# Roman Koudelka



## Thomas1

How do you pronounce this surname in Czech, please? It’s a name of a Czech ski jumper, and the Polish commentator pronounced it [kołdelka] (using Polish letters). So is there really _ł _(roughly an equivalent of English _w_ in _work_) in the pronunciation of this diphtong?


Dekůju moc,
Tom


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## Jana337

Thomas1 said:


> How do you pronounce this surname in Czech, please? It’s a name of a Czech ski jumper, and the Polish commentator pronounced it [kołdelka] (using Polish letters). So is there really _ł _(roughly an equivalent of English _w_ in _work_) in the pronunciation of this diphtong?
> 
> 
> Dekůju moc, děkuji/děkuju
> Tom


Exactly, it is the w sound.
Does it look improbable to your Polish eyes? 

Jana


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## K.u.r.t

Polish ł is transliterated as u in Czech.


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## Thomas1

Thanks. 


Jana337 said:


> Exactly, it is the w sound.
> Does it look improbable to your Polish eyes?
> 
> Jana


No, I didn't know how to pronounce it, and wonder if the commentator got it right. Anyway, if I were to pronounce it in Polish following our strict pronunciation rules I would pronounce the _u_ as th _u_ in _put_. However, in fast speech many people would, I guess, enunciate indeed an _ł_.


			
				K.u.r.t said:
			
		

> Polish ł is transliterated as u in Czech.


So how would you translierate _łódka _[wutka]? 

Tom


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## K.u.r.t

That is a tricky one as Czech u is sometimes sounded and sometimes unsounded, both are written the same way.

The only way to write it is utka, although that would be pronounced as a sounded u (oo in English). There is no way to  write this word in Czech I am afraid as we haven't got such sounds [w] in the beginning of words...


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## Thomas1

K.u.r.t said:


> That is a tricky one as Czech u is sometimes sounded and sometimes unsounded, both are written the same way.
> 
> The only way to write it is utka, although that would be pronounced as a sounded u (oo in English). There is no way to write this word in Czech I am afraid as we haven't got such sounds [w] in the beginning of words...


Interesting, I think it's just the quantitative difference then; as you have the [w] sound (only?) in the diphtong in question. That would be a different word in Polish, namely, _udka_ which means... _thighs_  most likely chicken ones.


Tom


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## K.u.r.t

I might be wrong but we probably only have the [w] sound in _ou_, _au_ or _eu_ diphtongs. There are quite a lot of words that contain these though, not just Koudelka ;-)


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