Why are the Russian letters ‘Ж’ & ‘Ш’ written with the letter ‘И’?

The ‘ЖИ’ (‘zhi’) and ‘ШИ’ (‘shi’) combination rule is a vivid example of both variability and consistent constancy. The answer to this pressing question lies in the distant past.

In Old Russian, the hissing letters ‘Ж’ (‘zh’) and ‘Ш’ (‘sh’) were always soft. One way to express this softness in writing is to use a corresponding vowel – ‘е’ (‘ye’), ‘ё’ (‘yo’), ‘ю’ (‘yu’), ‘я’ (‘ya’) or ‘и’ (‘i’) – after a consonant.

Later, the letters ‘Ж’ and ‘Ш’ hardened. In modern Russian phonetics, these sounds are defined as unpaired hard consonants. And the logic of linguistics dictates that the spelling should be changed to ‘ЖЫ’ and ‘ШЫ’ following the sound change, but… No. The centuries-old tradition of writing the letter ‘И’ after ‘Ж’ and ‘Ш’ proved stronger than the phonetic changes. 

It’s important to remember numerous exceptions in the Russian language. In the case of the ‘ЖИ’ and ‘ШИ’ rule, the exceptions are foreign-language proper names or toponyms (names of geographic sites and objects). For example, the female name ‘Шынара’ (‘Shynara’) and the name ‘Шымкент’ (‘Shymkent’), a city in Kazakhstan, are both spelled with the letter ‘Ы’. 

So, just remember this simple rule and continue drilling the pronunciation of the letter ‘Ы’, because ‘ЖИ-’ and ‘ШИ-’ are, of course, spelled with ‘И’, but pronounced as ‘Ы’! 

This article was first published in Russian by HED MAGAZINE.