Czech alphabet

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The Czech alphabet is a version of the Latin alphabet, used when writing Czech and Slovak languages from which it originates. This is the standard Slavic Latin alphabet as almost all the Balto-Slavic languages that use Roman characters have applied the Czechoslovak form of the Latin alphabet into their own scripts, those being Latvian, Lithuanian, Czech, Slovak, Slovene and the Latin version of Serbo-Croatian, often omitting the accented vowels and the letters Ě, Ň,Ř, Ť. The only major language not following this form is Polish, which had already developed its own Roman script independently. The Czech alphabet is also the standard script of Akademija Nauk, used when transliterating the Cyrillic-written East Slavic languages, Bulgarian, Macedonian and Cyrillic Serbo-Croatian.

The alphabet consists of 42 graphemes:

A, Á, B, C, Č, D, Ď, E, É, Ě, F, G, H, Ch, I, Í, J, K, L, M, N, Ň, O, Ó, P, Q, R, Ř, S, Š, T, Ť, U, Ú, Ů, V, W, X, Y, Ý, Z, Ž

The letters Q and W are used exclusively in foreign words, and are soon replaced with Kv and V once the word becomes "naturalized". The letters with háčeks and acutes are usually treated as variants, hence their exclusion from the standard alphabet.

Contents

[edit] History

Most of the diacritic letters were added to the alphabet through reforms brought about by Jan Hus at the beginning of the 15th century to replace the digraphs and trigraphs used to write Czech sounds that had no equivalent in the Latin alphabet. During the 16th century, the letter "Ů" (historically an "Ó" but now pronounced as "Ú") was added to the list. The only digraph left in the alphabet is "Ch", being ordered between the "H" and "I", indicating the sound similar to the German "ch" or the Russian "Х" (IPA: [x]). It is considered a single letter — in some crosswords it takes only one square and certain instances of vertical writing (as on shop signs) it stays together. The prevalence of single-square ch in crosswords declined somewhat with the widespread use of computers in The Czech Republic. For some time in the 1990s, the difference between accented and unaccented letters was not respected in crosswords, presumably because the software used could not handle accented characters gracefully.

The acute accent letters (Á, É, Í, Ó, Ú, Ý) and Ů indicate long vowels. They have the same alphabetical ordering as their non-diacritic counterparts. When there is no difference besides accentuation the accented letters are to be sorted after the unaccented ordered by the complexity of the accent. Therefore in a sorted list of wordforms, kura (of a Gallus) comes before kúra (treatment), which in turn comes before kůra (tree bark). The háček ( ˇ ) indicates historical palatalization of the base letter. The letters Č, Ř, Š, and Ž currently represent postalveolar consonants and are ordered behind their corresponding base letters; while Ď, Ň, Ť represent palatal consonants and have the same alphabetical ordering as their non-diacritic counterparts.

[edit] Letter names and pronunciation

Letter Name IPA value
A a á /a/
Á á dlouhé á /aː/
B b bé /b/
C c cé /ts/1
Č č čé /tʃ/1
D d dé /d/
Ď ď ďé /ɟ/
E e é /ɛ/
É é dlouhé é /ɛː/
Ě ě ije, é s háčkem /ɛ/, /jɛ/
F f ef /f/
G g gé /g/
H h há /ɦ/²
Ch ch chá /x/²
I i í /ɪ/
Í í dlouhé í /iː/
J j jé /j/
K k ká /k/
L l el /l/
M m em /m/
N n en /n/
Ň ň eň /ɲ/
O o ó /o/
Ó ó dlouhé ó /oː/
P p pé /p/
Q q kvé /kv/
R r er /r/
Ř ř eř /r̝/³
S s es /s/
Š š eš /ʃ/
T t té /t/
Ť ť ťé /c/
U u ú /ʊ/
Ú ú dlouhé ú /uː/
Ů ů ů s kroužkem /uː/
V v vé /v/
W w dvojité vé /v/
X x iks /ks/
Y y ypsilon /ɪ/
Ý ý dlouhé ypsilon /iː/
Z z zet /z/
Ž ž žet /ʒ/
  1. Unofficial ligatures are sometimes used for the transcription of affricates: /ʦ/, /ʣ/, /ʧ/, /ʤ/. The actual IPA version supports using of two separate letters which can be joined by a tiebar.
  2. Consonants are subject to allophonic voicing or devoicing; the distinction between velar and glottal fricatives is not made so that the voiced allophone of/x/ may be /ɣ/ or /ɦ/ and the voiceless allophone of /ɦ/ may be /h/ or /x/.
  3. The "long-leg R" <ɼ> is sometimes used to transcribe voiced <ř> (unofficially). This character was withdrawn from the IPA and replaced by the "lower-case R" with the "up-tack" diacritic mark, which denotes "raised alveolar trill".

[edit] Computer encoding

In computing, several different coding standards have existed for this alphabet, among them:

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Details in Czech at www.cestina.cz.

[edit] See also

[edit] External links