PHONETICS AND PHONOLOGY
Segmental Aspects

Quality of consonant phonemes does not differ as much as it does in vowels in English and Slovak. There are consonant phonemes pronounced almost the same in both languages: b, d, g, f, v, s, z, ʃ, ʒ, ʧ, ʤ, m, n, j, and the ones that are used in both languages, but their pronunciation is considerably different: p, t, k (if aspirated), liquids l, r and h (voiced in Slovak, but voiceless in English). The consonants functioning as phonemes that are found only in English, never in Slovak, are: θ, δ (represented by the digraph th in the written form), η (pronounced when n is followed or preceded by k or g) and w (pronounced with rounded lips). The consonants only found in Slovak, but not in English, are the sibilants c, dz, the voiceless velar fricative ch /x/, the palatalised ď, ť, ň, ľ, and the long consonants ĺ, ŕ (Bázlik, Miškovičová, 2012).

In Slovak, there are some single letters representing two sounds. These are the graphemes q pronounced /kv/, x /ks/ and ô /ŭo/. On the other hand, some digraphs (i.e. two-letter characters) are pronounced as a single phoneme – dz /dz/, dž /ʤ/ and ch /x/. In English, on the other hand, none of the dental or sibilant phonemes /θ δ ʃ ʒ ʧ ʤ/ corresponds to only a single grapheme.

There is one more phenomenon that exists in English only, while it does not occur in Slovak. These are so-called silent letters. Silent, also called mute letters, are the letters which are found only in the written form of words, but they are never transformed to phonemes, so they are never pronounced in the spoken form of words, e.g. castle /ka:sl/, knee /ni:/. Both the vowels and the consonants can have a zero phonemic realisation, even within one word, e.g. though /δəʋ/ contains six graphemes, but only three phonemes. The reason for having such a specific feature in English is definitely connected with etymology (historical development) of such words.