Talk:Czech alphabet

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Peter Ladefoged in SOWL states that Czech Ď, Ň, Ť may be somewhere between palatal and postalveolar, but does not go into detail. Evidently these sounds are not actually palatalized the way, for example, Russian is. Maybe someone who knows what they're doing can tidy this up? kwami 18:51, 2005 August 13 (UTC)

According to es:Alfabeto checo, Czech alphabet should have 31 letters and 11 variants. --Hello World! 03:19, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

PLease can someone urgently point me in the direction of information about the historical development of the Czech alphabet. When and by who was it standardised? Did this happen all at once, or was it a slow process of development? Mattwhiteski 15:45, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Originally Czech used digraphs for phonemes which are not knows in Latin. Jan Hus is usually mentioned as the author of "De orthographia Bohemica" (1406). In this writing he suggested using diacritics instead of digraphs. This revision was fully accepted as lately as in the 19th century. --Pajast 13:09, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. Any idea where he got the idea of using diacritics from? Or why he chose particular diacritics for particular sounds? Mattwhiteski 18:46, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Historiographers are not sure whether Jan Hus is the real author of the idea, he may have taken the idea from someone else. There was a need to unify and simplify Czech spelling of the sounds strange to Latin, because various authors had used various spellings before. Since the 10th century, some other Slavic languages have used the Cyrillic alphabet where particular letters correspond to particular sounds. The Czech language has always used the Latin alphabet, and the diacritics appears to be a practical solution (athough there are some problems in using computers sometimes). Jan Hus also criticised Czechs for not distinguishing i-y and l-ł in pronunciation. But these differences have not been kept in Czech up to the present day (unlike Polish). Y have been kept in orthography, but not in pronuncation. --Pajast 11:09, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Old Greek and Slavic scripts were full of diacritics (serving a bit different purpose, but the idea was clear - especially to mark vowel length) rado 14:43, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
Someone's opinion on Talk:Jan Hus (Accents section) gives few more details. Perhaps the author will write and article about it. Pavel Vozenilek 00:40, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] IPA

Wouldn't Czech "a" correspond more to /ʌ/ than /a/? I remember reading that somewhere, may have been the IPA Handbook, or something. +Hexagon1 (t) |*̥̲̅ ̲̅†̲̅| |>̲̅-̲̅| 09:17, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

I reverted some changes made by Hexagon1 and Jan.Kamenicek, because the the symbols ɼ, ʦ, ʣ, ʧ and ʤ are not official in the latest version of the IPA. They are regarded as obsolete. --Pajast 06:57, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

First of all, ʦ, ʣ, ʧ and ʤ are ligatures, not obsolete symbols, see IPA (s. 4.1.2). While they are not officially part of IPA their use is widespread and commonplace. ɼ was included after the official character, as a secondary one, as quite a few Czech linguists are unsatisfied with the current illogical IPA representation of ř, it remains in some use despite it being retired, and should be included for reference (perhaps shaded grey). +Hexagon1 (t) 08:37, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, you are right. It is possible to mention this as an additional information. But I think that the table should contain official IPA letters. Moreover, IPA is not comonly used by Czech linguists (see: Czech phonetic transcription). The IPA transcription of Czech is most often used for international purposes (as here). --Pajast 15:47, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

I changed the IPA characters [ts] for a single character [ʦ] which I think is more precise (it is a difference if you say [t] and [s] one after another, of if you make a single sound [ʦ]) and it is in accordance with characters used in Czech phonology#Consonants in the script. I did the same with [tʃ] and [ʧ] and other similar characters but you have rewritten them back all. May I ask you for the reason? Jan.Kamenicek 15:27, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

The last version of the IPA does not support ligatures. Affricates are written as two letters, often linked by tie bar ([t͡ʃ]) if needed to emphasize the fact they are not two separate consonants. It can be added to the table, of course. But some browsers do not display it correctly (e.g. my new IE7). It think it should be replaced in the Czech phonology too. See also my replay to Hexagon1. --Pajast 15:47, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
Unfortunately, some other browsers (such as mine IE6) do not display the tie bar. Jan.Kamenicek 17:40, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
Nothing to do with browsers, it's due to a fault in the Arial Unicode MS font, replace it with a real Unicode font as soon as you can. And when (rarely, but it can happen) the IPA is used, there's same chance the "new ř" will be used, as there is that the "old ř" will be used, that's why I think it should be included as an alternative. I agree with Jan.Kamenicek regarding ligatures, while they're not official any more they're still in very widespread use. +Hexagon1 (t) 08:20, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

I added some notes below the table. I think that this information is useful. But I stand out for my opinion that the table should contain official letters only.

