Help talk:IPA/Czech

Czech "r" as a trill?

How come the Czech "r" is paired with the alveolar trill, instead of a flap? 13:19, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

Because they're in a free variation. Czech [r, r̝, r̝̊] can be pronounced with one or (more rarely) multiple contacts. The former realization is called a 'tap' (or 'flap'), the latter 'trill'. See e.g. "Czech spoken in Bohemia and Moravia" cited at the end of the guide (the link doesn't work, but you can find it here). Besides, ⟨r, r̝, r̝̊⟩ are easier to write than ⟨ɾ, ɾ̞, ɾ̞̊⟩. Mr KEBAB (talk) 13:53, 11 February 2017 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Help talk:IPA which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 16:16, 15 July 2017 (UTC)

mě

I just corrected a transcription of náměstí as /naːmjɛsciː/ and wonder if it would be worth adding /mɲ/ to the consonants column with examples like měkký and jemně. I know it's not a phoneme but I'm not sure how to include the mě = /mɲɛ/ in the /m/ or /ɲ/ columns. – filelakeshoe (t / c)  17:12, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

Pronunciation of ť and ď

Hi, I reverted the last change, which exemplified the pronunciation of ť and ď with the English words skew and argue, respectively, back to stew and dew. I can imagine that the reason for suggesting skew, rather than stew, was that the IPA phone [c] corresponds to a variety of different sounds in different languages, ranging from [kj] to [tj], and that possibly in most languages, [c] is more [kj] than [tj]. However, in Czech, we pronounce ť as simultaneous [t] and [j], definitely not [k] and [j] (analogously, ď is pronounced as simultaneous [d] and [j], not [g] and [j]). Therefore, stew and dew (without yod-coalescence) match the Czech pronunciation better than skew and argue. 46.135.10.140 (talk) 15:47, 6 November 2020 (UTC)

No, ⟨c⟩ represents [c], not [kj] or [tj], and its closest approximations in English are /kj/ and /tʃ/ (the latter is closer in place but not in manner). Do you have a source that says Czech /c/ is, or may be, [tj]? Czech phonology mentions nothing of the sort. Even if that was the case, the use of stew makes even less sense because yod-coalescence is increasingly prevalent in the UK. Nardog (talk) 17:30, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

Neither /kj/ nor /tʃ/ is a good approximation of our pronunciation of ť: If one reads ť as /kj/, then the word lať will be misunderstood as lak. If one reads ť as /tʃ/, then the word tělo will be misunderstood as čelo. As for the fact that ť is pronounced as simultaneous [t] and [j]: sorry, I am not a phonology scientist, I just know how we speak, so I cannot provide any proof of that :-( But surely there are other Czechs on Wikipedia who could confirm that. If you think that the current stew (UK) associates /tʃ/ instead of the intended /tj/, then it would probably be a good idea to add the note "without yod-coalescence" or possibly write just "simultaneous [t] and [j]" without any English example word, just as in the case of ř. 46.135.10.226 (talk) 22:16, 7 November 2020 (UTC)

Ambiguity of "pasta"

@Nardog reverted my addition of "promenade" as a UK alternative to "pasta" with the comment: That ambiguity is exactly the intent, so that the phonetic value matches it. That makes no sense. The nearest English equivalent of /ɑ/, the Czech vowel, is not /æ/, so "pasta" as pronounced by a British English speaker is unambiguously the wrong vowel. Chi Sigma (talk) 00:39, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

RP /ɑː/ is back and long, which is especially inappropriate here since Czech contrasts short and long vowels. Modern RP /æ/ is a low vowel (which is why it's increasingly common to transcribe it with ⟨a⟩) and Dankovičová (1999: 72) even says The short /a/ is pronounced usually as marginally fronter than the long /aː/. Nardog (talk) 00:53, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

That's all great; it has nothing to do with the ambiguity of "pasta". Can you tell us which pronounciation of "pasta", the UK or US one, you think corresponds to the Czech vowel we're trying to illustrate in the first line of the vowels chart, but imagine you're writing for an audience that can't read your thoughts? Chi Sigma (talk) 19:28, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

