Strč prst skrz krk

.webm.jpg)
Strč prst skrz krk ( listen ) is a Czech and Slovak tongue-twister meaning "stick your finger through your throat".[1]
The sentence is well known for having a total absence of vowels, the nucleus of each syllable being a syllabic r, a common feature amongst many Slavic languages. It is often used as an example of such a phrase when learning Czech or Slovak as a foreign language.[1]
In fact, both Czech and Slovak have two syllabic liquid consonants, the other being syllabic l. (There is also the syllabic bilabial nasal m in sedm in Czech.) As a result, there are plenty of words without vowels. Examples of long words of this type are scvrnkls, čtvrthrst,[2] and čtvrtsmršť,[3] the latter two being artificial occasionalisms.
There are other examples of vowelless sentences in Czech and Slovak language, a longer one being "Škrt plch z mlh Brd pln skvrn z mrv prv hrd scvrnkl z brzd skrz trs chrp v krs vrb mls mrch srn čtvrthrst zrn."
See also
References
- 1 2 (French) "Le virelangue - jazykolam : strč prst skrz krk" - Radio Prague article about the phrase
- ↑ Wilson, James (2010). "Moravians in Prague: A Sociolinguistic Study of Dialect Contact in the Czech Republic". ISBN 9783631586945.
- ↑ http://www.ujc.cas.cz/jazykova-poradna/porfaq.html#nej