Czech alphabet and pronunciation

Strč prst skrz krk - "stick a finger through your throat". Not a single vowel letter, and every Czech speaker says it without blinking. It is the right place to start, because it shows what Czech spelling is really like: strange to an English eye, but honest. Almost every letter keeps its own sound, so a word you can spell is a word you can usually say. After English, where though, through and tough share four letters and nothing else, that is a gift.

The alphabet has 42 letters: the Latin letters you know, plus the háček ("little hook": č, š, ž, ř, ě, ň, ť, ď), the čárka (long mark: á, é, í, ó, ú, ý) and the kroužek ("little ring") on ů, which is simply another long [u]: dům (house), stůl (table). The marks are not decoration. Leave one off and you have written a different word, or none at all.

Letters that do not mean what English says

The one that trips English speakers most is c. Your eye wants to read cena as "sena" or "kena"; it is "tsena", every time. Ch counts as a single letter and comes after h in the dictionary, so look for chléb after hudba, not among the c-words.

Long vowels change the word

The čárka marks length, and length tells words apart:

English has long and short vowels too, but it changes the sound along with the length: ship and sheep are different vowels. Czech keeps the same vowel and simply holds it about twice as long. So á is not the "ay" of late: it is the a of father, held.

Stress falls on the first syllable

PRA-ha, DO-brý den, NA-shle-da-nou. There are no exceptions to learn, and stress has nothing to do with length: in dobrý you stress do- and hold -rý. Two English habits to drop here. English stress can land anywhere, so learners say "pra-HA". And English swallows unstressed vowels into a neutral "uh": banana is "buh-NA-nuh". Czech never does. Every vowel keeps its full value, so Praha ends in a clear [a].

Syllables without vowels

r and l can carry a syllable on their own: vlk (wolf), krk (neck), prst (finger), čtvrtek (Thursday), the Krkonoše mountains on the Polish border. Do not slip a vowel in: it is not "vuhlk". You already do this in English, where the second syllable of bottle or button has no real vowel either.

ě: one letter, three jobs

After d, t, n it softens the consonant, a little like the "d-y" in due said the British way: děti (children), tělo (body), někdo (somebody). After b, p, v it adds a "y": pět (five) - [pyet], věc (thing) - [vyets]. After m it adds "ny": město (town) - [mnyesto]. These are first-week words, so the rule pays for itself at once.

i and y: one vowel, two spellings

i and y both sound like the short "i" of machine, or the "ee" of see when long (í, ý): ryba (fish) is "riba". The difference is spelling, with one exception: after d, t, n, i softens the consonant and y does not, so ti (to you) has a soft "t" and ty (you) a plain one.

ř, the sound Czech is famous for

You know it from the composer Dvořák, which English speakers usually say as "DVOR-zhak". That is a fair start: ř is a trilled r and a "zh" made in one movement, the tongue tip vibrating while the hiss runs through it. Practise with řeka (river), dveře (door), tři (three). Czech children often learn it last of all their sounds, so give yourself time. After a voiceless consonant it turns voiceless too: tři sounds closer to "trshi".

Small things that give you away

p, t, k come without the puff of air English puts on them at the start of a word: hold your hand in front of your mouth, say pivo (beer), and nothing should blow. ou is one syllable, close to the "oh" of go: jsou (they are), mouka (flour). And voiced consonants turn voiceless at the end of a word: hrad (castle) ends in a [t].

A good test sentence, and a useful one in any Prague bakery: Čerstvý chléb, prosím. - "Fresh bread, please." It packs ch, three long vowels and first-syllable stress into three words.