23 Comments
It's interesting that several of these consonant-ending feminine words are words that in Russian end with a feminine soft sign. I wonder if Russian borrowed them and added the soft sign because they were feminine, or if Czech took them and simply retained the femininity that was caused by the soft sign.
what probably happened is that they both descended from a common proto-Slavic ancestor word and diverged as Russian and Czech became separate languages
Which kind of words are you meaning? I don't know Russian and i'm noob at czech but Im curioooouuus :3.
NOC in czech and in Russian it is (when written in latin alphabet) NOCH or NOČ
I think I understand now. But in this example I dont understand the "soft" sound. I mean... czech "c" is fricative, and "ch" is affricate, ze? Do you consider "c" softer than "ch"?
Maybe I didnt understand it very well
(But there's no glory for cowards! xD)
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In Czech, both "c" [t͡s] and "č" [t͡ʃ] are voiceless affricates. The first one is alveolar, the second one postalveolar.
For orthography issues, they are both considered so called "soft consonants", that means that they are always followed by "i" and not "y" in writing - except for words of foreign origin (e.g. cyklista) and in case of "c" also some plural forms of masculine inanimate - e.g. tácy (trays), puncy (hallmarks), kecy (rubbish, nonsense) etc.
In Czech you have "č" and "c". The letter "č" is pronounced just like the "Cz" is in the word "Czech" in English (or like "ch" is in the word "chocolate"). The letter "c" is pronounced like "ts" in the English (well, japanese, but anyway) word "tsunami" or like the letter "z" is pronounced (usually) in German and Italian.
I don't know the linguistic terms, so I can't tell you which is affricate and which is fricative and I'm not sure what you mean by "soft". Czech has no soft signs (which I think look like lowercase b in the Russian alphabet) and I don't know how those are supposed to be pronounced (I don't speak any Russian). Maybe Russians write the Czech letter "č" like "c" (if written in our alphabet) plus the soft sign?
In Russian, we say noch' (ночь) - night, it sounds like soft "ch". In Russian, to make consonants sound softly, you need to put a "soft sign" on the end of the consonat letter. For example: "Плач" (Plach) means "weeping" (noun), but "Плачь" (Plach') means "cry!"(verb). But in fact these words sound the same in speaking. Better example would be "Фен" (Fen) - "hair dryer" and "День" (Den') - "day".
I said bad evening and it was incorrect. Can we say evening? like in dobrou noc?
Noc = night (think of "nocturnal")
Večer = evening (think of the Č as the sun going down)
hey everyone! i'm having a hard time with conjugation... why is it "dobrOU noc" and "špatnA noc?" if it's "špatná" then why not use the feminine form of dobry too? (dobrA?) what is the different in these contexts? i hope my question makes sense. thanks!
I'm not czech, but I guess it is because the implicit verb you are using.
(Měj) dobrou noc. ACC (Je to) spatná noc. NOM
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this is indeed the reason. "noc" has the same form in nominative and accusative, but the corresponding (feminine) adjective "dobrá" must be "dobrou" in accusative.
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Would one use this phrase in the same way you'd say "wrong night?" That is, if someone were asking me if an event was happening on a particular night, would it be correct of me to respond with "Špatná noc!" ?
I guess it would be correct to say that in that specific case but it would also not be particularly clear what you want to say (if all you say are these two words). It would be grammatically correct, but it would be more natural and comprehensible to say something like:"Je to jinou noc" (i.e "it is on a different night").
The audio sounds like it is saying the 'á' twice, i.e 'špatna a noc' - am I mishearing or does the accent sometimes clone the vowel rather than lengthen it?
Yes. I hear it the same way as well. I think it's an error in the audio. All other recordings say it correctly.
in Czech, I'm assuming they pronounce it sCHpatna and in moldova they say 'spatna'? Am I right? I'm a beginner so I am asking somebody who knows :)
