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Can anyone help with the pronunciation of the name of a Czech bank? I am doing a voiceover tomorrow for a Finnish IT company that supplied some of their needs.

Česká spořitelna

Where does the stress come? What sounds differ from English expectations?

Thanks

You can't be me, I'm taken

by Sven Triloqvist on Wed Oct 15th, 2008 at 06:25:55 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Stress is easy: With almost no exceptions, the stress is on the first syllable, though there may be a secondary stress on long words.

The "Č" is like "Cz" in "Czech".  "á" is a long vowel, not a stress. The "ř", is some sort of mix between a rolled "r" and a "z", but I think it's basically unpronounceable for non-Czechs...

by gk (g k quattro due due sette "at" gmail.com) on Wed Oct 15th, 2008 at 06:33:48 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Thanks a lot. That tells me precisely... ;-)

Czech is like Finnish with the stress always on the first syllable.

You can't be me, I'm taken

by Sven Triloqvist on Wed Oct 15th, 2008 at 06:38:51 AM EST
[ Parent ]
And the relative of Finnish ,Hungarian, too. (Which made it hard for me to understand the concept of stress, for languages where its placement varied.)

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.
by DoDo on Wed Oct 15th, 2008 at 08:31:08 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Helsinki is always a difficult stress to reprogram in visitors ;-)

You can't be me, I'm taken
by Sven Triloqvist on Wed Oct 15th, 2008 at 09:20:05 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Where do they try to set the accent? Second or last syllable?

*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.
by DoDo on Wed Oct 15th, 2008 at 09:49:02 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Brits do it on the second. I've heard some French put it on the last - Helsinkiii. Anecdotally, the Dutch are the best with Finnish words.

Though most visitors are confused by the fact that every letter is pronounced: if there is a double t you can hear the difference with a single t etc.

You can't be me, I'm taken

by Sven Triloqvist on Wed Oct 15th, 2008 at 10:40:43 AM EST
[ Parent ]

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