Quote Originally Posted by Seraph View Post
For people learning Russian, there is an important exception to the general idea about not using ы after velars and hushes. For grammatical endings, ы after ц is normal. улицы отцы зайцы.

Otherwise, it is very rare to see ы after velars and hushes.
There are essentially five words with "цы" in the root: цыган, цыпочки, цыплёнок, цыкнуть, цыц. It seems to be a norm in endings and suffixes (лисицын, куцый) while "и" is an exception. I think the letter is used only in words with "-ция": полиция, акция. I am not sure whether "ций" is part of roots in words like "кальций", "стронций".

P.S. Pronunciation doesn't depend on the spelling in this case.