This article discusses the phonological system of the Czech language.
Consonants[]
The following chart shows a complete list of the consonant phonemes of Czech:
| Labial | Alveolar | Postalveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | ɲ | ||||
| Plosive | voiceless | p | t | c | k | ||
| voiced | b | d | ɟ | (ɡ) | |||
| Affricate | voiceless | t͡s | t͡ʃ | ||||
| voiced | (d͡z) | (d͡ʒ) | |||||
| Fricative | voiceless | (f) | s | ʃ | x | ||
| voiced | v | z | ʒ | ɦ | |||
| Trill | plain | r | |||||
| fricative | r̝ | ||||||
| Approximant | l | j | |||||
Vowels[]
There are 10 monophthongal and 3 diphthongal vowel phonemes in Czech: /iː ɪ ɛː ɛ aː a oː o uː u eu̯ au̯ ou̯/. Czech is a quantity language: it differentiates five vowel qualities that occur as both phonologically short and long. The short and long counterparts generally do not differ in their quality, although long vowels may be more peripheral than short vowels.
As for the high front vowel pair /iː/–/i/, there are dialectal differences with respect to phonetic realisation of the contrast: in the Bohemian variety of Czech, the two vowels are differentiated by both quality and duration, while in the Eastern Moravian variety of Czech the primary difference is that of duration. Therefore, in the Bohemian variety, the transcription [iː]–[ɪ] more accurately reflects the trade off between the qualitative and the durational difference in these vowels, while in the Eastern Moravian variety of Czech, the transcription [iː]–[i] captures the primary durational difference.
Besides length, Czech differentiates three degrees of height and three[is that in the source?] degrees of backness.
Vowel modifications such as nasalization do not occur in Czech. The vowels are never reduced and undergo no assimilations. Vowel length and quality is independent of the stress.
Short vowels[]
- /ɪ/ is spelled i and y
- /ɛ/ is spelled e and ě
- /a/ is spelled a
- /o/ is spelled o
- /u/ is spelled u
Long vowels[]
Long vowels are indicated by an acute accent (čárka) or a ring (kroužek).
- /iː/ is spelled í and ý
- /ɛː/ is spelled é
- /aː/ is spelled á
- /oː/ is spelled ó (this phoneme occurs almost exclusively in words of foreign origin)
- /uː/ is spelled ú and ů with the former only used when it is the first letter of an unbound morpheme, as well as in loanwords and onomatopoeia.
Diphthongs[]
- /au̯/ is spelled au (occurs almost exclusively in words of foreign origin)
- /eu̯/ is spelled eu (occurs in words of foreign origin only)
- /ou̯/ is spelled ou
The phonemes /o/ and /oː/ are sometimes transcribed /ɔ/ and /ɔː/. This transcription describes the pronunciation in Central Bohemia and Prague, which is more open. The standard pronunciation is something between [o(ː)] and [ɔ(ː)], i.e. mid back vowel.
Note that ě is not a separate vowel. It simply denotes /ɛ/ after a palatal stop or palatal nasal (e.g. něco /ɲɛtso/), /ɲɛ/ after /m/ (e.g. měkký /mɲɛkiː/), and /jɛ/ after other labial consonants (e.g. běs /bjɛs/).
The vowel sequences ia, ie, ii, io, and iu in foreign words are not diphthongs. They are pronounced with an epenthetic /j/ between the vowels: [ɪja, ɪjɛ, ɪjɪ, ɪjo, ɪju].