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[Victor Steinbok]

When I was 8, my favorite Czech name was Jiri Trnka (a few missing
diacritics, as I "knew" the name to sound like [Irzhi Tr at nkah] or
[JIrzhi]). Of course, a handful of Slovak cities kept it interesting too
(Brno, Trnava), both names and places known from watching hockey games.
It never occurred to me at the time that [r] could be incorporating a
hidden vowel, although I knew from Latvian and Lithuanian that marked
literals could represent consonant clusters.

     VS-)

On 3/6/2014 1:23 PM, Joel S. Berson wrote:
> At 3/6/2014 12:18 AM, Victor Steinbok wrote:
>> Many Russians feel the same way about Czech, especially Czech
>> names--where do the vowels go?
> Victor has put his finger precisely on my problem.  I didn't see enough vowels.
>
> Joel
>
>
>>      VS-)
>>
>> On 3/5/2014 1:13 PM, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>>> Which is why in my graduates school days I gave up trying to learn
>>> Russian -- I couldn't pronounce it.  (This actually was one locution
>>> the instructor assigned the class during its first week.  Was he
>>> using it as an intentional weeding out "shibboleth"?)
>>>
>>> Joel

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