What’s happening here is that /tɕ/ is a single sound — I’d transcribe it /t͡ɕ/, with a little tiebar to make that clear. This sound is an ‘affricate’, meaning that it’s pronounced by starting with a /t/ and releasing it with the tongue so that it finishes with a /ɕ/ sound. /ɕ/ alone would be the sound written in Russian as ⟨щ⟩, which is of course different. Incidentally English ⟨ch⟩ is also affricated, although it’s pronounced slightly differently, as /t͡ʃ/ rather than /t͡ɕ/.
> This sound is an ‘affricate’, meaning that it’s pronounced by starting with a /t/ and releasing it with the tongue so that it finishes with a /ɕ/ sound.
I don't agree. I don't start with a /t/ when I'm about to say any Russian word that starts with ч (ch). The tongue is in a different place altogether.
With т, the tongue is closer to teeth than when I start with ч (ch). This should be true for all since we're talking about more or less the same sound – ч and /ch/.
Of course for French and English speakers /ch/ represents two different sounds.
I don't speak Russian so I'm somewhat reluctant to quarrel with someone who does on this point, but the phenomenon of <ч> being used to write an affricate sound that starts with a dental stop is super-well documented in linguistics literature -- on the basis of extensive studies with, and often by, native Russian speakers.
That dental stop might or might not be exactly the same sound as any of those that are written with Russian <т> or English <t> (which, per Wikipedia, are themselves slightly different in place of articulation). English-speakers might be misled into thinking the <ч> is a familiar English sound if it's transcribed as [t͡ʃ]; Russian Wikipedia, for example, suggests it's actually [t̠̪͡ʲɕ̪] (different in three different respects from [t͡ʃ]!). But /t/ is also the closest we can probably get in English to what may be actually be, say, [t̪ʲ], even though it does have a slightly different place of articulation.
I think it would be fair to say, considering evidence from both English and Russian Wikipedias, that the Russian <ч> does start with a "t-like" sound from the English perspective, yet that sound is at least not precisely identical to that written with English <t>.
This reminds me of a conversation I had with a Vietnamese speaker about the word "đúng" which means "right" or "correct".
To my English ears it sounds like "doom" (Southern Dialect). The "ng" ending sounds like an "m". But to this Vietnamese speaker, they said "no, 'ng' makes a sound like the English word 'sung'"
And the vocalization you mentioned for the Russia sound is similar. "ng" in Vietnamese is the same "ng" sound in English but you close your mouth at the end and purse your lips like the "m" sound in English.
But I think we're both right, it's just that each person hears the same sound in different ways due to the language we grew up with.