Please, could you give me advise for the replacement of Unicode? I have no experience in it. Thank you. --Pajast 10:50, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

We're going to use Unicode in this article, per a trillion conventions on Wikipedia. +Hexagon1 (t) 00:38, 17 February 2007 (UTC)
I am afraid that I also have no idea, how to replace the Unicode fonts, so that I could see them displayed correctly. May I ask for an advice, how to do it? Jan.Kamenicek 19:26, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
Download a Unicode font (for the purpose of this article you can use Gentium, it comes with IPA support). Copy (not cut) it to "C:\Windows\Fonts" (presuming you're using Windows). And while in the folder find Arial Unicode MS and delete it. It should work afterwards. (All standard disclaimers apply, no guarantees or responsibility :) +Hexagon1 (t) 05:30, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
Thanks very much. Could you please include it into the article (for example into the footnote), so that I can see, what it looks like? Jan.Kamenicek 12:54, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

This regards the use of ligatures in IPA, which I personally support, as it is indeed possible to pronounce the sounds of [t] and [s] consecutively as separate sounds, and, therefore, in my estimation, they should be employed for the sake of clarity. Is there any specific reason that these are not official members of the International Phoenetic Alphabet? I see no good reason why this change should have been made. -Jacques Rosier —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.117.118.180 (talk) 00:34, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Hus

Hus did not completely revolutionize diacritics in Czech. His letters from prison include a great deal of cz, sz, etc. He wrote De Orthographia Bohemica, to be sure, but diacritical marks were used before him and were standardized after him. --69.17.67.11 18:16, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Czech pronunciation

The following discussion occured in My talk page. It is related to this article, so I've copied it here. --Pajast 15:32, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

You have rewritten the table of the Czech alphabet and also added there allophones of some phonemes. It is clear, that e. g. "ž" ([ʒ], as in the word "život") has an allophone [ʃ] (as in the word "kuráž"). But are you sure that it is true vice versa as well, i. e. "š" ([ʃ] may have an allophone [ʒ]? There are more examples of this ("c", "č"...), but because I am not a linguist, I ask you before I make some changes. Jan.Kamenicek 23:47, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Good observation! I must confess that I don't remember any example of realization /š/ as [ʒ] at this time. But I belive that some rare cases could be found, especially in the Moravian pronunciation. Therefore, I would not remove that. It's my opinion. Neither am I a linguist. --Pajast 14:15, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
The problem is that we can include only the facts which have already been published in some reliable sources. Therefore we cannot leave it there, just because we think it can occur in some dialects, unless we find some source stating it. Jan.Kamenicek 19:05, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

věštba [vjɛʒdba]

Máš ho v kapse. [ˈmaːʒ ɦo ˈfkapse] (I found this example in the following textbook: Karlík P., Nekula M., Rusínová Z. (eds.) Příruční mluvnice češtiny. Nakladatelství Lidové noviny, Praha 1995. ISBN 80-7106-134-4.

I didn't find any note in any linguistic or phonologic literature that realizations of /š/ as [ʒ] do not occur in Czech. All mention "/š/ ~ /ž/" as a minimal pair without any additional comment.

--Pajast 09:44, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I see, the two examples are very good and illustrative, thank you. What does your book say about /c/ realized as [dz], /č/ realized as [dʒ], /p/ realized as [b], /t/ realized as [d] and /ť/ realized as [ɟ]?
I would also like to aks you, if you could use templates such as {{IPA|[dz]}} , because otherwise some IPA characters do not appear correctly on my computer for some reason. Thanks. Jan.Kamenicek 19:50, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

/c/ realized as [dz]: leckdo [lɛdzgdo]

/č/ realized as [dʒ]: léčba [lɛːdʒba]

/t/ realized as [d]: svatba [svadba]

/p/ realized as [b], /ť/ realized as [ɟ] – nothing special in the textbook, see my comment below.

