Czech phonology

This article discusses the phonological system of the Czech language.

The following chart shows a complete list of the consonant phonemes of Czech:

Phonetic notes:

The glottal stop is not a separate phoneme. Its use is optional and it may appear as the onset of an otherwise vowel-initial syllable. The pronunciation with or without the glottal stop does not affect the meaning and is not distinctive.

The glottal stop has two functions in Czech:

In the standard pronunciation, the glottal stop is never inserted between two consecutive vowels without an intervening morpheme boundary, which occurs chiefly in words of foreign origin, e.g. in the word koala.

The phonemes /f/, /g/, /d͡ʒ/ and /d͡z/ usually occur in words of foreign origin (Germanic, Romance or Greek) or dialects only. As for /f/, however, the number of words where it occurs is still significant and many of them are commonplace, e.g. fialový ('violet'), fronta ('queue' as a noun), fotit ('take photos'), doufat ('hope' as a verb). It is also used in common first names (František, Filip) and surnames (Fiala, Fišer). The phoneme /g/, though rarer than /f/, appears in frequently used words as well, e.g. graf ('graph'), gram ('gram'), grep ('grapefruit'), regulace ('regulation'). The occurrence of /d͡ʒ/ is uncommon and typically signals that the word is of English origin (e.g. džíny ← jeans), but not always (e.g. džbán ← older čbán 'jug'). The phoneme /d͡z/ is quite marginal, used mostly by dialects spoken near the border with Slovakia (see Slovak phonology).

Nevertheless, as phonemic realizations [f], [g], [d͡ʒ] and [d͡z] all four consonants also occur as allophones of /v/, /k/, /t͡ʃ/ and /t͡s/ respectively due to assimilation of voice. Moreover, affricates can phonetically occur at morpheme boundaries (see consonant merging below).