You are absolutely correct about Russian and a lot of other Slavic languages. There exists the shch sound in Russian and they use it a lot. It is more complicated though because in a language using the Latin alphabet like Polish and not the Cyrillic of the Russian language ch is pronounced as h only more like the Hebrew version. Latin does not have "w" but in Polish which is close enough to Russian to be able to communicate in simple ways or in German for example W stands for V in pronunciation, whatever nuances the experts can find between them. V exists in Polish (and German, hence the V1 And V2 rockets) but it is never used in Polish. The only use I can think of is "veto". To complicate the matter even more. Polish has the English w sound but it is called the "hard L' and is written as crossed L sort of for the lack of a better explanation. I should know because I have both letters/sounds in my given name. Bea pronunciations. -----Original Message----- From: Tim Eck Sent: Tuesday, September 02, 2014 4:30 PM To: 'Pacific Bulb Society' Subject: Re: [pbs] Voronof's snowdrop In German, the sch (and the s when followed by p or t) is pronounced indistinguishably from the unvoiced (American) English sh. I believe Russian has the unvoiced sh, the ch, and the shch in sequence. Tim --- This email is free from viruses and malware because avast! Antivirus protection is active. http://www.avast.com/