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Difference between Ć and Č

Posted: 2008-07-20, 17:38
by evilbu
Or the difference between Ћ ,ћ and Ч, ч . :)

I still don't really get it. Since my native language doesn't really use those sounds that much, I find it hard to hear the difference. There wouldn't happen to be some material on the net (youtube?) where I could hear the difference?

Many thanks,
evilbu

Re: Difference between Ć and Č

Posted: 2008-07-25, 16:35
by kibo
Yeah, I can understand that it could be a difficulty for learners, it's hard even for some native speakers, but I don't see how to teach you the difference. I'm afraid I don't know how youtube can help here.

However, I have recorded some words in which č and ć alternate. The last four words are the only two minimal pairs I could think of. No wonder it represents a difficulty. ;)

The words are: čovek, ćorav, čekam, ćevap, čiča, ćilim, čar, ćar, spavačica, spavaćica

ch-cj.mp3

Re: Difference between Ć and Č

Posted: 2008-07-26, 9:22
by evilbu
Thanks for the clip! :o You're right, it really is hard. I really have difficulty hearing any differences between the two sounds. :oops:

Re: Difference between Ć and Č

Posted: 2008-07-27, 11:00
by kibo
Well, dunno how to help you except giving you the articulatory description

- ć - the tongue tip is placed on the lower incisor and the tongue blade is on the hard palate
- č - the tongue tip and a part of the blade is on the hard palate

Don't get your tongue tied up in a knot though ;)

(Btw, do you have the same problem with đ and dž?)

Re: Difference between Ć and Č

Posted: 2008-08-04, 8:07
by Knabo
And even if you don't manage to learn it won't really matter since it's "normal" to make such mistakes. If it helps, in my town people don't differ them at all :D. That goes only for pronunciation, it does look strange if write them wrong.

Re: Difference between Ć and Č

Posted: 2008-12-18, 0:42
by polishboy
No, I don't think it is dificult.
Č is simply ch in English.
And Ć is soft C.
We in Poland have also these sounds.

Re: Difference between Ć and Č

Posted: 2008-12-18, 19:15
by voron
Serbian ć is not equal to Polish ć.
Bolek wrote:ć - the tongue tip is placed on the lower incisor

Re: Difference between Ć and Č

Posted: 2008-12-22, 21:31
by evilbu
:silly: :hmm: I'm afraid that I'll just say "it's the same" for now.
By the way, they played "Crna mačka, beli mačor" on Flemish public television yesterday, but as usual it's just written "Crna macka, beli macor". :D Most newspapers don't support the characters or simply don't care, it's funny how often names are mispronounced here as well. :o

Re: Difference between Ć and Č

Posted: 2008-12-29, 13:51
by Ved
I don't know if it helps at all, but

č = Often transcribed as ʧ, but it's actually tʂ

ć = ʨ

dž = Often transcribed as ʤ, but it's actually dʐ

đ = ʥ

If you know how to pronounce IPA symbols, you should be able to get just the right sounds.

Re: Difference between Ć and Č

Posted: 2009-03-12, 20:28
by Quetzalcoatl
What I don't understand is that alveo-palatal affricates appear both in Serbocroatian and Polish, but Serbocroatian ć and đ sound much harder than Polish ć and dź...

I have rather the impression ć is not really alveo-palatal, but a palatalised č (and đ is a palatalised ž)


Serbocroatian:

č = tʃ
ć = tʃʲ

or

č = tʂ
ć = tʃ

Polish

cz = tʂ
ć = tɕ

Re: Difference between Ć and Č

Posted: 2009-04-05, 1:55
by wolf_88
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.

Re: Difference between Ć and Č

Posted: 2009-05-01, 22:19
by Quetzalcoatl
I think you misunderstood me... My question deals with the fact, that the Polish " ć " as well as the BCS " ć " are said to be alveopalatal sounds (the same applies to " dź vs. đ "), but they sound differently. The BCS " ć " is not as hard as "cz/č", but still much harder than the Polish " ć ".
This is what I do not understand...

Re: Difference between Ć and Č

Posted: 2011-01-07, 7:26
by jocke
Č represents the voiceless postalveolar affricate. Ć represents the voiceless alveolo-palatal affricate. In English, the former is used, but not the latter.

Re: Difference between Ć and Č

Posted: 2011-01-07, 7:37
by jocke
represents the voiced postalveolar affricate. Đ represents the voiced alveolo-palatal affricate. In English, the former is used, but not the latter.

Re: Difference between Ć and Č

Posted: 2011-01-07, 7:41
by mōdgethanc
Somebody explain to me how the Polish and Serbian ć differ. They sound the same to me.

Re: Difference between Ć and Č

Posted: 2011-01-07, 7:46
by jocke
Talib wrote:Somebody explain to me how the Polish and Serbian ć differ. They sound the same to me.

They are very similar because both represent the voiceless alveolo-palatal affricate.

Re: Difference between Ć and Č

Posted: 2011-01-07, 14:25
by Ludwig Whitby
Talib wrote:Somebody explain to me how the Polish and Serbian ć differ. They sound the same to me.


They sounded the same in initial position (''ćma'' is the word I heard). Otherwise the Polish one is softer. Somewhat more palatal. At least that's how I hear it.

Re: Difference between Ć and Č

Posted: 2011-01-07, 15:04
by mōdgethanc
I didn't think it could be more palatal without being a palatal stop (which is the sound the Serbian affricates developed from, incidentally).

Re: Difference between Ć and Č

Posted: 2011-04-02, 18:06
by Runamoinen
Talib wrote:Somebody explain to me how the Polish and Serbian ć differ. They sound the same to me.


They don't. Or at least not much. The same can be said for:
Polish dź and Serbian đ,
Polish dż and Serbian dž,
Polish cz and Serbian č,
Polish sz and Serbian š,
Polish ż and Serbian ž,
Polish ń and Serbian nj
and Serbian lj exists as the onset of Polish li.

It's pretty much the same tongue position although on a subjective note Polish consonants always sound a bit softer to me. :)

Re: Difference between Ć and Č

Posted: 2011-05-11, 13:25
by hemflit
It may help to think of them as coming from different directions.

Think of Č as a rather old Slavic sound, which originally appeared as a variant of K.
Think of Ć as a much younger one, which is essentially a softening of T.

DŽ doesn't have the long and illustrious history that Č does, but being its exact voiced counterpart, for the purpose of this exercise it's neatly symmetric and useful (though not actually correct) to think of it as an emancipated variant of G.
Think of Đ as a softened D.

(A useful approximation for English speakers is also to describe Ć and Đ as the beginnings of words "tune" and "dune", if pronounced tyoon/dyoon, and not toon/doon.)


Getting in the habit of thinking of them this way will be of tremendous help once you start getting used to the morphophonological changes that words go through. You'll notice that Ć and Đ rarely even show up in old word stems at all - they most typically emerge when a something-T- or something-D- stem gets softened by a -J-something suffix in some specific word form.

(But they do appear a lot in stems of younger words, like loanwords, slang words, hypocorisms and diminutives. Plus some nonstandard dialects like to over-soften their Ts and Ds in older words too.)


Though, if the goal is just being understood by native speakers, it's not a problem at all to mix them up. Or to exaggerate the difference, if that comes naturally to you.