Sounds of Czech

In this post, I summarise the sound system of Czech and comment on spelling and on contrasts between Czech (a West Slavonic language) and Russian (n East Slavonic language).  

Consonants

Table 1 lists Cech consonants.

Table 1. Czech consonants

Comments on consonants

• the letters <ň ď ť > represent palatal consonants, although those consonants are written <n d t> before the letters  ⟨i í ě⟩. <ɲ> is the palatal nasal. <ď> (voiced) and <ť> (unvoiced) represent the palatal stops /ɟ c/, which resemble the palatal stops written <gy ty> in Hungarian.  How do you say Magyar? – Language Miscellany
• ř is a rhotic pronounced with the tongue pressed closed to the roof of the mouth. It is often described as a mix between /r/ and /ʒ/. for more on rhotics, please see Rhotic consonants – Language Miscellany
• Unlike Russian (and most other Slavonic languages), modern Czech has no pervasive distinction between 2 sets of consonants: soft (palatalised) and hard (velarised).
  Hard and soft consonants in Russian – Language Miscellany
  Czech distinguishes only 2 much smaller sets of soft consonants <ň ď ť ř > and hard consonants <n d t r>.
• the rhotic /r/ and lateral /l/ are sometimes vocalic, occupying the nucleus of a syllable between consonants, creating a syllable with no vowel. Some people argue that nasals /m n/ are also sometimes vocalic, but Townsend and Komar (1999) reject this idea.
• Some Czech speakers insert a glottal stop before syllables starting with a vowel. Czech spelling does not reflect this glottal stop.
• the affricate [d͡z] is not a separate phoneme Phonemes and allophones – Language Miscellany (it does not distinguish different words), it is just an allophone appearing in some positions where assimilation occurs.
• The Czech alphabet does not include the letters <q w x>.

Comparison with Russian

Townsend and Komar (2000) comment that:

• Czech /d/ and /n/ are pronounced with the tongue touching the alveolar ridge (behind the teeth) but Czech /t/ and Russian /d n t / are pronounced with the tongue touching the tooth.
• Czech and Russian /c/ are hard (not soft), but before /i/ Czech /c/ ‘gives a softer effect’ than Russian /c/.
• Although Czech /t͡ʃ/ is soft, some phoneticists perceive it as harder than Russian /t͡ʃ/.
• Czech and /ʃ/ and /ʒ/ are noticeably softer than their Russian counterparts.

Vowels and dipthongs

Czech has 5 short vowels /ɪ ɛ a o u/ and 5 long vowels /iː ɛː aː oː uː/. The only distinction between some pairs of words is that one word has a short vowel but the other has a long vowel.

Initial /a- e- i- /appear only in loanwords and in the conjunctions a (‘and’), i (‘and’) and ale (‘but’).

Long /oː/ is now found only in loanwords, where it is spelled as <ó >.

Spelling the vowels

The long vowels are spelled with an acute accent <á é í ó ú>.

The long vowel /uː/ is:

• sometimes spelled <ů> where it developed from old /oː/ This occurs in monosyllabic roots, alternating with <o>, and in some genitive and dative plural noun endings.
• spelled ú when it is the first letter of an unbound (free) morpheme, as well as in loanwords and onomatopoeia.

In modern Czech, letter <y> spells the same vowel as <i> does and < ý > spells the same vowel as <í> does. In the distant past, <y ý > were used for a different sound similar to /ɨ/, as in the sound spelled in Polish still by <y> and in Russian by ы (in the Cyrillic alphabet, usually transliterated as y): I discuss the Russian vowel in Is Russian difficult for English speakers? – Language Miscellany Although there is no difference in pronunciation, after velar consonants <k h> only <y ý > are written; after other consonants, historical factors determine whether <i í> are written or <y ý >.

The letter spelled <ě> denotes:

• /ɛ/ after a palatal stop or palatal nasal;
• /ɲɛ/ after /m/ (eg město /mɲɛsto/, ‘town’);
• /jɛ/ after other labial consonants.

Diphthongs

Czech has one native dipthong /ou̯/ (spelled <ou>).

Czech also has diphthongs used mainly (/au/) or only (/eu/) in foreign words and interjections.  

Comparison with Russian

Townsend and Komar (2000) comment that:

• Russian vowels vary greatly depending on whether preceding and/or following consonants are hard or soft. Neighbouring consonants do not affect Czech vowels nearly as much as that.
• Unstressed Russian vowels differ greatly from their stressed counterparts. These differences do not occur in Czech.
• Russian stressed vowels are longer than unstressed vowels and Russian has no separate system of contrasts between long and short vowels. In Czech, both stressed and unstressed vowels can be long or short.  
• Unlike Czech, Russian still has a separate vowel /ɨ/.

Stress

Czech words have a weak stress on the 1^st syllable. Some prepositions are clitics preceding the noun, with the preposition and noun forming a single phonological word: in those cases, the word stress is placed on the preposition, not on the noun.

Russian words have a much stronger stress and its position is only partly predictable.

Colloquial Czech

Townsend and Komar (2000) list some differences between standard Czech (presented above) and colloquial Czech:

• standard <é> is often colloquial <í> (or <ý> after <d t n r>);
• standard <í > and <ý> are often colloquial<ej>;
• standard /o-/ at the start of a word is often colloquial /vo-/ ;
• standard /u-/ at the start of a word is often colloquial /ou-/.

Russian and Bulgarian

For a comparison between Russian and Bulgarian (another East Slavonic language), please see Bulgarian through Russian – Language Miscellany

Sources

Czech through Russian, Charles E Townsend and Eric S Komar (revised and expanded edition, 2000)

Czech, by David Short, in The Slavonic Languages, edited by Bernad Comrie and Greville Ge Corbett (1993)

Common and Comparative Slavic: Phonology and Inflection; with special attention to Russian, Polish, Czech, Serbo-Croatian and Bulgarian, Charles E Townsend and Lara A Janda (1996)

Czech, Jana Dankovičová, Journal of the International Phonetic Association, Volume 27, Issue 1-2 (June 1997) DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0025100300005442 Also available in Handbook of the International Phonetic Association: A guide to the use of the International Phonetic Alphabet (1999)

Further reading

Czech spoken in Bohemia and Moravia, Šárka Šimáčková, Václav Jonáš Podlipský, Kateřina Chládková, Journal of the International Phonetic Association (volume 42, issue 2 2012) doi:10.1017/S0025100312000102