Lauren wrote:Also also, just since I'm frustrated, I'm going to point out that most if not all sources say that stress is /b/always//b/ on the first syllable, and I've found that's absolutely not true. For one, most if not all feminine words with the ending '-ka' are stressed on the penultimate syllable. Also, foreign words can have different stress, like "američan" or "student".
In standard Czech the stress is
always on the first syllable, unless the speaker wants to stress a different one - this can be used for example in poetry reading, acting etc, but it is generally not used otherwise. If you heard stress being on penultimate syllable then this might have been Czech from Northeastern part of Czech Republic (northern Moravia and Czech Silesia - the area around the city of Ostrava) where the pronunciation is influenced by neighbouring Polish and Slovak, both of which do use stress on penultimate syllable, this is especially typical for Polish.
Both of the examples you have given are not correct, in both cases stress would be on the first syllable in standard Czech:
američan
student
Generally, I would suggest to learn and use standard Czech not the colloquial one. There is no harm using standard Czech, although some people in Prague might find it a bit weird (formal and bookish). However, standard Czech is used in all media such as TV, newspapers, magazines, internet news sites and you will be able to communicate with evryone in Bohemia,and Moravia and Silesia. If you used colloquial Czech (of Prague type) it would sound very funny, especially to people in Moravia.
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