Both. General American has the phoneme /ɑ/ in pasta and it's a short open central or back vowel. Modern RP has the phoneme /æ/ (also written /a/) and that is a short open front or central vowel. Both are close or identical to Czech a. The example promenade is worse because there Modern RP has the phoneme /ɑː/, which is long and back, which is different from Czech a, which is short and central. So pasta has different phonemes in General American and modern RP, but that actually makes it an example that works well in both of them. Promenade would be a good match in General American, but a worse match in modern RP. — Eru·tuon 23:45, 18 November 2022 (UTC)

Promenade is not a good match in either accent anyway, as it may have /eɪ/, the stress varies between the first syllable and the third, and the vowel is followed by a voiced consonant. Nardog (talk) 11:48, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

Identity is transitive, though. You can't have two things both be identical to a third thing if they aren't identical to each other. That you can distinguish between GA /ɑ/ and RP /æ/ in pasta is why we need to find a better example of Czech /ɑ/, or at least specify "pasta (US)", with or without a UK alternative. Promenade is not perfect, even granting that /eɪ/ is an Americanism, because of the variable stress, but as to length, if there is indeed a halfway house between the formerly-R-coloured long vowel in army and the short vowel in alteration and St.Albans that merges with /o/ (not with /æ/), then that halfway house is promenade for most speakers I've heard. Chi Sigma (talk) 12:30, 19 November 2022 (UTC)

Lots of poor examples

Hi, I'm surprised this help page has so many poor examples of how to approximate the Czech pronunciation of these sounds. Kup for example, is pronounced nothing like bull or pull, rather like coop, or soup or loop. Americans say pahstah like the a in although, or also, whereas in the UK it's pronounced much closer to the Italian, pasta as in apple, axle, battle. And this skew /stew thing - woah. It's nothing like skew, no matter what symbol has been chosen. Moda is pronounced more like over than thought. Matka is not pronounced like father unless the person saying father has a weird New England accent. Letat and square? There is no similarity. Letat is more like the e in edit. Speaking of edit, I suggest the whole page is due a thorough revision. Webster Forrest, London UK (talk) 20:07, 5 September 2023 (UTC)

In my experience, Brits say "pasta" with the first "a" having the same flat sound in "hat", and the second "a" having a schwa sound (like "uh"). So it's not like the Italian pronunciation. But I agree the Czech IPA key could use some tweaking. For example, "ě" does not sound like English "let", unless we all said "lyet", which we don't. 68.193.141.193 (talk) 19:55, 3 October 2023 (UTC)corpho

I agree with you. It is to me a sign of how linguistics /phonetics is such a messy subject when two quite distinct sounds - e and ě are represented by the same symbol. I would prefer an additional row in the vowels section with ě using the word 'yellow' as a guide. Not sure how to add a row though. Re: pasta - this is pronounced so many ways in so many places it would be easier just to refer to Italian rather than English. Not sure if that's 'allowed'. Webster Forrest, London UK (talk) 19:41, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

Maybe 'yet' would be better than 'yellow'. Webster Forrest, London UK (talk) 19:42, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

This page is for people to make sense of IPA pronunciations given in the IPA-cs template, not to teach Czech sound-letter correspondences. We have other pages for that. ě sometimes represents the sequences /jɛ/ and /ɲɛ/ (we don't treat /jɛ/ as a separate phoneme) and sometimes just /ɛ/ depending on where it appears in a word, but the vowel sound is always the same, /ɛ/. The reason "let" and "světlo" are given as examples for /ɛ/ is because they both contain that vowel sound. – filelakeshoe (t / c) 🐱 22:46, 12 November 2023 (UTC)

The example word given is not "matka" but "máma", with the long á. Giving the "a" in "another" (a schwa) as an example is just plain wrong, "father" really is the closest English approximation. And how is there "no similarity" between the long é in "létat" and the UK pronunciation of "square"? I'm from the south of England and for me those are literally the exact same vowel. Some UK accents pronounce "square" as a centring diphthong instead, which isn't that different. – filelakeshoe (t / c) 🐱 22:50, 12 November 2023 (UTC)