Contents
Czech language
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (October 2009)
Czech
Čeština, Český jazyk
Spoken in Czech Republic and as a minority language also in the United States, Canada, Austria, Germany, Croatia, Romania, Serbia and Slovakia
Region Central Europe
Total speakers 12 million
Ranking 70
Language family Indo-European
Writing system Czech variant of Latin alphabet
Minority language:[1]
Austria
Croatia
Slovakia
Serbia
Official status
Official language in
Czech Republic
European Union
Regulated by Czech Language Institute
Language codes
ISO 639-1 cs
ISO 639-2 cze (B) ces (T)
ISO 639-3 ces
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.
Czech (pronounced /ˈtʃɛk/; čeština Czech pronunciation: [ˈt͡ʃɛʃcɪna]) is a West Slavic language with about 12 million native speakers; it is the majority language in the Czech Republic and spoken by Czechs worldwide. The language was known as Bohemian until the late 19th century in English. Czech is similar to and mutually intelligible with Slovak and, to a lesser extent, to Polish and Sorbian.
Official status
Czech is widely spoken by most inhabitants of the Czech Republic. As given by appropriate laws, courts and authorities act and make out documents and executions in the Czech language (financial authorities also in the Slovak language). Czech can be used in all official proceedings also in Slovakia as granted by Article 6 of Slovak Minority Language Act 184/1999 Zb. People who do not speak Czech have the right to get an interpreter. Instructions for use in Czech must be added to all marketed goods. Regarding other languages, English and German are the most common foreign languages studied and used. Russian is also spoken, but to a much lesser extent than it was prior to the fall of Communism.
The right to one's own language is guaranteed by the Constitution for all national and ethnic minorities.
Czech is also one of the 23 official languages in the European Union (since May 2004).
Mutual intelligibility
Speakers of Czech and Slovak usually understand both languages in their written and spoken form, thus constituting a language diasystem, though some dialects or heavily accented speech in either language might present difficulties to speakers of the other (in particular, Czech speakers may find Eastern Slovak dialects difficult to comprehend). Younger generations of Czechs living after the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1993 (therefore generally less familiar with Slovak) might also have some problems with a certain number of words and expressions which differ considerably in the two languages, and with false friends. Nevertheless, these differences do not impede mutual intelligibility significantly.
Name
The name "čeština", Czech, is derived from a Slavic tribe of Czechs ("Čech", pl. "Češi") that inhabited Central Bohemia and united neighbouring Slavic tribes under the reign of the Přemyslid dynasty ("Přemyslovci"). The etymology According to a legend, it is derived from the Forefather Čech, who brought the tribe of Czechs into its land. The variant English name "Bohemian" was used until the late 19th century, reflecting the original English name of the Czech state derived from the Celtic tribe of Boii who inhabited the area since the 4th century BC.
History
The Czech language developed from the Proto-Slavic language at the close of the 1st millennium.
Phonology
The phonology of Czech may seem rebarbative to English speakers as some words do not appear to have vowels: zmrzl (frozen solid), ztvrdl (hardened), scvrkl (shrunk), čtvrthrst (quarter-handful), blb (fool), vlk (wolf), or smrt (death). A popular example of this is the phrase "strč prst skrz krk" meaning "stick a finger through your throat" or "Smrž pln skvrn zvlhl z mlh." meaning "Morel full of spots was dampened by fogs". The consonants l and r can function as the nucleus of a syllable in Czech, since they are sonorant consonants. A similar phenomenon also occurs in American English, where the reduced syllables at the ends of "butter" and "bottle" are pronounced [ˈbʌɾ.ɹ] and [ˈbɒɾ.l], with syllabic consonants as syllable nuclei. It also features the consonant ř, a phoneme that is said to be unique to Czech. To a foreign ear, it sounds very similar to zh, though a better approximation could be rolled (trilled) r combined with zh, which was incidentally sometimes used as an orthography for this sound (rž) for example in the royal charter of Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor from 1609. The phonetic description of the sound is a raised alveolar non-sonorant trill which can be either voiceless (terminally or next to a voiceless consonant) or voiced (elsewhere), the IPA transcription being [ r̝ ].
Vowels
There are 10 vowels in Czech which are regarded as individual phonemes. There are 5 short and 5 long vowels.
Long vowels are indicated by an acute accent or a ring.
/iː/ is represented by letters í and ý /uː/ is represented by letters ú and ů /ɛː/ is represented by letter é /aː/ is represented by letter á /oː/ is represented by letter óShort vowels
/ɪ/ is represented by letters i and y /u/ is represented by letter u /ɛ/ is represented by letter e (and sometimes ě) /a/ (actually an open central unrounded vowel [ä][citation needed]) is represented by letter a /o/ (actually a mid back rounded vowel [o̞][citation needed]) is represented by letter oThere have been some disputes as to whether there are really ten or only five vowels in Czech. These can however be settled by a simple list of minimal pairs:
sad [sat] ~ sát [saːt] bal [bal] ~ bál [baːl] kaž [kaʃ] ~ káš [kaːʃ] lek [lɛk] ~ lék [lɛːk] len [lɛn] ~ lén [lɛːn] sled [slɛt] ~ slét [slɛːt] bor [bɔr] ~ bór [bɔːr] chor [xɔr] ~ chór [xɔːr] mot [mɔt] ~ mód [mɔːt] sir [sɪr] ~ sýr [siːr] Žid [ʒɪt] ~ žít [ʒiːt] kil [kɪl] ~ kýl [kiːl] dul [dul] ~ důl [duːl] nuž [nuʃ] ~ nůž [nuːʃ] ruš [ruʃ] ~ růž [ruːʃ] kura [kura] ~ kůra [kuːra] ~ kúra [kuːra]Note that ě is not a separate vowel. Analogous to y, ý and ů, it is a grapheme kept for historical reasons (see Czech orthography).
/r/ and /l/ (and sometimes also /m/ and /n/) can be syllabic, i.e. they can take the vowel's role as the nucleus of a syllable, e.g. vlk (wolf).
Diphthongs
There are three diphthongs in Czech:
/aʊ̯/ represented by au (almost exclusively in words of foreign origin) /eʊ̯/ represented by eu (in words of foreign origin only) /oʊ̯/ represented by ouWhen these groups come together at morpheme boundaries, they do not form diphthongs in standard Czech; for instance naučit, neučit, poučit ([-au-, -eu-, -ou-] or [-aʔu-, -eʔu-, -oʔu-]). Vowel groups ia, i.e., ii, io, and iu in foreign words are likewise not regarded as diphthongs; they may also pronounced with /j/ between the vowels [ɪja, ɪjɛ, ɪjɪ, ɪjo, ɪju].
Consonants
Place of articulation → Labial Coronal Dorsal GlottalManner of articulation ↓ Bilabial Labio‐
dental Alveolar Post‐
alveolar Palatal Velar Glottal
Nasal m (ɱ) n ɲ (ŋ)
Plosive p b t d c ɟ k ɡ (ʔ)
Affricate t͡s d͡z t͡ʃ d͡ʒ
Fricative f v s z ʃ ʒ x (ɣ) (h) ɦ
Approximant j
Trill r r̝*
Lateral Approximant l
* [r̝] is a specific raised alveolar non-sonorant trill which can be pronounced both voiced and voiceless (regarded as two allophones of one phoneme).