Chapter: A Comparison of English and Slovak Pronunciation Features

Question 1

1. Compare the English and the Slovak sound systems regarding the number of vowels/monophthongs.

Answer 1

The English and Slovak sound systems differ in the number of vowels and monophthongs they have.
English sound system:
12 distinctive monophthongs
Slovak sound system
11 distinctive vowels

Question 2

2. Compare the English and Slovak vowels/monophthongs. Focus on the differences between the two systems.

Answer 2

a. Number of vowel sounds
b. Vowel quality:
- the difference exists due to bigger differences between the tongue positions of the Slovak monophthongs
Slovak:
- Long monophthongs and short monophthongs are produced in the same place and we can only distinguish 5 different monophthong qualities
English:
- Distinguishes 12 monophthong qualities
c. Length distinctions:
English:
- Total vowel length depends on the following sound.
- It has 4 phonetic lengths (short clipped, short unclipped, long clipped, long unclipped) but only 2 phonological lengths (short, long)
Slovak:
- Following sound doesn’t influence phonetic length of Slovak monophthongs
- only 2 phonetic / phonological lengths (long monophthongs are approximately twice the length of short monophthons)

Question 3

3. Name the English and the Slovak diphthongs

Answer 3

English diphthongs (8):
- /eɪ/ - as in “day“
- /aɪ/ - as in “high“
- /ɔɪ/ - as in “boy“
- /aʊ/ - as in “cow“
- /oʊ/ - as in “go“
- /eə/ - as in “air“
- /ɪə/ - as in “ear“
- /ʊə/ - as in “tour“
Slovak diphthongs (4):
- /ie/ - as in “nie“
- /ia/ - as in “ľalia“
- /iu/ - as in “venovaniu“
- /uo/ - as in “vôkoľ”

Question 4

4. Briefly describe the differences between the English and the Slovak systems of consonants.

Answer 4

English:
- 24 consonants
- The phonemes /c/, /ɟ/, /x/, /ɲ/, /ʎ/, /ts/, /dz/ do not exist in its’ inventory (but these slovak phonemes are similiar to English sequences /tj-/, /dj-/, /hj-/, /nj-/, /lj-/ although the absolute quality differs
- Slovak elements /ts/ and /dz/ are broken down into separate elements in English
Slovak:
- 27 consonants
- There are no dental phonemes such as /θ/ or /ð/
- The sounds /w/ or /ŋ/ exist but only as allophonic realizations of the phonemes /v/ or /n/
- In Slovak as in English, the sound /r/ exists but the sound most often representing this phoneme in Slovak is different from that found in English

Question 5

5. Compare the English and the Slovak language in terms of aspiration.

Answer 5

In English:
- /p/, /t/, /k/ are aspirated in a stressed syllable in an onset position, e.g. Occur [əˈkɜːr]
In Slovak:
- No aspiration
- Pes, top, krk - (p, t, k) are not aspirated in the same way as their English counterparts.

Question 6

6. Compare the English and the Slovak word stress.

Answer 6

English:
- Placement of stress is free, meaning that the primary stress can be put on any syllable in English words = there is no stress pattern compulsory for all English words -> this can be seen in the fact that secondary stress can either precede or follow the main stress
Slovak:
- Particular stable stress pattern is compulsory for all words -> primary stress is always on the first syllable and the secondary stress can never precede primary stress

Question 7

7. Compare the English and the Slovak stress concerning its lexical function.

Answer 7

English:
- The stress pattern can distinguish one word from another, sometimes without any phonemic changes -> one word-class can change into another word-class mainly by means of stress
Example
“import” noun - /’impɔ:t/
“import” verb - /im’pɔ:t/
Slovak:
- stress pattern is stable and it can never distinguish between word-classes

Question 8

8. Compare the elision of the English and the Slovak Vowels

Answer 8

English:
- contextual elision of vowels can be found both within the word and the word boundary -> majority of cases of vowel elision results in reduction of the number of syllables
Example
police -> /pə’li:s/ (2 syllables) -> /’pli:s/ (1 syllable)
Slovak:
- contextual elision of vowels is rare and it is confined mainly to the morpheme boundary.
- It may occur when two vowels of identical quality meet at the word boundary and the second word of the sequence is either unstressed or carries secondary stress (this type of elision occurs only in very rapid speech)
Example
stačí iba /’statʃi: iba/ -> /’statʃ(i:)iba/