This mini course of 6 lessons will guide you through the alphabet, the pronunciation of Czech characters, and stress and intonation in sentences.
Czech Alphabet
The Czech alphabet has 42 letters and contains all 26 traditional international letters. The reason for such a high number is the fact that there are many special characters including diacritical marks such as caron, acute and ring.
Special Characters
Apart from the 26 basic latin characters, the Czech alphabet has 11 more special characters with extra diacritical signs and one unique letter CH.
Softening of Consonants
Softening of consonants means that certain syllables are pronounced differently with a weaker sound. It happens when a syllable contains a certain consonant in combination with letters Ě or I.
Pronouncing Diphthongs
A diphthong is a sound formed by the combination of two vowels (a, e, i, o, u) next to each other. The most common ones are au, ou and eu. Unlike other languages, Czech strictly keeps the sound of both individual vowels.
Assimilation
Assimilation is a sound change where certain letters are pronounced in an easier way. Most languages have assimilation to a certain extent and the Czech rules are quite intuitive.
Stress and Intonation
The stress of all Czech words falls on the first syllable without any exceptions. Also, in pronunciation, one-syllable prepositions merge with the following word and carry the stress.
Pronunciation Exercises
There are plenty of opportunities to try the phonetic rules from the previous six lessons. The materials in this final lesson include names of Czech films, famous personalities and cities.
