Talk:Slovak phonology

Expanding this article

Hello. Dvončová, Jenča & Kráľ (1969), Kráľ (1988), Pauliny (1979) and Short (2002) [all cited in the "Bibliography" section] contain way more information than there presently is in this article. Anyone who wants to expand this article should mine these sources. Peter238 (talk) 21:40, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Consonants - c & ɟ Palatal Plosives instead of tɕ & dʑ Alveolo-Palatal Affricates

The source you cited clearly says that the sounds are not purely palatal, but "strongly palatalized /t, d/" that are affricated. This is the only realization he describes, as far as I can see. It doesn't matter that Pavlik uses the symbols /c, ɟ/ as he specifies that the cardinal values of those IPA symbols are not the same as the Slovak sounds usually transcribed as such. The fact that they are grouped together with j in the table doesn't mean that they are purely palatal. Their phonetic realization is described on page 99. Sol505000 (talk) 09:28, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

It does matter - we should do what RS do when it comes to IPA transcription, bearing in mind that our IPA transcriptions are intended to be broad. And the "so that the symbols match Polish and BCS" rationale is bogus. Slovak is not Polish. The same rationale was used to change /ʃ ʒ tʃ dʒ/ to /ʂ ʐ tʂ dʐ/ which is even dodgier, IMO (see my comments on the help page talk). – filelakeshoe (t / c) 🐱 09:36, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

No, the author states that, citing: "Ďalšia dvojica slovenských explozív – [ť] a [ď] – je v IPA vydeliteľná priesečníkom palatálnosti a explozívnosti. Príslušné IPA znaky reprezentujúce tieto parametre sú [c] a [ɟ]." The outlined characteristics are palatalness and plosiveness. Aurel1510 (talk) 09:33, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

What do you mean "no"? The relevant part is literally a couple of paragraphs down (on the same page). I'm not sure what he writes above it, but he writes that the work that describes the consonants as alveolo-palatal stops with affrication is, in his opinion, more reliable. I think that he says (above) that the other study describes the consonants as more of pure palatal stops. So... what he says is the literal opposite of what you're claiming. Plus, we transcribe the Danish affricated stop with [tsʰ], even though the fricative part is not always that strong. There are no consonantal [ɕ ʑ] that could rival the fricative parts of [tɕ dʑ]. I mean we could go with [t̠ʲᶝ d̠ʲᶽ] (assuming we switch back to ⟨c ɟ⟩ elsewhere), that'd be no problem.

Except that BCS /tɕ dʑ/ are subject to a merger with /tʃ dʒ/ (which themselves should be changed to ⟨tʂ dʐ⟩, along with their fricative counterparts) to [tʃ dʒ] in a number of dialects, whereas Slovak /ʂ ʐ tʂ dʐ/ vary between retroflex and palato-alveolar. Every language has its own allophony. Slovak close front vowels are more open than the Polish /i/ as they don't have a central counterpart, unlike in Polish. Polish /i/ is like Dutch /i/, very close and very front, whereas the corresponding sound in Slovak is more like in English. There's no problem with transcribing ⟨ť ď⟩ with ⟨tɕ dʑ⟩. There's a long tradition of using ⟨c ɟ⟩ for postalveolar affricates in IPA - this, IMO, is overly broad for our purposes (see [1] for a similar problem in Dutch). ⟨tɕ dʑ⟩ shows that the sounds aren't your prototypical dorso-palatals. And, again, why is it OK to use ⟨ʂ ʐ tʂ dʐ⟩ in Polish and Russian (when almost no source does that) but suddenly it is a problem when we do it in the case of Slovak? The same applies to using ⟨tɕ dʑ⟩ in Slovak.

I'd rather hear other editors' input before we do anything. Sol505000 (talk) 07:11, 6 December 2021 (UTC)

First of all: if you want to use a source, use it. If a source doesn't use /tɕ dʑ/ or /ʂ ʐ tʂ dʐ/, please don't claim it otherwise. If a source suggest to use [^ʝ] and [^ç] for affrication, don't bring up other unclaimed notations like [t̠ʲᶝ] [d̠ʲᶽ] from nothing.

Second: Slovak is a different language. Even the Russian wikipedia uses /c, ɟ/ and /ʃ ʒ tʃ dʒ/

Maybe because <sz; ż/rz; cz> and <ш; ж> are hard in Polish as well as in Russian. <š; ž; č; dž> are soft in Slovak. In native words they cannot be followed by long velar vowels but palatal diphtongs, eg: žiadna kniha, najlepšie knihy, čiu knihu? not žádna, najlepšá, čú?. Neither Polish nor Russian has such a phenomenon.

There are also differences, how they act in clusters. eg: šťastie, angličtina, dážď. The suggestion /ʂtɕastɕɪ̯ɛ/ /aŋglitʂtɕina/ /da:ʐdʑ/ looks just unexplained. None of these clusters exist in Polish. They use /ʂtʂ/ /ɕtɕ/ /st/ or /ʂt/ and the voiced pairs in similar cases. So using a Polish-like notation creates more problems than it solves.

All the sources use /c, ɟ/ and /ʃ ʒ tʃ dʒ/ and not /tɕ dʑ/ or /ʂ ʐ tʂ dʐ/. SteifSeallan (talk) 16:07, 16 June 2022 (UTC)

I'll admit that I don't have any RS to back up my view, but the claim that ť and ď are most often realised as [tɕ] and [dʑ] in Slovak is pretty uncontroversially wrong. Do you have any sources which support this claim? Native Russian speakers not versed in linguistics usually struggle to distinguish Slovak ť and ď from Russian ть [tʲ] and дь [dʲ]; on the other hand, if we asked those same Russian speakers to transcribe Slovak words such as byť or ďaleko, not a single one of them would use ч (pronounced as [tɕ]) or дж (pronounced as [dʑ] if followed by a soft vowel such as я) in their transcription ─ not out of thousands, and probably not out of millions. I know that, not being a professional linguist, I have no authority on this, but we should at least have some common sense, right? And common sense tells us that transcribing Slovak ť and ď the same way as Russian ч and джь would be wrong. Rhosnes (talk) 18:28, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

Please ping me if you intend to reply to me. Rhosnes (talk) 18:44, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

According to the pronunciation page on SlovakE, a learning website supported by the European Commision, it is a voiced palatal plosive, not a voiced alveolo-palatal affricate. If you listen to the examples and compare them to the samples on Wikipedia, you will clearly hear that the plosive is the correct choice. Moreover, multiple people including native speakers have voiced objection to this interpretation. With due respect, can we finally get this episode over and undo the damage that has been done, please? This is not the only affected page. Sithril (talk) 22:24, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for your support, it's truly all over the place, but it still needs to be done. That being said, I don't feel like getting into it that much, as I can already imagine my edits being rejected and reverted even after stating the sources. Not to mention that the author not only stated that the characteristic attributes of the sounds are plosiveness and palatalness, he even included the symbols /c, ɟ/ in the text and in his final summary IPA table, it's unreasonable to change that to different symbols simply because he also stated that the sounds might not always be purely palatal. But that is a matter of course, I believe, as you simply cannot make your tongue touch precisely and only a single spot and nothing else, you'd have to cut out the front half to achieve complete palatalness. Not to mention the assimilation and dialects among other factors that influence the speech. But we're talking about modern standard Slovak language and not the Rusini dialect or whatever other eastern dialect, standard Slovak! Aurel1510 (talk) 23:34, 8 January 2022 (UTC)