PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY
Segmental Aspects
SLOVAK DIPHTHONGS
Slovak diphthongs: ĭa ĭe ĭu ŭo
In English, as presented above, diphthongs can be pronounced as falling or rising, but the general tendency is to pronounce them as falling.
In Slovak, there is the opposite situation – Slovak diphthongs are rising. The first component of the diphthong is weakened, being pronounced only as a semivowel /ĭ/ or /ŭ/ (Mistrík, 1984), while the second part constitutes the centre of the diphthong. When pronouncing Slovak diphthongs, these are not really pronounced as combinations of /i/ plus /a/, /e/, /u/ or /u/ plus /o/, but Slovak users articulate /ĭ/ combined with the second segment which is either /a/, /e/ or /u/, while in the case of /o/, it is /ŭ/. Thus, the Slovak diphthong ia is pronounced as /ĭa/, e.g. diaľka /ďĭaľka/, the diphthong ie /ĭe/, e.g. dieťa /ďĭeťa/, the diphthong iu /ĭu/, e.g. paniu /paňĭu/ and the diphthong as ô /ŭo/, e.g. kôň /kŭoň/. The Slovak diphthongs /ĭu/ and /ŭo/ are labialised, because the lips actively participate in their pronunciation, even when articulating the first segments /ĭ/ and /ŭ/.
In the Slovak vocabulary, there are a lot of words comprising the vowel cluster ou. This is mainly recognized as the inflectional gender-marked feminine ending of the instrumental case for pronouns, numerals, adjectives and nouns, e.g. s tou druhou dobrou priateľkou /s toŭ druhoŭ dobroŭ prĭaťeľkoŭ/. Although this vowel combination is often used and pronounced within one syllable rapidly and without interruption (which means that all the characteristics for diphthongs are applied), and the segments of this vowel group are inseparable as well, ou /oŭ/ is not recognised as a diphthong.
Otherwise, there are other vowel combinations in Slovak which form hiatus, e.g. kakao /ka-ka-o/, video /vi-de-o/, diéta /di-é-ta/. These vowel clusters are not diphthongs, they form hiatus.
In Slovak, the letters j and v are pronounced as semivowels /ĭ/ and /ŭ/ when they occur syllable-finally, e.g. tvoj /tvoĭ/, čítaj /ʧi:taĭ/, jav /jaŭ/, dievča /ďĭeŭʧa/. According to the direction of the tongue-movement, the Slovak diphthongs are defined as central /ĭa/, front /ĭe/, close /ĭu/ and back /ŭo/ (Mistrík, 1984).
Slovak diphthongs: ĭa ĭe ĭu ŭo
- /ĭa/ – a central diphthong – the Slovak /i/ is short spread front close, the Slovak /a/ is a short neutral central open vowel. The tongue position for /ĭ/ is more backward, and thus not thoroughly identical with that of /i/
- /ĭe/ – a front diphthong – the tongue glides from /ĭ/ to /e/ which is defined as a short neutral front mid vowel
- /ĭu/ – a close (high) diphthong which is described as labialized in the second part of its articulation. The tongue position rapidly changes from the /ĭ/-position to a short rounded back close /u/
- /ŭo/ – a back diphthong manifesting labialisation in the initial part of its articulation for /ŭ/, the tongue moves rapidly and without interruption to /o/ characterized as a short rounded back mid vowel
The diphthongs /ĭa/ and /ĭu/ present more significant differences in the tongue position for pure vowels /i/, /a/, /u/ and diphthongized /ĭ/, /a/, /u/ than in the case of /ĭe/ and /ŭo/ because the articulatory span between their segments is longer. Labialisation in the diphthongs /ĭu/ and /ŭo/ is weaker than for the monophthong /u/ (Kráľ, Sabol, 1989).
The English and Slovak diphthongs barely have some features in common. As Pavlík says: “Slovak and English diphthongs are so different in nature that no parallels can be drawn between them” (Pavlík, 2000, p. 256). The figures number 10 and 12 clearly support this conclusion.