Vowel length is indicated by an acute, but there is also a U with a circle above it, Ů, as in the composer Martinů, now with the same value as u-acute. The vowels I and Y are pronounced the same but I causes palatalization of some previous consonants. There is also an E with a háček over it, Ě, pronounced JE. The name of this accent comes from Czech. The hooked T and D are palatal.
Czech uniquely has the rolled fricative written R-hacek (Ř if that shows up on your browser), as in Dvořák. This is voiceless after voiceless consonants.
Here are the specifically Czech letters, taken from my Using Unicode in E2:
Č Č č č C-hacek Ď Ď ď ď D-hook Ě Ě ě ě E-hacek Ň Ň ň ň N-hacek Ř Ř ř ř R-hacek Š Š š š S-hacek Ť Ť ť ť T-hook Ů Ů ů ů U-circle Ž Ž ž ž Z-hacek
Czech is a Slavic language (Indo-European/Balto-Slavic/Slavic/West Slavic/Czech) spoken today mainly in the Czech Republic with 12 million speakers, as well as some people in the United States, Germany, and other Central and Eastern European countries. Its closest relatives are Slovak and Sorbian (which is all but extinct, if not completely dead already), as well as Polish (due to different spelling conventions the languages look less related in print). Czech has some palatalization, like most Slavic languages, though to a lesser extent. It also has contrastive vowel length, which is lost in many modern Indo-European languages. Its relatively weak (when compared to Russian, particularly) stress always falls on the first syllable, giving Czech a rather staccato rhythm. It is grammatically very similar to Polish and Slovak, and for the most part Czech is mutually intelligible with Slovak. The written record of Czech (When the modern Czech Republic was roughly made up of the small kingdoms of Bohemia and Moravia, the two principal halves of the modern country) dates back to the 13th Century at least, and Czech, like many Slavic languages has enjoyed a rich literary history, especially after an 18th Century revival
The alphabet has 42 letters, most of which are modified versions of Latin letters. A reform around the 15th Century which resulted in a roughly one-to-one correspondence between letter and sound. Anyone writing or typing Czech knows how much of a pain in the ass all the diacritics can be, but it actyually comes out looking quite beautiful. Here is the alphabet of Czech, including the letter and its IPA value:
Czech (ch?k; 204), n.
1.
One of the Czechs.
2.
The language of the Czechs (often called Bohemian), the harshest and richest of the Slavic languages.
© Webster 1913.
printable version chaos
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