User:40bus/Pronunciations/Czech

Vowels
Czech vowels

Aspiration
In the standard dialect, the voiceless plosive and affricate phonemes p t ť k c č are normally postaspirated as  if they occur at the beginning of a morpheme, but are never postaspirated in the non-initial position within a morpheme and are instead pronounced. In particular, this makes the consonant pairs p/b and t/d homophones between vowels within a morpheme, though b and d tend not to occur in this position in Icelandic words inherited from Old Norse anyway. The aspiration does not always completely disappear, though:
 * Geminated sequences pp tt kk within a morpheme become preaspirated.
 * Any of the sequences pn pl tn tl kn kl after a vowel within a morpheme become preaspirated.
 * In the sequences mp nt nk rk rp rt lp lt lk ðk within a morpheme, the second consonant is not postaspirated, but the first consonant becomes voiceless as another form of prespiration, resulting in.

R

 * can be uvular, alveolar or even dental, a consonant or a semivowel, see below.
 * is bilabial–labiodental, rather than purely labiodental.
 * can be apical alveolar,  laminal alveolar  or laminal denti-alveolar . The other possible pronunciation of  that has been reported to occur in unstressed intervocalic positions is retroflex . Austrian German often uses the laminal denti-alveolar articulation.
 * is always clear, as in most Irish English accents. A few Austrian accents may use a velarized instead, but that is considered non-standard.
 * In the Standard Austrian variety, may be affricated to  before front vowels.
 * can be laminal alveolar,  laminal post-dental  (i.e. fronted alveolar, articulated with the blade of the tongue just behind upper front teeth), or even apical alveolar .  Austrian German often uses the post-dental articulation.  are always strongly fricated.
 * are strongly labialized palato-alveolar sibilants .   are fricated more weakly than . There are two variants of these sounds:
 * Laminal, articulated with the foremost part of the blade of the tongue approaching the foremost part of the hard palate, with the tip of the tongue resting behind either upper or lower front teeth.
 * Apico-laminal,  articulated with the tip of the tongue approaching the gums and the foremost part of the blade approaching the foremost part of the hard palate. According to, this variant is used more frequently.
 * has a number of possible realizations:
 * Voiced apical coronal trill,  either alveolar (articulated with the tip of the tongue against the alveolar ridge),  or dental (articulated with the tip of the tongue against the back of the upper front teeth).
 * Distribution: Common in the south (Bavaria and many parts of Switzerland and Austria), but it is also found in some speakers in central and northern Germany, especially the elderly. It is also one of possible realizations of in the Standard Austrian accent, but a more common alveolar realization is an approximant . Even more common are uvular realizations, fricatives  and a trill.
 * Voiced uvular trill, which can be realized as voiceless  after voiceless consonants (as in treten). According to  it is often a tap  intervocalically (as in Ehre).
 * Distribution: Occurs in some conservative varieties - most speakers with a uvular realize it as a fricative or an approximant. It is also one of possible realizations of  in the Standard Austrian accent, but it is less common than a fricative.
 * Dorsal continuant, about the quality of which there is not a complete agreement:
 * describe two fricative variants, namely post-palatal and velar . The post-palatal variant appears before and after front vowels, while the velar variant is used in all other positions.
 * describe it as voiced post-velar fricative.
 * and describe it as voiced uvular fricative ;
 * states that "with educated professional radio and TV announcers, as with professional actors on the stage and in film, the [voiced uvular] fricative [realization of] clearly predominates."
 * In the Standard Austrian accent, the uvular fricative is also the most common realization, although its voicing is variable (that is, it can be either voiced or voiceless ).
 * writes that "the place of articulation of the consonant varies from uvular in e.g. rot ('red') to velar in e.g. treten ('kick'), depending on back or front vowel contexts." He also notes that is devoiced after voiceless plosives and fricatives, especially those within the same word, giving the word treten as an example. According to this author,  can be reduced to an approximant in an intervocalic position.
 * describe it as a uvular fricative or approximant . The latter is less likely to occur word-initially.
 * Distribution: Almost all areas apart from Bavaria and parts of Switzerland.
 * Near-open central unrounded vowel is a post-vocalic allophone of (mostly dorsal) varieties of . The non-syllabic variant of it is not always near-open or central; it is similar to either  or, depending on the environment.
 * Distribution: Widespread, but less common in Switzerland.
 * The voiceless stops, , are aspirated except when preceded by a sibilant. Many southern dialects do not aspirate , and some northern ones do so only in a stressed position. The voiceless affricates , , and  are never aspirated, and neither are any other consonants besides the aforementioned.
 * The obstruents are voiceless lenis  in southern varieties, and they contrast with voiceless fortis.
 * In Austria, intervocalic can be lenited to fricatives.
 * Before and after front vowels ( and, in varieties that realize them as front, and/or ), the velar consonants  are realized as post-palatal . According to, in a parallel process,  before and after back vowels ( and, in varieties that realize them as back,  and/or ) are retracted to post-velar  or even uvular.
 * There is no complete agreement about the nature of ; it has been variously described as a fricative,  a fricative, which can be fricated less strongly than , a sound variable between a weak fricative an approximant and an approximant , which is the usual realization in the Standard Austrian variety.
 * In many varieties of standard German, the glottal stop,, occurs in careful speech before word stems that begin with a vowel. It is much more frequent in northern varieties than in the south. It is not usually considered a phoneme. In colloquial and dialectal speech, is often omitted, especially when the word beginning with a vowel is unstressed.
 * The phonemic status of affricates is controversial. The majority view accepts and, but not  or the non-native ; some accept none, some accept all but , and some accept all.
 * Although occurs in native words, it only appears in historic clusters of  +  (e.g. deutsch < OHG diutisc) or in words with expressive quality (e.g. glitschen, hutschen).  is, however, well-established in loanwords, including German toponyms of non-Germanic origin (e.g. Zschopau).
 * and occur only in words of foreign origin. In certain varieties, they are replaced by  and  altogether.
 * is occasionally considered to be an allophone of, especially in southern varieties of German.
 * and are traditionally regarded as allophones after front vowels and back vowels, respectively. For a more detailed analysis see below at ich-Laut and ach-Laut. According to some analyses,  is an allophone of  after  and according to some also after .  However, according to, the uvular allophone is used after  only in the Standard Austrian variety.
 * Some phonologists do not posit a separate phoneme and use  instead, along with  instead of . The phoneme sequence  is realized as  when  can start a valid onset of the next syllable whose nucleus is a vowel other than unstressed, , or . It becomes  otherwise. For example:
 * Diphthong
 * diphthongieren
 * Englisch
 * Anglo
 * Ganges ~