Christopher wrote:
How does one pronounce "Šmrhová" anyway?
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A hobby of mine is reading about foreign language phonologies and the different ways the Latin alphabet is used to transcribe non-Latin sounds. Czech has a pretty cool phonology and orthography.
Š corresponds to English "sh".
M is as in English.
R is a trilled "r", as in Spanish "pe
rro", but it also can form a syllable nucleus, as it does here. (So "Šmr" is one syllable, just like the "ble" in "syllable" is one syllable without an actual vowel.) Note that this "r" is different from the "ř" in Dvořák's name.
H is basically like in English.
O is an Italianate "o".
V is as in English.
Á is a long "a," as in Spanish "c
as
a", but held longer.
So, assuming I understand correctly, "Šmrhová" should probably be rendered by Anglophones as "Shmerr-ho-VA", with that first syllable theoretically being much more "rr" than "er".