* Czech

This document uses ISO8859-2 encoding. If your browser did not show accented characters correctly, go to the encoding-safe version of this page, where Czech orthography will be expressed by other means. Here is the standard sentence for encoding verification - you should see the same letters in both lines:

"pøíli¹ ¾lu»ouèký kùò úpìl ïábelské ódy" ... with accents

"prilis zlutoucky kun upel dabelske ody" ... without accents


SAMPA           ORTHOGRAPHIC    SAMPA           ENGLISH
SYMBOL          TRANSCRIPTION   TRANSCRIPTION   TRANSLATION

Vowels

There are five short and five long vowels in Czech. 

i               my¹             miS             mouse
e               les             les             forest
a               pas             pas             passport
o               rok             rok             year
u               kus             kus             piece

i:              pít             pi:t            to drink
e:              lék             le:k            drug
a:              rád             ra:t            glad
o:              móda            mo:da           fashion
u:              pùl             pu:l            half

diphthongs

o_u             mouka           mo_uka          flour
a_u             auto            a_uto           car

schwa (reduced vowel, turned e in IPA):

@            DTW          d@t@v@       spelling of DTW

Consonants:

plosives:

p               pes             pes             dog
b               bota            bota            shoe
t               tam             tam             there
d               dùm             du:m            house
c               tito            cito            these
J\              dìd             J\et            grandfather
k               krk             kr=k            neck
g               kde             gde             where

affricates:

t_s             cíl             t_si:l          aim
d_z             leckdy          led_zgdi        at times
t_S             èas             t_Sas           time
d_Z             d¾bán           d_Zba:n         jug

fricatives:

f               forma           forma           form
v               vak             vak             bag
s               sen             sen             dream
z               zub             zup             tooth
P\              øád             P\a:t           order
S               ¹aty            Sati            clothes
Z               ¾al             Zal             regret
j               jas             jas             brightness
x               chata           xata            cottage
h\              had             h\at            snake

liquids

r               ret             ret             lip
l               led             let             ice

nasals:

m               mák             ma:k            poppy
n               noc             not_s           night
N               banka           baNka           bank
J               nic             Jit_s           nothing

The symbols described below are not required in the Czech SAMPA transcription. It is however likely that people interested in more detailed transcription would define and use their own symbols for the phenomena mentioned below, so we rather define a common symbols here:

  1. syllabic versions of consonants (thought the sound is the same)
    2. l=              vlk             vl=k            wolf
m=              osm             osm=            eight
r=              krk             kr=k            neck
  2. additional allophones:
    3. PHONE     ALLOPHONE OF     ORTHOGRAPHY    TRANSCRIPTION      MEANING

F         m                tramvaj        traFvaj            tram
G         x                abych byl      abiGbil            so as I am
Q\        P\               tøi            tQ\i               three
  3. additional diphthongs:
    4. e_u             euforie         e_uforie        euphoria
and maybe also diphthongs like /a_j/, /e_j/ etc.

Reasoning and explanation can be found in:

and all the discussions are in: http://noel.feld.cvut.cz/sampa

This design is very compatible with overall design of prof. Wells, so it may be possible to borrow from other languages. For example, when asked to spell certain Czech names of foreign origin (e.g. Häusler, Röder, Müller), some speakers produce sounds very different from Czech phones but close to German ones. Therefore three phones from German SAMPA are also used in transcription of spelled items in Czech SPEECHDAT: 

E:              ä
2:              ö
y:              ü

SAMPA home page

This page was created 2001 November 22 on the initiative of a group of Czech researchers interested in speech technology, namely (in alphabetical order):