Background

Language Family: Indo-European / Slavic / West / Czech-Slovak

Also known as Slovakian, it is predominantly spoken in Slovakia, but also in Canada, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Ukraine, and the U.S.

Phonology

Consonants

Rubach (1993) states that the palatal consonants of ⟨ť⟩, ⟨ď⟩, ⟨ľ⟩, and ⟨ň⟩ are in fact pre-palatal (p. 30); however, given that Hanulíková and Hamann (2010) and Short (1993) don’t make this distinction (p. 374; p. 535), I have opted to use the standard palatal IPA symbols.
Hanulíková and Hamann (2010) point out that even though /lː/ and /rː/ are often considered allophones of /l/ and /r/ respectively, they don’t appear in complementary distribution (p. 374). Based on this, I have opted to keep the phonemic distinction.

	Place of Articulation
Manner of Articulation	Labial	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Palatal	Velar	Laryngeal
Stops	p b	t d		c ɟ	k ɡ
Affricates		ts dz	tʃ dʒ
Fricatives	f v	s z	ʃ ʒ		x	ɦ
Nasals	m	n		ɲ
Trills		r rː
Approximants		l lː		j ʎ
Note: For phonemes that share a cell, those on the left are voiceless and those on the right are voiced. Both palatal approximants are voiced, but the one on the right is lateral. Both alveolar trills and approximants are voiced, but the ones on the right are phonemically long.

Vowels

Hanulíková and Hamann (2010) as well as Short (1993) express that /æ/ (⟨ä⟩) is virtually obsolete in the language and is realized more often as /ɛ/ (p. 375; p. 534). Therefore, I have chosen to use /ɛ/ to represent the grapheme ⟨ä⟩.
Slovak makes a distinction between long and short vowels (Hanulíková and Hamann 2010, 534). Long vowels are indicated with acute accents (´).

	Front	Central	Back
High	i		u
Mid	ɛ		ɔ
Low		a

Diphthongs
/ia/, /iɛ/, /iu/, /ʊɔ/

Alphabet

Regarding the graphemes of the palatal consonants ⟨ť⟩, ⟨ď⟩, ⟨ľ⟩, and ⟨ň⟩, the diacritics aren’t present when preceding front vowels (Rubach 1993, 30). This creates ambiguity with the transcription, compromising the language. In the rules, alveolar consonants are transcribed by default preceding front vowels.
Graphemes containing two characters (e.g. ⟨dz⟩) represent one phoneme when not situated at a morpheme boundary, and two when situated at a morpheme boundary (Nemcová and Altmann 2008, 80). Therefore, it is unclear when such digraphs represent one phoneme or two. The rules prioritize the transcription of one phoneme (e.g. /dz/) as opposed to a sequence (e.g. /d z/), but this further compromises the language.
The uppercase correspondents of ⟨d’⟩ and ⟨tˈ⟩ are ⟨Ď⟩ and ⟨Ť⟩.
Notice that /ʊɔ/ is the only diphthong realized by an individual grapheme (Hanulíková and Hamann 2010, 376).

Grapheme	Phoneme	Comment
a	/a/
á	/aː/
ä	/ɛ/
b	/b/
c	/ts/
č	/tʃ/
d	/d/
ď	/ɟ/
e	/ɛ/
é	/ɛː/
f	/f/
g	/ɡ/
h	/ɦ/
i	/i/
í	/iː/
j	/j/
k	/k/
l	/l/
ĺ	/lː/
ľ	/ʎ/
m	/m/
n	/n/
ň	/ɲ/
o	/ɔ/
ó	/ɔː/
ô	/ʊɔ/
p	/p/
q	/k/; /kv/	/kv/: only in loanwords
r	/r/
ŕ	/rː/
s	/s/
š	/ʃ/
t	/t/
ť	/c/
u	/u/
ú	/uː/
v	/v/; /w/	/w/: only in loanwords
w	/v/
x	/ks/; /ɡz/	/ɡz/: only in loanwords
y	/i/
ý	/iː/
z	/z/
ž	/ʒ/
Digraph
dz	/dz/
dž	/dʒ/
ch	/x/

Lenition Rules

/ɡ/ spirantizes to [ɣ] (Short 1993, 536)
/v/ approximates to [ʋ] in syllable onsets preceding a vowel or liquid (Hanulíková and Hamann 2010, 374). It also approximates to [ʋ] or [w] in coda positions.

Misc. Rules

Velars and coronals palatalize before front vowels and glides (Rubach 1993, 44).
Alveolar fricatives palatalize and alveolar stops become affricates preceding /j/. However, if such stops are preceded by an alveolar fricative, they palatalize (Rubach 1993, 44).
There is final devoicing of voiced obstruents (Hanulíková and Hamann 2010, p 376). /ɦ/ is realized as [x] in this case.
/n/ assimilates to [ɲ] prior to velar sounds and to [m] prior to labials (Hanulíková and Hamann 2010, 374).
Obstruents assimilate in voicing (the preceding obstruent must assimilate to the following obstruent) (Rubach 1993, 30). /ch/ becomes [ɣ] in this case if voicing is required.

References

Hanulíková, Adriana, and Silke Hamann. 2010. “Slovak.” Journal of the International Phonetic Association 40 (3): 373–78. doi:10.1017/S0025100310000162.

Nemcová, Emília, and Gabriel Altmann. 2008. “The Phoneme-Grapheme Relation in Slovak.” In Analyses of Script: Properties of Characters and Writing Systems, edited by Gabriel Altmann and Fan Fengxiang. Vols. 79-87. Quantitative Linguistics 63. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Rubach, Jerzy. 1993. The Lexical Phonology of Slovak. The Phonology of the World’s Languages. Oxford : New York: Clarendon Press ; Oxford University Press.

Short, David. 1993. “Slovak.” In The Slavonic Languages, edited by Bernard Comrie and Greville G. Corbett, 533–92. Routledge Reference. London ; New York: Routledge.

Slovak

Emily Strand