Czech Phonology

In Czech Language Translation, as in Slovak, Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian, there are many words that do not have vowels: zmrzl (frozen solid), ztvrdl (hardened), scvrkl (shrunk), čtvrthrst (quarter-handful), blb (dimwit), vlk (wolf), or smrt (death).

The consonants l and r can be the nucleus of a syllable in Czech. Examples of this which Czechs share among themselves are strč prst skrz krk ‘stick a finger down [your] throat’ and smrž pln skvrn zvlhl z mlh ‘morel full of spots was dampened by fogs’.

The same Czech language idioms phenomenon occurs in English, for example in the second syllable in the word ‘bottle’. In Slavic languages, /l, r/ as syllabic nuclei are usually the result of the disappearance of [ɛ], [o], or [a] (contrast for example the Russian cognates for vlk and smrt, ‘volk’ and ‘sm’ert”).

Czech features a phoneme that is said to be unique to the language, the consonant ř. The phonetic description of the sound is a raised alveolar non-sonorant trill. Its IPA transcription is [r̝].

Read Also: Czech Translation Service