Postby wolf_88 » 2009-04-05, 1:55
I don't speak polish, but i know that the Serbian č is certainly not the same as the English "ch" as in church or chimney.
This may also be so cause there actually is a difference between Serbian and Croatian consonants, so you may be confused if you go into such detail, observing the language as Serbocroatian (not that they are very different).
From Wikipedia:
In Serbian, the phonemes /tʃ/, /cç/, /dʒ/, and /ɟj/ (in contrast to Croatian and Bosnian vernaculars) have an independent phonetic realization in most vernaculars.[11]
^ P. Ivic, Dva glavna pravca razvoja konsonantizma u srpskohrvatskom jeziku, Iz istorije srpskohrvatskog jezika, Niš 1991, p. 82ff.
Gruszka - im not sure how good you know serbian, but you can try see Đ and Ž as voiced partners od Ć and Š... as in:
voiced Š = Ž
voiced Ć = Đ
voiced Č = Dž
You are right about the palatalization thing, though. There are 5 consonants traditionally regarded as "soft", and those are the palatal ones, so it could be that they came to be such by a process of palatalization.
Native: Serbian ( Sprski / BCS)
Fluent - proficient: English
Advanced: Norwerian ( Norsk)
Intermediate/Good: Russian, Portuguese
Studying: German, Korean + Wants to learn: Norrønt, Middle and Old Englsih, Czech, Frisian, Dutch