--Pajast 09:51, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

My own experience: I noticed that the devoicing of voiced obstruents was very frequent in Czech. But the frequency of the inverse process is much lower. Positions in which some voiceless phonemes could be realized voiced are really rare. And it is not only a case of /ʃ/. A similar situation is in the case of /f/, /x/, /p/ and /c/. Their voiced realization usually occurs in the final position if the following word begins with a voiced obstruent (this pronunciation is considered as correct, see the example above – [ˈmaːʒ ɦo ˈfkapse]).
The phoneme /f/ is strange in domestic words. However, its voiced realisation can be found: Afghánistán is usually prounounced [avg(ɦ)aːnɪstaːn]. Pajast 15:32, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
Yes, good examples, now I see that you were definitely right when mentioning those allophones in the article. Meanwhile I asked on the /ť/ and /p/ at the Czech Language Institute and also received some examples, such as "zaplaťbůh" [zaplaɟbu:x], or "Klapzubova" [klabzubova], so we can leave them as well. I think [v] from your "Afghánistán" example should be included as well. Jan.Kamenicek 10:38, 12 January 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Allophones

H h há [ɦ] [x], resp. [h] Ch ch chá [x] [ɣ] or [ɦ]

When are those pronounced that way? -iopq 16:22, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

See Czech phonology for explanation. --Pajast 14:32, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Krátké u

I was under the impression that "u" without an accent or ring was pronounced like IPA /u/ and that ú and ů were simply pronounced for a two-count (/uː/). In fact, when I was teaching English, a lot of my Czech students had trouble making the /ʊ/ sound, often substituting /u/. -- Mwalcoff 23:48, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

The Czech language doesn't have a systematic distinction between close and open vowels. In precise pronunciation, vowels might tend to be rather close. Also, vowels pronounced by speakers from Moravia are generally rather close. Could it be that your students were mostly from Moravia? Daniel Šebesta (talk • contribs) 23:55, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

No, they were Pražané. -- Mwalcoff 02:41, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

That's really strange. The vowels of born Praguers are usually very (too) open. Daniel Šebesta (talk • contribs) 14:41, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Well, some were just bydlí v Praze and not native Pražané. But if Czechs consider /u/ and /ʊ/ to be allophones, that would go a ways toward explaining why some students have trouble with words like "hook." It's probably along the same line of why another student of mine kept referring to someone named Vince as "Wince," having trouble distinguishing between the "w" and "v" sounds. -- Mwalcoff 22:29, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

While both [ʊ] and [u] exist in today's Czech in some way (not as phonemes of course, but as regionally and/or stylically limited allophones), the [w] sound doesn't (except a few very marginal, near-extinct dialects). However, it's not very difficult for a Czech native to learn how to pronounce the English [w]. IMO, substituting a [w] for a [v] is just inattention or carelessness. I'd just remind the student that a written "v" is pronounced as [v], just like in Czech.
Back to the vowels—Czech speakers generally have trouble distinguishing open and close vowels in some foreign languages, e.g., German. Having some experience with German and English teaching to Czech students, I wouldn't be extremely meticulous about this aspect unless it's one of the last steps to the student's perfection in that language and/or as long as the open/close vowel doesn't change the meaning. Daniel Šebesta (talk • contribs) 00:04, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] F, G and X in czech words?

X is used only in words of foreign origin (and "naturalized" versions of these words still keep this letter – X is not replaced with KS).

G is used only in words of foreign origin + in some (moravian) dialects – "gajdy" (bagpipe), ...

There are only two "really" czech words which contains letter F: doufat (to hope) and zoufat (to despair)

Another letter which cannot be found in standard czech is Ó (long O) – it is used in colloquial czech (sometimes) + in naturalized word of foreign origin – jód (Iodine; jod is also possible), bór (Boron; bor is also possible) ...

see http://cs.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abeceda (if you can speek czech) --88.102.58.13 15:44, 30 June 2007 (UTC)