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

[Trebor Jung]
>Are the letters with caron ASCIIified with a following ^? I thought the ^
>represented a circumflex...
AFAIK, ^ can be used to mean either and usually the
context of the language being discussed is enough to
disambiguates. I don't know if there are strategies
to distinguish both diacritics in ASCIIfication.


>"The sound is a voiced rhotic fricative; just like a Czech z^ but with an
>accompanying vibration of the tip of the tongue.
>
>Anyone know where I could hear r^ pronounced?
Try with the sound files here (they're located almost
at the bottom of the page, before the ones for the
vowels; their file names are "r1.rm", "rikat.rm",
"prijit.rm", "brezen.rm", "kure.rm" and "kancelar.rm"):

[N.B. I've split the URL into two lines, so that the
link is not spoiled because of its length, so copy
and paste both parts together into your browser]

http://www.bohemica.com/czechonline/reference/
pronunciation/comparing_czech_and_english.htm


>"Note, however, that the sounds of Czech s^/c^/z^/r^ are not postalveolars
>like an English sh, but alveolar-postalveolars, which gives them a mixed
>hissing-hushing quality very similar to the one of the Ubykh s^."
>
>Are s^ and z^ the alveolo-palatal fricatives [s\] and [z\]?
Actually no, they are a bit different. [s\] and [z\] are
used in Polish and in Japanese and sound like a merging of
a hushing sh/zh with a palatal y. The Czech sounds, for their
part, sound like a merging of a hissing sibilant s/z with a
hushing sibilant sh/zh. A very similar hissing-hushing sound
exists in Ubykh (or existed, if its last speaker has already
passed away). You can listen to that s^ sound of Ubykh by
clicking on the element (a file named "u3.aiff") in the
second column of the first row in the chart here (again,
note that I have split the URL into two lines):

http://hctv.humnet.ucla.edu/departments/linguistics/
VowelsandConsonants/appendix/languages/ubykh/ubykh.html


>"[Czech notation: e< = e with caron, y' = y with acute, i' = i with
acute]"
>
>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.

Cheers,
Javier

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