PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY
Segmental Aspects

The term transcription may be confused with the term transliteration.

While transcription is a system of phonetic notation that makes studying pronunciation of foreign languages easier, transliteration converts any written text from one writing system (alphabet) into another in order to ease pronunciation of the words and names in foreign languages, e.g. from Cyrillic, Chinese, Arabic to Latin characters – e.g. партия to partiya. Transliteration is not interested in representing the phonemics of the original: it only strives to represent the characters accurately (https://www.definitions.net/definition/).

Transcription deals with spoken performance, while transliteration focuses on the written text (predominantly the names of people or geographical names).

In Slavic languages, the letters s, z, š, ž, c, dz, č, dž are commonly used for sibilants (sykavky). In Slovak, these are also used in written texts, but in English, no letters for š, ž, č or dž exist (no graphemes represent these sounds). Sibilants š, ž, č, dž are only used in speech as phonemes /ʃ ʒ ʧ ʤ/.  The Slovak letter š is transliterated into English as sh, z as zh, č as ch (e.g. the Slovak surname Štúr is transliterated as Shtoor). A similar situation is connected with e.g. the Slovak phoneme /x/ defined as the voiceless velar fricative consonant which is represented in the written form by the digraph ch. This sound is transliterated into English as a grapheme cluster kh. Transliteration is dealt with e.g. by Bázlik and Miškovičová in their publication Pravidlá výslovnosti britskej a americkej angličtiny (2012, p. 35).