Basically Czech accent in English means: - regressive assimilation of voice - no aspiration - stress placement on the first syllable - reluctance to pronounce interdental consonants properly - pronouncing /w/ as /v/ - pronouncing/-ing/ as /-ink/ - pronouncing diphthongs as monophthongs - ignorance of the schwa /ə/ sound - ignorance of weak forms - using flat intonation - no linking
@@narratormatt It basically means that they pronounce every word the way it would be pronounced in isolation. For example in "How do you know?" native English speakers will not pronounce do as /du:/ and you as /ju:/. Instead, thanks to the dynamics of stressed-unstressed words in a sentence, they will naturally use weak forms of those words - /də/ and /jə/. Often together it will become just /djə/ or /dʒə/. Weak forms are very common in spoken English but most Czech people don't even know they exist. Another example is "you and me". And will not be pronounced as /ænd/ here. Instead it would be just /ən/. But Czech people pronounce every word in its full form, as if it was standing in isolation.
Good job, for me typical czech accent is director Milos Forman , if you play some of his speeches (especially from 70s) he has quite typical czech accent imho 🙂
As a czech I think you got few of these details right, but in total, to me, it doesn´t sound like czech accent at all. I have always worked to get rid of my accent, so I am focusing on the same subject from the opposite perspective. Maybe you can find some of these helpful.. personally I don´t think kick would be pronounced as gick (as opposed to ending G pronouced as K and D as T - which is fairly standard in czech). For me a major red light in my head when I hear somebody speaking with accent that hints to czech is the way P, T and K are pronounced. English native speakers pronouce P(h), T(h) and K(h) as if they were breathing out while making the sound a little (or more) than is neccessary to make the sound. Czech pronounce P, T and K sound were strictly making only the P,T or K sound immediatly followed by another letter without the audible (h) sound or the slight breath out. Another thing maybe not so tangible, but probably causing the whole speech not sound much as originating from czech is that in czech the stress is always on the beggining of the word.
This was actually really great! You pointed out things about czech accent that I've never noticed before. HOWEVER, there's still place for improvement because you left out the most obvious ones. For example when you have really bad english speaker they pronounce the Rs how they're right in czech (with the ring sound to it). AND most importantly, we don't intonate, we only intonate on words like "ahoj = hello, Dobrý večer = Good evening, Dobrou noc = Good night" and so on and at the last word in questions. I've heard from an American how flat our sentences are. Also I should've said this right away but one thing you completely missed out on is the W and V; when you pronounce them your teeth *need* to touch your bottom lip! Hope this helped! :)
This actually sets me free to push harder into things that would normally be seen as over-the-top. Tell me: If there's no intonation... how do we know when the person is angry, happy, etc? Is is just one long angry tone per sentence?
@@narratormatt ummm well the intonation... When you speak in English your voice goes up and down on each word, right? Well not in czech, BUT we still do have tones. (It's hard to explain without sound) In czech you drop your voice at the end of every sentence ending in a dot, in question mark you raise the voice (almost sounds like you're trynna sing it) and in exclamation mark you add more emphasis at the end when it's a command. The emotion is all in the tone of your voice and in the words. Example is that when you're happy your voice can exponentially rise throughout your whole speech but it's one steady tone (minus interpunciation) /said in a nutshell ughhh I'm sorry this is such a bad explanation, I'm really sorry 😅
@@GenderNotFound._. Well, how's this for contrast: In General American, we tend to start medium, go up high, then glide down, ending firmly. For you it sounds like you start on a tone, keep it and drop it right at the end, unless it's an exclamation. Sound right? Or closer to right?
Sorry, it's not Czech accent at all. But don't be sad about it. Czech accent is very hard to nail without some basic understanding of Czech language and its phonology. I think the greatest and most stereotypical Czech accents are from politicians speaking English. 1. President Zeman: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-phxVhJubLYw.html 2. Politician (absolutely stereotypical): ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-K13njP5RdXw.html 3. Czech skier (it's a big meme in Czechoslovakia, he's speaking a mix of English, German and Czech) ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-8Xm0zLDyoVQ.html 4. Czech guy explaining things about Czech accent in a light Eastern Czech (Moravian) accent: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Bo6lxFRHTkA.html Slovak language is very similar to Czech and although our accents in English sound different, there are also many similarities on a worldwide scale. Here are some perfect stereotypical examples: 1. President Čaputová: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-WisfTZf2FAQ.html 2. Ex-president Kiska: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-PJKXYEszhcI.html
Je mi líto, ale obávám se že jsi český akcent vůbec netrefil. ;) Protože češi v angličtině často nekladou vůbec žádný důraz na písmena, respektive kladou na ně stejný důraz bez rozdílu. Dál neumí rozlišovat V a W a říkají obě písmena stejně. Plus například "TH" vyslovují jako "D" a spousta dalších věcí. Jsem si jistý že kdyby jsi si měl možnost naživo poslechnout čecha s těžkým přízvukem, poznal bys okamžitě že v tomhle videu jsi to moc netrefil. ;) Každopádně ale oceňuju jako rodilý čech tvůj pokus! :) I'm sorry, but I'm afraid you didn't hit the Czech accent at all. ;) Because Czechs in English often do not place any emphasis on letters at all, or rather place the same emphasis on them without distinction. Furthermore, we cannot distinguish much between V and W and they say both letters the same. Plus, for example, we pronounce "TH" as "D" and a lot of other things. I'm sure that if you had the opportunity to listen to a Czech live with a heavy accent, you would immediately know that you didn't get much hit in this video. ;) Anyway, but I appreciate your attempt as a native Czech! :)
Nice vid! Incidentally, in English, the name of the country Monaco is not pronounced "Mon-Ah-co." Rather, it's MAh'-ni-coh with the stress on the first syllable.
Huh, I never thought of it that way but I can see how the chunky trilled consonants can seem Scottish. However, mind the musicality: Scottish has it by the doze whereas Czech sounds much more reserved... at least to my ear.
Whole Czech language can be pronounced with closed mouth, if you have to open your mouth and crawl out tongue, it's not real Czech accent then. BTW Czech doesn't have rolled R like Russian so be careful about that, foreigners tend to pretend Russian accent and think it's Czech accent, but it's not. Czech R is somewhere between English and Russian R.
Yeah the closed mouth definitely captures my experience with the Czech accent. I think the R takes care of itself if we follow the closed-mouth principle. Very difficult to roll it in that position.
Would you say its more of a flip than a roll? Ive never been able to roll my r's, so i ended up doing a similar motion to how japanese pronounces the r/l sound, and from what i can tell, it sounds like a similar sound to how r's are pronounced in czech.
@@leislingvoss1547 I checked few videos about pronunciation of Japan R and in most of words I hear just D instead of R, but in some other words, it sounds slightly similar to Czech R, some people pronounce R differently, someone is rolling more and someone has R almost like in English, those people may have some tongue defect and probably had to visiting logopedist when they were little kids, so it's hard to say what is real Czech R. Czech R is always clearly R, it's not turning to D or L like in some asian langauges and it's not silent like in English, but it's not even RRRRR like in Russian or Italian, but it's more close to Russian than English. I would say on scale where English R is 0 and Russian R is 100, Czech R is somewhere around 60-70. It's similar to Russian R, but don't do RRRRR, say just one single and fast R sound. I would say that Czech R sounds very similar to Scottish R, but again, their pronunciation can be very inconsistent because they live under influence of English. I also noticed thatn Scotish CH sounds is almost same as Czech Ch.
