How does Czech sound in your ears?

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mōdgethanc
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Re: How does Czech sound in your ears?

Postby mōdgethanc » 2013-04-13, 22:46

As somebody who speaks neither, Czech sounds like a whole lot of strč prkt and Hungarian sounds like a whole lot of hogy megy.
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Re: How does Czech sound in your ears?

Postby TeneReef » 2013-04-14, 1:39

Czech, to me, sounds like Continental Portuguese. :)
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Re: How does Czech sound in your ears?

Postby mōdgethanc » 2013-04-14, 4:24

When I first heard Portuguese I thought it was a Slavic language, and it was driving me crazy trying to figure out which one it was. Then I saw the subtitles and thought What the fuck? This is a Romance language?.
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Re: How does Czech sound in your ears?

Postby הענט » 2013-04-14, 7:38

We don't swallow our vowels as much as EP. :) I would say Portuguese sounds Slavic, but more like Bulgarian or Russian. :)

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Re: How does Czech sound in your ears?

Postby mōdgethanc » 2013-04-14, 10:33

El Tigre Chino wrote:We don't swallow our vowels as much as EP. :) I would say Portuguese sounds Slavic, but more like Bulgarian or Russian. :)
It was EP, actually, which also has the very strong "dark l" you hear in Russian. BP doesn't sound like Russian, though. Russian is the Slavic language that's most notable for "eating" (or in linguistic terms, reducing) its vowels. Others do it too, but not to the same extent.

Now that I think of it, I don't know what Slavic language BP would sound like. Maybe Polish.
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Re: How does Czech sound in your ears?

Postby הענט » 2013-04-14, 22:17

Yes. When I first heard EP on the TV, it took me a few minutes to realize it was not Russian. :D
That was a long time ago, though. The Brazilian Portuguese doesn't sound Slavic to me. Someone here wrote it sounds like a mix of Dutch and Catalan. Haha. :)

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Re: How does Czech sound in your ears?

Postby TeneReef » 2013-04-14, 22:28

El Tigre Chino wrote:Yes. When I first heard EP on the TV, it took me a few minutes to realize it was not Russian. :D
That was a long time ago, though. The Brazilian Portuguese doesn't sound Slavic to me. Someone here wrote it sounds like a mix of Dutch and Catalan. Haha. :)


Brazilian Portuguese can sound like Polish. :P
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Re: How does Czech sound in your ears?

Postby Lada » 2013-04-18, 18:43

El Tigre Chino wrote:Yes. When I first heard EP on the TV, it took me a few minutes to realize it was not Russian. :D

Hmmm... that's strange, Russian doesn't have nasal vowels that should be very notable...

Czech sounds like a soft and incomprehensible variant of Ukrainian to me :wink: So, it's kind of very close and very distant at the same time, if it makes sense :)

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Re: How does Czech sound in your ears?

Postby הענט » 2013-04-19, 12:29

Lada wrote:
El Tigre Chino wrote:Yes. When I first heard EP on the TV, it took me a few minutes to realize it was not Russian. :D

Hmmm... that's strange, Russian doesn't have nasal vowels that should be very notable...

Czech sounds like a soft and incomprehensible variant of Ukrainian to me :wink: So, it's kind of very close and very distant at the same time, if it makes sense :)



Now I can tell them apart, but it was for my untrained ear which wasn't prepared for the EP.

Haha. Yes. It's a language you understand, even though you don't. I have the same feeling when it comes to Serbian/Bosnian/Croatian. :)

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Re: How does Czech sound in your ears?

Postby mōdgethanc » 2013-04-19, 14:57

Lada wrote:Hmmm... that's strange, Russian doesn't have nasal vowels that should be very notable...
No, but one of the most noticeable features of a Russian accent is the strong /l/, and Russian has a lot of postalveolar sounds (like ш ж) and so does Portuguese. Also, both languages tend to reduce their vowels a lot.
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Re: How does Czech sound in your ears?

Postby johnklepac » 2013-04-21, 17:36

mōdgethanc wrote:When I first heard Portuguese I thought it was a Slavic language, and it was driving me crazy trying to figure out which one it was. Then I saw the subtitles and thought What the fuck? This is a Romance language?.

At first when you said this, I thought you were crazy, but now that I'm listening to it again, I can see it. There's a lot of "shpa proma karotsh"-sounding stuff, and the accent sometimes sounds distantly Slavic.

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Re: How does Czech sound in your ears?

Postby mōdgethanc » 2013-04-21, 17:44

Did you listen to EP? I swear, it's that /l/ that makes it sound so Eastern European. (As well as all the shpa zhda, I guess.)
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Re: How does Czech sound in your ears?

Postby johnklepac » 2013-04-21, 17:51

mōdgethanc wrote:Did you listen to EP? I swear, it's that /l/ that makes it sound so Eastern European. (As well as all the shpa zhda, I guess.)

Yeah, BP is somewhat less so.

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Re: How does Czech sound in your ears?

Postby silmeth » 2013-08-11, 15:19

mōdgethanc wrote:I think it sounds kind of strange due to a) all the syllable consonants b) the postalveolar r-caron sound and c) the unvaried initial stress. The concept of a Slavic tongue with vowel length is strange to me too. I have to wonder if it's an innovation or an original feature.

