letter Shta: .
This letter is the most troublesome for romanization. In linguistics, its Russian pronunciation is transliterated as ''šč'' (with háčeks). In English, it is typically transcribed ''shch'', but in German it requires seven letters: ''schtsch''. This gave rise to a popular joke about Catherine the Great, a Russian tsarina of German origin, that she managed to make eight spelling mistakes in the two-letter word Щи (''Shchi'', a traditional Russian soup) because the word written according to German spelling rules is rendered "schtschi".