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(155*) Fonetická epizoda v Praze? (V >> F, what we really say and why?)

Ahoj, jak to jde? Dnes pro tebe mám fonetickou epizodu. To je super, né? Budu mluvit anglicky a vysvětlím ti, co, kdy, jak a proč říkáme. A potom budeš lépe rozumět, co Češi říkají. A taky budeš lépe mluvit. Ale nejdřív je klasická epizoda, potom vysvětlení a nakonec malý dril pro tebe, kdy můžeš poslouchat a opakovat. Tak co, jsi ready? Jestli jo, jdeme na to.

Je pondělí a já mám každé pondělí lekce češtiny. Takže  v pondělí mám normálně lekce češtiny, ale dnes ne. Dnes mám volno, protože je státní svátek. Bydlím v Praze, sedím v parku a dívám se na lidi. Proč sedím v parku? Protože v televizi nic nedávají a venku je fakt hezky. Normálně chodím do parku v sobotu, protože v týdnu nemám čas.

Jak jsem říkala, normálně jsem každou sobotu venku – jsem buď v parku nebo v kavárně, v ki nebo v cukrárně. Mám jednu oblíbenou cukrárnu, kde mají ten nejlepší cheesecake v Praze! A v červnu, v červenci a v srpnu tam mají hrozně dobrou zmrzlinu. Minulý rok jsem byla v Chorvatsku na ostrově Pag. A v cukrárně na Pagu neměli tak dobrou zmrzlinu jaká je v Praze v kavárně. Mimochodem, víš, že říkáme, že Praha je v srdci Evropy?

Moji rodiče bydlí v Chomutově. Bydlí v bytě v přízemí. Můj otec rád sedí doma v křesle a pije víno, zatímco moje maminka je často v sobotu a v neděli venku v přírodě, protože potřebuje slunce a čistý vzduch.

A co ty? Co děláš v pondělí? Co děláš v tek a v sobotu? Bydlíš v Praze? V Chomutově? V Chebu? V Plzni? V Přerově? V Pardubicích? V Českých Budějovicích nebo někde jinde v Čes republice?


As you can hear, when we combine the preposition V, firstly, we do not read it separately. The preposition will become part of the following word and the accent in the Czech language is on the 1st syllabe. Thats is why you will not read “V — Praze” but “fPraze”- Or we do not say “v — kavárně” but fkavárně. That is also the reason why I underlined the words in the text. The line means accent. It’s not longer, it’s not shorter as pronunciatoon, it’s just stronger. Listen to the difference when the accent is moving from the 1st to the last syllabe:

fkavárně – fkarně – fkavár

fChomutově – fchomutově – fchomutově – fchomuto

The first one is correct. If you put the accent on the 2nd syllabe and you make it longer, you will sound russian : vkavááárně, v chomuuutově, v červeeenci… which might create sort of distance when talking to older people.

Are you interested in why we pronounce “v” as “f” in those cases? In any language there are what we call pairs of voiced and voiceless sounds.  Those are phonetics terms. But what does it mean? For instance the sound V is a voiced sound – our vocal cords vibrate to create this sound. You can touch your throat to verify. Compared to “f” where the vocal cords are sleeping. So the “f” sound is voiceless sound. Check your cords and compare Vvvvv and Fffff. For the “f” sound, only some air is going out. The same for S, K, CH, Š.

So now, why we write V and pronounce F in some cases? For example [fpra-ze] but [vbr-ně]? I will show you. If you put 1 voiceless and 1 voiced sound one next to each other, they are fighting who is going to be stronger. And one of them will win. This is called assimilation.  It doesn’t happen only to V preposition but to many other sounds, even in the middle of the word, examples:

kdo [gdo], prosba [prozba], sousedka [sousetka], zkouška [skouška], lehký [lechký]

And how we know what to say? The second sound in this small fight will win everytime 🙂 Meaning that for example in the word KDO, we write K D O, the K is the 1st sound followed by the D which is the 2nd one. This one will win. D is voiced sound, so voiceless K will become G as voiced sound. The D will convince K to join his voiced group. Let’s see the examples:

And now, let’s practise the V and F sounds together:

v pondělí, v Praze, v parku, v televizi, v sobotu, v týdnu, v kavárně, v kině, v cukrárně, v červnu, v červenci, v srpnu, v Chorvatsku, v srdci, v Chomutově, v přízemí, v křesle, v přírodě, v Plzni, v Přerově, v Pardubicích, v Českých Budějovicích, v České republice a v Česku.

Tak čaaau, Eliška 🙂

Michaela Paldusová, UJOP UK Praha

(Note that I am not any specialist when it comes to the phonetics and pronunciation rules. I just know them a bit and I teach the pronunciation a lot because I believe that it is important to have the correct accent and sounds from the very beginning.

If you want to know more about Czech pronunciation, if you want to ask questions, if you want to learn how to speak better, I enthusiastically recommend  the best pronunciation teacher, speacialist Michaela Paldusová (who is amazing as person, too). And who taught me so much! THANK YOU!

Her website: mluvimcesky.cz).

    2 Comments

  1. Sergey
    Reply

    Jsem bydlím v Kaliningrade (Königsberg). Kaliningrad nejlepší město světа. V sobotu
    a neděle normálně jezdim k moře.

  2. User Avatar
    slowczech
    Reply

    Bydlíš v Kaliningradu nebo taky česky v Královci (Královec)?
    🙂
    Nikdy jsem tam nebyla. Ani v Rusku jsem ještě, bohužel, nebyla 🙁
    Eliška

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