(since 29. 4. 2007)
J. Kumičák
Americans, looking for their ancestors in Slovakia, are usually perplexed by the correct pronunciation of Slovak names. The purpose of this short note is to help them to read Slovak texts in such a way that their pronunciation would be correct at least approximately, bearing in mind that perfect pronunciation is not only difficult but also unnecessary. The author is born Slovak, he is theoretical physicist educated also in linguistics and having experiences with problems facing Americans when trying to grasp the fundamentals of Slovak pronunciation.
In my opinion the correct pronunciation is helped much by knowing the history of reading and writing in the given language. That is why I will start with brief explanation of relevant history. But first we must introduce a few notions. Spoken language consists of sentences, which consist of words, which consist of syllables, which consist of sounds. The scientific name for the smallest element able to change the meaning of a word is phoneme. The sounds f and l denote distinct phonemes in English, because they represent the only difference between the words fist and list. The smallest element of written language has the scientific name grapheme. In the above example f and l are graphemes, as are sh, ch, y, a, etc. Practically all letters and groups of letters meant to denote a single sound are graphemes.
Now it should be evident that the founding fathers of writing/reading (or orthography) tried to create a one-to-one correspondence (in mathematical language called a bijection) between phonemes and graphemes. Otherwise they would have to have serious reasons for introducing a grapheme which would be pronounced differently in different contexts as is nowadays e.g. the case of a in words cap, stake, among. Can you image such reasons? I bet you cannot suggest a single one! In times of Geoffrey Chaucer (1340-1400) the same graphemes were actually pronounced as the same phonemes. So the a in the above example was pronounced appoximately as u in cup in all three situations. The orthography preserving the bijection is usually called phonetic – English orthography was thus originally phonetic.
A long time elapsed since the death of G. Chaucer and during centuries to follow English pronunciation was gradually changing. Changes in spoken language, however, were not followed by changes in written language with the result that a discrepancy between written and spoken language appeared and was all the time growing – the orthography of English ceased to be phonetic. Written language thus witnesses the pronunciation which was alive centuries ago. The easy proof is given by comparing English with related languages like German, the pronunciation of which changed very little. If you know German, compare English words name, word, new, wise with German Name, Wort, neu, wissen.
On the contrary, the founding fathers of Slovak orthography started their work only recently, around 1840, so that the pronunciation had no time to depart from the written language even if it would be prone to such a tendency (but it is not). That is why the one-to-one correspondence between reading and writing is almost 100% by now in Slovak and the orthography is strictly phonetic: Slovaks use to say that they read text as it is written. So we come to the
FIRST RULE: Pronounce a grapheme (letter) always the same way, irrespective of its position in a word. As an example, the grapheme a must sound the same in all the following words: matka, starec, azda. You should firmly learn only one pronunciation of every grapheme and avoid changing it the "English way". If you manage this, you will at the same time learn how to pronounce English texts the way they sounded in the 13th century!
To understand Slovak pronunciation it is sufficient to add just one rule which I will call the
SECOND RULE: use always only the one-to-one correspondence – bijection – between Slovak phonemes and graphemes given by the following list:
a is pronounced as u in cup – never as a in name
b as in English
c as ts in tsetse – never as in can, cider
ch as ch in loch – never as in child
d as in English
e as e in pen – never as in me, home
f as in English
g as g in great – never as in gentle
h as h in home
i as e in me – never as in like
j as y in yard – never as in jail
k as k in krypton – never as in keen
l as in English
m as in English
n as in English
o as o in rob – never as in old
r as r in ready – never as in nor, neither
s as s in simple
t as t in try – never as in tea
u as u in put – never as in cup, cute
v as v in view
x as x in extra
y as i in pick – never as y in cry (i and y stand for identical phonemes in Slovak!)
z as z in zebra.
Remark: Adding q pronounced as kv and oe pronounced as long é, the above list can be used for reading Latin texts!
Slovak letters have frequently diacritics. The dash ´ above vowels means they are pronounced longer: á should be pronounced about twice as long as a, approximately as aa, í is pronounced as ee in English deep. Other diacritics are given explicitly:
č as ch in chip
ď approximately as dj in Slovak
ľ approximately as lj in Slovak
ň approximately as nj in Slovak
ô approximately as uo in Slovak
š as sh in shadow
ť approximately as tj in Slovak
ž exactly as j in French Jacques (Chirac), jeux
dž as j in jump
ä as a in cat (ä and e are almost identical phonemes in Slovak! They are properly called allophones of the same phoneme.)
Remark: It is true that founding fathers of Slovak orthography avoided the bijection in two less important cases: (1) they introduced two graphemes i and y for one and the same sound, the reasons being historical: the sounds sounded different in the older language from which Slovak evolved, as witnessed by Russian and Ruthenian where the different allophones still exist; (2) they omitted diacritics in groups de, te, ne, le, di, ti, ni, li which should be pronounced as ďe, ťe, ňe, ľe, ďi, ťi, ňi, ľi – but, unfortunately, not always. Modern view is that both exceptions were erroneous and some are suggesting to correct them.
