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Lesson 4. Voiced and voiceless: h and ch, devoicing, and stress on prepositions
I can tell voiced h from voiceless ch and say h with voice, never silently; spell a word as it's written, not as it sounds (hlad, podpis, mráz); and stress a short preposition: do kina.
h and ch
h and ch: a voiced and voiceless pair
ch is one letter (in the alphabet it comes after h) and one sound, like the ch of Scottish “loch”: air rubs at the back of the mouth, as in chleba “bread”. Never the ch of “church”, never k.
h is the voiced partner of ch: the same place in the throat, but with voice. Say “aha” and let the throat buzz through the h: hlava “head”, hora “mountain”, hodina “hour”. Never silent, never g. h and ch are a pair, voiced and voiceless, like b and p.
Listen for the voice: h buzzes (hlava, hora), ch only rubs (chleba).
The letter g appears almost only in borrowed words: guláš “goulash”.
The checker tells h and ch apart: “chora” for hora is a mistake.
Common mistakes:
• × hlava with a plain English h — the h has voice.
• × “hleba” — chleba is spelled with ch.
• × ch as in “church” — ch always sounds like the ch of “loch”.
h and ch
h is the voiced partner of voiceless ch, as b is of p.
| Letter | Sound | Word | Translation | Hint |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| h | voiced: the throat buzzes | hlava | head | say “aha” and let the h buzz; never silent, never g |
| ch | like ch in “loch” | chleba | bread | never the ch of “church” |
| g | like g in “go” | guláš | goulash | almost only in words borrowed from other languages |
Lesson notes
h and ch: a voiced and voiceless pair
ch is one letter (in the alphabet it comes after h) and one sound, like the ch of Scottish “loch”: air rubs at the back of the mouth, as in chleba “bread”. Never the ch of “church”, never k.
h is the voiced partner of ch: the same place in the throat, but with voice. Say “aha” and let the throat buzz through the h: hlava “head”, hora “mountain”, hodina “hour”. Never silent, never g. h and ch are a pair, voiced and voiceless, like b and p.
Listen for the voice: h buzzes (hlava, hora), ch only rubs (chleba).
The letter g appears almost only in borrowed words: guláš “goulash”.
The checker tells h and ch apart: “chora” for hora is a mistake.
Common mistakes:
• × hlava with a plain English h — the h has voice.
• × “hleba” — chleba is spelled with ch.
• × ch as in “church” — ch always sounds like the ch of “loch”.
Spell the word, not the sound; stress on prepositions
Unlike English, a voiced consonant at the end of a word or before a voiceless consonant sounds voiceless: zub “tooth” [zup], muž “man” [muš], všechno “everything” [fšechno]. h at the end sounds voiceless too: trh “market” [trch].
Spell the word, not the sound: zub with b, muž with ž. The checker sees the letter: “zup” is a mistake.
It also works the other way: before a voiced consonant a voiceless one sounds voiced — kde “where” [gde]. Just learn to recognize it.
A one-syllable preposition takes the stress: do kina “to the movies” — do is stressed; na poště “at the post office” — na is stressed. A one-consonant preposition (v, z) makes no syllable: v Praze “in Prague” — Pra- is stressed.
Length and stress are different things: the stress is always on the first syllable, and any syllable can be long: in rohlík the stress is on roh-, and -lík is just long.
Common mistakes:
• × “zup”, “muš” in writing — write zub, muž.
• × stress on ki- in do kina — the preposition do is stressed.