Re: Natlang Question: "Quiet" in Czech?

From: "tim talpas" <tim@...>
Subject: Re: Natlang Question: "Quiet" in Czech?


> #
> # My maternal grandmother immigrated to the USA from Czechoslovakia
> # sometime soon after WWI, and she was very young at the time.  According
> # to my mother, my grandmother only remembered one word in Czech, meaning
> # "quiet".  When my mother pronounced it for me, it sounded like [tSIxO],
> # with palatized [tS] and [x] and with what sounded like schwa offglides
on
> # the [I] and the [O].
> # I'm sure at least someone here speaks Czech or knows something about
> # it... does that word sound like Czech?  If yes, how is it supposed to be
> # pronounced and spelled?  If not, do you know what else could it be?
> #
>
> Was it certainly czech, or could it have been slovak?
>
> The word in both languages is spelled "ticho".
>
> In slovak it would (should? ) be pronounced [cixo], and probably
> the same in czech, though czech tends to not palatalize some things
> that are definitely palatalized in slovak.
>
> Palatal stops tend to get misprounced and misheard as affricates, I find.
>
> My grandparents speak russian, but now that they're older and hardly use
> the language any more, they tend to mispronuce things in a similar manner.
>
> ie. for ru. "spat'", they say [spaS] (or maybe this is a dialectical
>  pronunciation?)
In standard Slovak, spat' is pronounced [spatj], but in my family's dialect
(eastern, as far as I can tell), it's [spats].  Every palatalized t (t') is
pronounced like c [ts] in this dialect.