I'm far more familiar with Russian and Polish, which don't sound anything like Czech, so that's probably why it seems so strange to me.


Well. Czech does sound very much like Old Polish. Polish had the /ř/ sound to some 15th-16th century probably, it had stress on initial syllable, it had long vowels (which now remain only as a difference between /ą/ and /ę/, /o/ and /ó/ and in some dialects /a/ and /á/ – pronounced mostly as [ɔ]).

Also, Protoslavonic language probably had:
– sonants – syllable making r and l, and r' and l' – although they are often reconstructed as yer + consonant (*dьlgь instead of *dlgь – dlouhý; *mьrtvъ instead of mrtvъ – mrtvý; *vьlkъ instead of *vlkъ – vlk etc.)
– vowel length (although different than in today Czech): there were four short vowels: *e, *o, *ь, *ъ (yers actually the shortest), all other were long. More in Wikipedia article – here notation of vowel length and here about vowel system
polszczyzna jest moją mową ojczystą (pl), Is í Gaelainn na Mumhan atá á foghlaim agam (ga) ((ga-M)), mám, myslím, dobrou znalost češtiny, rozumím a něco mluvím (cs), Jeg lærer meg bokmål på Duolingo (no-nb) (og eg ville lære nynorsk ein gong (no-nn))

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Re: How does Czech sound in your ears?

Postby PiotrR » 2013-12-04, 8:40

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Last edited by PiotrR on 2014-04-01, 22:43, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: How does Czech sound in your ears?

Postby Levike » 2013-12-04, 13:38

To me Czech sounds funny but pleasant, maybe a bit strange.

But then sorry, I can't tell the difference between Czech/Slovak/Polish unless written.

To my ears they don't sound so harsh like the other Slavic languages,
more like cute and funny. :lol:

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Re: How does Czech sound in your ears?

Postby ling » 2013-12-05, 1:48

To my untrained ears, Czech sounds like Russian without the roughness or edginess of Russian. More refined. Or like Polish with st- sounds instead of szcz- sounds.
Native: [flag=]en[/flag] Advanced: [flag=]zh[/flag] Actively studying: [flag=]th[/flag][flag=]id[/flag] Passively dabbling: [flag=]lkt[/flag]

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Re: How does Czech sound in your ears?

Postby jonc275 » 2013-12-13, 1:17

Honestly, Czech sounds more similar to Ukrainian than to Russian, in my opinion. But I recognize similarities between Czech and Russian in certain words. I appreciate the regular stress of Czech, but the long vowels are a little strange to me because I am not accustomed to this feature. Overall, I like hearing spoken Czech, it is pleasant to my ears.

I'm not very familiar with the west Slavic languages. I can tell Czech apart from Polish with a little difficulty, but I cannot tell Czech and Slovak apart unless written (and even then, it is a little difficult unless I see certain 'clues', such as letters that exist in one language and not in the other :D )

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Re: How does Czech sound in your ears?

Postby הענט » 2014-03-03, 9:18

jonc275 wrote:Honestly, Czech sounds more similar to Ukrainian than to Russian, in my opinion. But I recognize similarities between Czech and Russian in certain words. I appreciate the regular stress of Czech, but the long vowels are a little strange to me because I am not accustomed to this feature. Overall, I like hearing spoken Czech, it is pleasant to my ears.

I'm not very familiar with the west Slavic languages. I can tell Czech apart from Polish with a little difficulty, but I cannot tell Czech and Slovak apart unless written (and even then, it is a little difficult unless I see certain 'clues', such as letters that exist in one language and not in the other :D )


I agree that Ukrainian is closer to Czech than Russian, but even more so to Polish.

I search - hledám ([flag=]cs[/flag]) , szukam ([flag=]pl[/flag]) , шукаю ([flag=]uk[/flag])
I love - miluji ([flag=]cs[/flag]) , kocham ([flag=]pl[/flag]) , кохаю ([flag=]uk[/flag])

Czech and Slovak are like 98% mutually intelligible, while Polish is more distant and you have to learn it in order to understand it thoroughly.

Random Slovak sentence:

Pred príchodom do Ríma sa Coriolanus umýva, pod prúdom vody tečúcej priamo na javisko si čistí rany a keď zo seba strasie vodu ako pes, červené kvapky striekajú na všetky strany.

And its Czech translation by me:

Před příchodem do Říma se Coriolanus umývá, pod proudem vody tekoucí přímo na jeviště si čistí rány a když ze sebe setřese vodu jako pes, červené kapky stříkají na všechny strany.

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Re: How does Czech sound in your ears?

Postby Lojomir » 2016-05-24, 21:01

Parasztember wrote:The czech language often forced hungarians laughing , especially if it sounds in Pop/Rock songs, and Hollywood films. It's not an irony, only an involuntary thing :) I don't know the cause of this phenomena.
For the hungarian ears the czech is too tough, due to the frequent use of consonants, it sounds strange but unique. Honesty...

But I'm curious, how sounds the hungarian language for the czechish people?

I really do not intend to to be offensive, i do find hungarian a language which has its magic in terms of the sound but to me it sounds like the goats were forming their sounds into words and subsequently sentences. I AM CZECH


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