I have planned a bit about another famous Czech artist, but I got no time, so today let’s have a bit of fun with language again.
Some Slavic languages allow for a syllable being constructed without a vowel, especially Czech and Slovak, where the “r” and “l” consonants can be syllable constructing instead of a vowel. So for example the Czech name for Giant Mountains, Krkonoše, consists of four syllables – Kr-ko-no-še.
I have met native English and German speakers who had extreme trouble with this and they instinctively inserted an “e” before the syllable constructing consonant, so instead of “srdce” (heart), they pronounced “serce”, which is a nonsense word but one eventually gets what the struggling foreigner means in a sentence, as one generally does on such occasions if one is not a deliberately obtuse asshole and actively tries to understand instead of being pedantic.
I do not remember if I tried to tease anyone except one of my colleagues at work to say one of the czech tongue twisters – “strč prst skrz krk” (stick a finger through the throat) which consists of four monosyllabic words without a single vowel. Or the longest Czech word without vowels – “scvrnkls” (you shrunk (it)). Or the allegedly longest sentence without vowels- “Smrž pln skvrn zvlhl z mlh.” (A morel full of spots got wet in the fog). They are tonque twisters for a reason – even Czechs trip over their own tongue trying to say these fast and perhaps multiple times in succesion.
Have fun pronouncing those, I know you will try.
Aren’t ALL of those letters consonants?
Nah, that’s just Russian, rather than a nonsense word. “Сердце” means “heart” in Russian.
I tried. It seemed very easy for me. I’m a polyglot, and in my life I have had to learn all kinds of hard-to-pronounce sounds. That being said, I have no clue whether my own idea of how a string of consonants could sound is even close to how you actually pronounce it in Czech. Can you give a link to some online dictionary with sound recordings of how these words are pronounced? I just got curious and now I’m wondering whether I can pronounce these words at least somewhat correctly.
I think that if I say it, srdce will sound sörrdsö.
bobmunck, I have corrected the article, I see that I have used the words “vowel” and “consonant” incorectly on multiple ocasions. It is one of the occasions where I have trouble keeping track of which word in the pair means what.
@Andreas Avester, I know it is the same word in Russian, but in Czech and Slovak it is not.
Those are all tongue twisters to me. I would insert vowels in an attempt to say any of those words and I would surely insert the incorrect vowel.
I find the opposite is true when I look at Finnish words from Ice Swimmer. There are often too many vowels all together and I can’t figure out how you would say them.
Andreas
There is a site called Forvo that uses native speakers to pronounce things in quite a few languages. It’s a bit limited, but it’s fine for my needs.