Many English phonemes do not exist in Slovak. I mention just a few of them: th as in this, thin, w as in why, p as in pen, t as in tea, er as in bigger. So you shoul avoid using them by mistake.
Hopefully, the two rules are everything you need to be able to pronounce the majority of Slovak words. After some practice you should check your proficience, trying to read carefully the following sentence written in Slovak:
Aj kennot andrstend uot ar ju sejing.
You are already quite good in Slovak if you have noticed that you actually pronounced the following English sentence:
I cannot understand what are you saying.
A few more examples follow:
It mej bi júzful for jú tu ríd sam slouvek sentnsiz laudli.
It may be useful for you to read some Slovak sentences loudly.Jú ken lrn slouvek saundz ívn not híring slouveks spíking.
You can learn Slovak sounds even not hearing Slovaks speaking.Slouvek lengvidž majt sím ikstrímli difiklt et frst bat prektis mejks prfikt az ju nou.
Slovak language might seem extremely difficult at first but practice makes perfect as you know.Evri čajld iz ejbl to lrn eny lengvidž – uaj šud ju not?
Every child is able to learn any language – why should you not?If ju hev gud dikšnri ju ken traj lrning uan vrd dejli – prnaunsiejšn šudnt bi big problem baj nau.
If you have good dictionary you can try learning one word daily – pronunciation should'nt be big problem by now.
I conclude the examples by a curiosity – a child's "quicksaying" meant to check the ability of Slovak children to master the pronunciation of their native language:
Strč prst skrz krk, with the meaning "Put your finger through your throat". As the PhD student I was very much surprised finding this sentence in the monograph M. Reed, B. Simon, Methods of Modern Mathematical Physics, Vol. II, Academic Press, New York 1975 at the end of Section IX.9. After carefull observation I concluded that the authors wished to say that the five page long mathematical proof of theorem IX.41 was extremely breakneck ... Surely, a Slovak student had to suggest the sentence to the authors.
I would like to stress that Slovak is not the only language with bijection between phonemes and graphemes, i.e. with phonetic orthography. Actually, the majority of European languages is quite similar in this respect (notable exception being French)! I would say English is the most unpleasant exception of generally observed bijection. This explains why Slovaks have practically no problems pronouncing the majority of languages – except English – and why Americans have the problems with almost all languages.
Ironically then, the speakers of English have problems with pronunciation of the simplest words which represent no problems for the rest of Westerners. I was always surprised at awkward transcriptions of Latin words knowing that Latin is for more than twenty centuries international language with phonetic orthography. Using the above two rules you will not need pronunciation "aids" for Latin words like the ones found e.g. in MedlinePlus Encyclopedia (which are many times even incorrect since Latin pronunciation is mistaken for Italian):
Aldesleukin – al des loo' kin, Amlodipine – am loe' di peen, Bisoprolol – bis oh' proe lol, Bromocriptine – broe moe krip' teen, Capecitabine – ka pe site' a been, Daunorubicin – daw noe roo' bi sin, Diazepam – dye az' e pam (wrong transcription of ia!), Estrogen – ess' troe jen (wrong transcription of g!), Gemfibrozil – jem fi' broe zil (wrong transcription of g!), Gentamicin – jen ta mye' sin (wrong transcription of g!), Ibuprofen – eye byoo' proe fen (wrong transcription of i!), Terbutaline – ter byoo' ta leen, Kaolin – kay' oh lin (wrong transcription of a!), Ofloxacin – oh floks' a sin, Oxycodone – ox i koe' done (wrong transcription of last two o's!), Ribavirin – rye ba vye' rin (wrong transcription of first two i's!), Unoprostone – yoo no praas tone (wrong transcription of u and all o!), Ursodiol – er' soe dye ol (wrong transcription of u!).
Allow me to conclude with a bit personal remark. As you certainly know, the classical church music (e.g. masses by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Verdi) is sung in Latin. Slovaks pronounce the Latin text perfectly with no need to learn the correct pronunciation. But English pronunciation is simply awful. If the English performers of recordings do not know the correct pronunciation, they will incredibly spoil the magnificent musical pieces. I give just a few examples found in recordings, first giving the Latin text which sounds perfect when pronounced in Slovak (with just a few exceptions), then I transcribe English pronunciation found in recordings with the help of Slovak orthography:
Regina coeli – ridžajna kejlaj
et resurrexit tertia die secundum Scripturas – et rizrexit teršja dij skundm skripčrz
Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata mundi – aňz dej ki toulz pekat mandi
dona nobis pacem – doun noubiz pejsm
sanctus Dominus Deus – senktz dominz dijs
Jesus Christus – džízs krajsts
The difference you see is the difference I hear. That is why I hate many English and American recordings of church music. When listenening to texts sung in such a way I am shivering.
Why are musical interprets not taught how to correctly pronounce Latin text, why do they think that any language has to be pronounced as English? I hope my short note demonstrates that a lesson of correct pronunciation of Latin/Slovak would be quite feasible for anyone not excluding famous performers. This leads me to the suggestion for American schools: why not introduce a few lessons to teach simple rules of Latin pronunciation at elementary schools – no awkward transcriptions would then be necessary!
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(since 29. 4. 2007)