Strč prst skrz krk

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Waveform and spectrogram for the Czech expression.
Milan Cabrnoch 2014

Strč prst skrz krk (pronounced [str̩tʃ pr̩st skr̩s kr̩k] (About this soundlisten)) is a Czech and Slovak tongue-twister meaning "stick a finger through the throat".[1]

The sentence is well known for being a semantically and syntactically valid clause without a single vowel, the nucleus of each syllable being a syllabic r, a common feature among many Slavic languages. It is often used as an example of such a phrase when learning Czech or Slovak as a foreign language.[1]

In fact, both Czech and Slovak have two syllabic liquid consonants, the other being syllabic l. (There is also the syllabic bilabial nasal m in sedm in Czech.) As a result, there are plenty of words without vowels. Examples of long words of this type are scvrnkls, čtvrthrst,[2] and čtvrtsmršť,[3] the latter two being artificial occasionalisms.

There are other examples of vowelless sentences in Czech and Slovak, such as , meaning "a mole farted through grass, having swallowed a handful of grains".[4]

The longest Czech vowelless sentence (with 25 words and 82 consonants) as of 2013 is Škrt plch z mlh Brd pln skvrn z mrv prv hrd scvrnkl z brzd skrz trs chrp v krs vrb mls mrch srn čtvrthrst zrn.[5] The meaning of the sentence is: Stingy dormouse from Brdy mountains fogs full of manure spots firstly proudly shrank a quarter of handful seeds, a delicacy for mean does, from brakes through bunch of Centaurea flowers into scrub of willows. IPA pronunciation of this sentence is [ʃkr̩t pl̩x zml̩x br̩t pl̩n skvr̩n zmr̩f pr̩f ɦr̩t st͡svrn̩kl̩ zbr̩st skr̩s tr̩s xr̩p fkr̩s vr̩p ml̩s mr̩x sr̩n t͡ʃtvrdɦr̩st zr̩n].

See also[]

References[]

  1. ^ Jump up to: a b Le virelangue – jazykolam : strč prst skrz krk. Radio Prague (in French).
  2. ^ Wilson, James (2010). Moravians in Prague: A Sociolinguistic Study of Dialect Contact in the Czech Republic. ISBN 9783631586945.
  3. ^ http://www.ujc.cas.cz/jazykova-poradna/porfaq.html#nej Archived 9 March 2013 at the Wayback Machine
  4. ^ Francis Tapon (22 May 2017). "Czechia Has Won The Czech Republic Name Debate"". Forbes.
  5. ^ "Blba vlka porazil škrt plch. Nejdelší souhlásková věta má 30 znaků navíc". iDNES.cz. 25 September 2013. Retrieved 29 March 2021.


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