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

[Trebor Jung]
> > Czech uses carons? I thought it just used some circumflexed consonants
> > and acuted vowels...
Yes, Czech uses carons, not circumflexes. This diacritic
is called _ha´c^ek_ in Czech (meaning 'little hook',
diminutive of _ha´k_), and this name is sometimes used
in English, too.

Also, apart from the acute accent (called _c^a´rka_, stroke),
they use a small circle (called _krouz^ek_, meaning 'ringlet
or small circle', diminutive of _kruh_). This is the same
diacritic that in Scandinavian orthographies appears over
some a's, but in Czech it is always placed over a u. The
sound represented by this circled u is the same as that
of the acuted u, that is, a long u. In Czech orthography,
the acuted u is restricted to initial position, except
when a prefix is appended to a word featuring an initial
acuted u.


[Trebor Jung]
> > BTW how would one represent Czech r^ in X-Sampa?
[Paul Bennett]
> And that, indeed, is the question. I think I've heard as many answers
> as answerers to that question, and maybe more. It's some kind of voiced
> rhotic fricative, that much I think is fairly universally agreed upon.
> Ithink you'd have to resort to describing the sound as "Czech r^",
> and overloading one of the existing SAMPA symbols.
There is a standard way to represent that sound in IPA,
so I don't see why there should be any problem with doing
the same in SAMPA. There used to be a specific symbol for
the sound in older versions of IPA (an r with a long leg),
but for some strange reason it was dropped out. Nowadays,
the sound is represented by an r with the diacritic for
lowering (a small subscript T-shape). Therefore, even
though AFAIK there's no specific SAMPA for the former IPA
symbol, the sound can be rendered simply by transcribing
an r with the diacritic for lowering: [r_o].

The sound is a voiced rhotic fricative; just like a Czech z^
but with an accompanying vibration of the tip of the tongue.
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^.

Cheers,
Javier