Slovak Pronunciation Guide

One of the first tasks they have to get over is mastering Slovak pronunciation and to become acquainted with the phonetic value of Slovak vowels and consonants as it does not correspond to English phonetic value. So let’s go ahead and try to understand the peculiarities of   Slovak language pronunciation.

And how does one avoid the basic mistakes of pronunciation? A very frequent  spelling and pronunciation mistake is omitting the elongation marks (á, é, í, ó, ú). Do not forget that while in English there is a movable stress depending on the word ending, in Slovak the stress is on the first syllable.

If you think that you have already mastered Slovak pronunciation, let’s practice it with the following examples. But be careful and “don’t get your tongue in a twist” or as the Slovaks say, “nezlom si jazyk” (literally: “Do not break your tongue”) when you come across the words formed just from consonants.

Members of the family:
Mama - mother, otec - father, dcéra - daughter, syn - son

Months:
Január, február, marec, apríl, máj, jún, júl, august, september, október, november, december

Difficult examples:
smrdieť - to smell badly, krst - christening, hrmieť - to thunder, vrtieť sa - to fidget, skrz - through,
brnkať - to strum, prst - finger, krk - neck, kŕkať - croak, hrbatý - humpbacked, vŕzgať - creak, glgať -gulp

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