Tag Archives: Czech

Pronunciation tip: “Happy new year” in 27 languages

Posted on December 30, 2024 | Leave a comment

I’m overdue for a pronunciation tip video. Sorry – I’ve been busy doing things that earn money! (Also things that cost money. Travel in particular.) Here’s how to say “Happy new year!” in 27 languages: Afrikaans, Basque, Breton, Chinese (Mandarin), Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Icelandic, Indonesian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Latvian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Ukrainian, and Welsh. And I give a bit of linguistic geekery here and there too.

Pronunciation tip: Dvořák

Posted on June 28, 2018 | 3 comments

I’ve been listening to classical music on the radio a lot lately. A perennially popular composer – for good reason – is Antonín Dvořák. Because English speakers are the way we are, I’ve been hearing a certain amount of “duh-vor-jack” for his name, which is… nah. So, for those who are wondering about how best to say it, here you go: both the way Czechs say it and the way ordinary non-Czech-speaking English speakers can reasonably say it. Because there’s a sound in the Czech that is deliberately difficult!