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Re: Czech orthography (was Re: Lack of ambiguity in Czech, was Re: EU allumettes)

From:Stephen Mulraney <ataltanie@...>
Date:Saturday, May 8, 2004, 2:30
Javier BF wrote:

>>I didn't know Czech vowels could wear a caron too. >> >> > >Only 'e' can wear a caron in Czech, and it's used to indicate >the "palatalization" of the previous consonant. In practice, >a semiconsonant [j] is inserted between the consonant and the >vowel (thus, me^ sounds like mje), except for n, t and d, that >are pronounced like n^, t^ and d^ (thus, ne^ sounds like n^e). >In the latter cases the caron is simply transferred from the >consonant letter to the vowel e because of an orthographical >convention, without any change in pronunciation. > >
Or, to put it another way, the caron is transferred to the consonant, except in the case of labials, where it indicates an interposed [j]. In any case, what I really wanted to say was that I've also heard the sequence sequence "me^" sounded as [mne], rather than [mje]. In fact, I distinctly recall the subway announcements in Prague using this pronunciation, and lo! the web can produce a sound file (though not actually recorded from the subway announcement itself). Have an earful of the last sound file linked on http://homepages.paradise.net.nz/pdg/Czechitout/lingo.htm ... the one for (dropping diacritics at will) "Pristi zastavka: Name^sti Republiky". Czech uses "e caron" where Polish spelling uses the digraph "ie", and I suppose it corresponds to one of the pre-Revolutionary Russian "e" letters too ("e" itself, I suppose). I have to admit that I always passed off Czech as being sort of an identikit Slavic language, at least when I was only familiar with it on the printed page. It looked like sort of a sanitized version of Polish. It took actually *hearing* the language in the real world to realise that it sounds absolutely gorgeous. It also alerted me to the wonderful aesthetic potential of the stressing the first syllable in the word (prepositions being incorporated into the word for phonological purposes) in a language with phonemic long vowels. It sounds akin, to my ears, to the much more well-known intonation of Italian, where I suppose Italian uses phonemic length distinction in consonants (and of course there are other contributing factors in Italian; tenseness or somesuch). s. ---- Stephen Mulraney ataltane@ataltane.net Klein bottle for rent ... inquire within.

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Danny Wier <dawiertx@...>