Talk:Czech orthography

"in case"

Just a comment on the use of the English phrase "in case". I know in Czech, v případě can be used to mean, essentially, "if". But, it cannot be translated directly in English, as "in case" is used like this: I will take an umbrella, in case it rains. Meaning, whether it rains or not, I will have it, to prepare for the possibility of rain. Perhaps "pro jistotu" nebo "pro případ" in Czech. -Sladek 18:33, 4. 4. 2007

Would you suggest some better formulation for: "A comma is never placed before a (and), i (as well as), ani (nor) and nebo (or) IN CASES they connect parts of sentences or clauses in copulative conjunctions"? I think it is not the same meaning as in your example. Thanks for your help. --Pajast 13:03, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

I would say, "A comma is never placed before 'a', 'i', 'ani', and 'nebo' WHEN they connect parts of sentences or clauses in copulative conjunctions".

Agreement between the subject and the predicate

Why is this section here? Grammar is not orthography. —Tamfang 02:13, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, grammar is not orthography. But this rule influences the orthography. There is no difference between -li and -ly in pronunciation. The difference exists in the orthography only. (And the standard neuter ending -la is uncommon in most dialects; plural endings of participles in general are often unified in common speech.) And although this rule is not complicated in my opinion, many native Czech speakers are not familiar with it and make mistakes. This is why you can find this topic in every Czech orthographical textbook or handbook. I am sure it belongs here too. --Pajast 07:40, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Example for names of nations cannot be correct

The article says:

"names of nations are capitalized: Angličan (Englishman), Němec (German); adjectives derived from geographical names and names of nations, and names of languages are not capitalized: anglický (English – adjective), angličtina (English language), pražský (Prague – adjective);"

The words "Englishman" and "German" are not names of nations, they are names of nationalities. So either the Czech word is wrong or the translation of it is, or alternately the assertion is meant to be about nationalities. Based on a dictionary I found online, the words are incorrect and should be "Anglie" and "Německo", but someone who actually speaks Czech needs to check this out and correct it. More info and detail would also be useful. --Armchairlinguist 23:58, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

The words and their translations are correct. You can replace "nations" by "nationalities" if you feel it is better (I am not a native English speaker, I do not feel the difference between the two words well).

Anglie = England, Německo = Germany.

Other examples: Praha = Prague (the name of the city) x pražské metro = Prague underground/subway --Pajast 09:25, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, that clarifies it. Previously, the article was incorrectly referring to nationalities as nations. The nation is the place (England, Germany), and the nationality term refers to the person (Englishman, German). It is a little unclear to just say "nationality" because usually nationality by itself is an adjective in English. For example, we can say either "I'm American" (adjective) or "I'm an American" (noun), and I would usually say the first. If I understand you correctly, the first would be lowercase in Czech and the second would be capitalized, but maybe there aren't two ways to say it in Czech and that's why it's confusing in English. Anyway, I've edited it and I think it's clearer the way it stands now what is and isn't capitalized. --Armchairlinguist 16:47, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your explaining. There is the only way to say "I am Czech/American" in Czech: Jsem Čech/Američan. Čech or Američan are nouns. Using adjectives in this meaning (jsem český/americký) sounds very strange. (This is usual in Russian.) --Pajast 07:25, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

In Russian its usual for the only one nationality - namely Russians. All other nationalities are denoted by nouns. ja češskij/amerikanskij/anglijskij - wrong. The correct ones are ja čech/amerikanec/angličanin. ja russkij is correct. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 195.12.94.165 (talk) 14:27, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Not true

Long í and ý are different in most dialects of Bohemia. í is pronounced [i:], ý ý [ɛj] or maybe [ɛɪ]. (in most words)--SuperElephant 06:23, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

This article is about standard Czech, not dialects. They have no codified orhography. --Pajast 12:50, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Really?? (it has been preserved in some dialects in Ostrava and its surroundings). Ostrava dialects have codified orthography?--SuperElephant 13:57, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Someone has added this note on the pronuciation. It is a fact. I cannot see any reason to remove it. This does not mean that Ostrava dialect have a codified orthography.

That part of this article gives an explantion why two graphemes for one phoneme are used. The note on Ostrava pronunciation illustrates the reasons. The fact that /ý/ changed into /ej/ in common Czech is not related to the standard Czech orthography. --Pajast 14:57, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

"ch" letter

According to the Czech version of the page the "ch" letter counts as a letter in the alphabet.

With the "ch" letter the Czech alphabet contains 42 characters.

The "ch" letter is also important when sorting strings, according to Czech standard. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.24.152.82 (talk) 14:10, 18 July 2016 (UTC)

X

@@Awewewe: I have twice removed something about the letter <x> being replaced by <ks> when words become naturalised, because it's not entirely true. Off the top of my head: sex, sexualita, sexuální; saxofon; maxi, maximální, maximalizovat; Maximilián; oxid, oxidovat... all have the letter X despite being naturalised (some even inflected with Czech morphology). This isn't the same as with <w>, which doesn't stick around in Czech words at all. Polish does this with <x> (oksydować, maksymalny), but Czech doesn't seem to at least not as much.

I suggest finding some sources that discuss this in more depth if you want to re-add it. – filelakeshoe (t / c)  20:22, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

Understanding F and G

F is clearly used mostly in words of foreign origin (I guess this means Greek, Latin, or Germanic.) This makes sense because no sound yielded the f sound in Slavic, so we wouldn't normally expect a native Slavic word to have an F in it. But how about G?? What special property does G have?? Georgia guy (talk) 23:05, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

Proto-Slavic *g turned into /ɦ/ in Czech, Slovak and Ukrainian while it remained /g/ in Russian, Polish and South Slavic languages. Czech hrad and Serbian grad are the same word give or take that phonological shift. So in the first set of languages, the /g/ sound is generally not found in native words.

In Czech specifically though, even when the sound /g/ did appear (e.g. in kdo) it was written <k>, because in the old blackletter orthography the letter <g> stood for /j/ (e.g. jaro was written garo). See "brethren orthography" under history. – filelakeshoe (t / c)  23:26, 16 October 2017 (UTC)

Digraphs dž, dz

These digraphs are rarely considered as digraphs in Czech. It's because they aren't very common in Czech and their pronunciation is very similar to pronunciation "d-ž" resp. "d-z" (and in Czech is common that a letter is read as another simmilar letter). There are very few words with them in Czech and they are mostly loanwords ("džbán" is the only exception I can remember, "dz" isn't in Czech at all, or it should be pronounced "d-z" - in cases where prefix ends "d-" and root begins "-z", for example "podzim").

37.48.0.55 (talk) 12:15, 30 June 2021 (UTC)