Editing Czech language (section)

===Consonants===
The consonant phonemes of Czech and their equivalent letters in Czech orthography are as follows:<ref>{{Harvnb|Dankovičová|1999|pp=70–72}}</ref>
{| class="wikitable" style="text-align:center"
|-
!colspan=2| 
! [[Labial consonant|Labial]]
! [[Alveolar consonant|Alveolar]]
! [[Postalveolar consonant|Post-<br/>alveolar]]
! [[Palatal consonant|Palatal]]
! [[Velar consonant|Velar]]
! [[Glottal consonant|Glottal]]
|-
!colspan=2| [[Nasal consonant|Nasal]]
| {{IPAlink|m}} {{angle bracket|m}}
| {{IPAlink|n}} {{angle bracket|n}}
| 
| {{IPAlink|ɲ}} {{angle bracket|ň}}
| 
| 
|-
!rowspan=2| [[Stop consonant|Plosive]]
! {{small|[[voicelessness|voiceless]]}}
| {{IPAlink|p}} {{angle bracket|p}}
| {{IPAlink|t}} {{angle bracket|t}}
| 
| {{IPAlink|c}} {{angle bracket|ť}}
| {{IPAlink|k}} {{angle bracket|k}}
| 
|-
! {{small|[[voice (phonetics)|voiced]]}}
| {{IPAlink|b}} {{angle bracket|b}}
| {{IPAlink|d}} {{angle bracket|d}}
| 
| {{IPAlink|ɟ}} {{angle bracket|ď}}
| ({{IPAlink|ɡ}}) {{angle bracket|g}}
| 
|-
!rowspan=2| [[Affricate consonant|Affricate]]
! {{small|[[voicelessness|voiceless]]}}
| 
| {{IPAlink|t͡s}} {{angle bracket|c}}
| {{IPAlink|t͡ʃ}} {{angle bracket|č}}
| 
| 
| 
|-
! {{small|[[voice (phonetics)|voiced]]}}
| 
| ({{IPAlink|d͡z}})
| ({{IPAlink|d͡ʒ}})
| 
| 
| 
|-
!rowspan=2| [[Fricative consonant|Fricative]]
! {{small|[[voicelessness|voiceless]]}}
| {{IPAlink|f}} {{angle bracket|f}}
| {{IPAlink|s}} {{angle bracket|s}}
| {{IPAlink|ʃ}} {{angle bracket|š}}
| 
| {{IPAlink|x}} {{angle bracket|ch}}
| 
|-
! {{small|[[voice (phonetics)|voiced]]}}
| {{IPAlink|v}} {{angle bracket|v}}
| {{IPAlink|z}} {{angle bracket|z}}
| {{IPAlink|ʒ}} {{angle bracket|ž}}
| 
| 
| {{IPAlink|ɦ}} {{angle bracket|h}}
|-
!rowspan=2| [[Trill consonant|Trill]]
! {{small|plain}}
| 
| {{IPAlink|r}} {{angle bracket|r}}
| 
| 
| 
| 
|-
! {{small|[[Voiced alveolar raised non-sonorant trill|fricative]]}}
| 
| {{IPAlink|r̝}} {{angle bracket|ř}}
| 
| 
| 
| 
|-
!colspan=2| [[Approximant consonant|Approximant]]
|
| {{IPAlink|l}} {{angle bracket|l}}
| 
| {{IPAlink|j}} {{angle bracket|j}}
| 
| 
|}

Czech consonants are categorized as "hard", "neutral", or "soft":

*Hard: {{IPA|/d/, /ɡ/, /ɦ/, /k/, /n/, /r/, /t/, /x/}}
*Neutral: {{IPA|/b/, /f/, /l/, /m/, /p/, /s/, /v/, /z/}}
*Soft: {{IPA|/c/, /ɟ/, /j/, /ɲ/, /r̝/, /ʃ/, /t͡s/, /t͡ʃ/, /ʒ/}}

Hard consonants may not be followed by ''i'' or ''í'' in writing, or soft ones by ''y'' or ''ý'' (except in loanwords such as ''[[kilogram]]'').<ref>{{cite web|title=Psaní i – y po písmenu c|url=http://prirucka.ujc.cas.cz/en/?id=102|website=Czech Language Institute|access-date=11 August 2014}}</ref> Neutral consonants may take either character. Hard consonants are sometimes known as "strong", and soft ones as "weak".<ref>{{Harvnb|Harkins|1952|p=11}}</ref> This distinction is also relevant to the [[Czech declension|declension]] patterns of nouns, which vary according to whether the final consonant of the noun stem is hard or soft.<ref>{{Harvnb|Naughton|2005|pp=20–21}}</ref>

[[Voice (phonetics)|Voiced]] [[consonant]]s with unvoiced counterparts are unvoiced at the end of a word before a pause, and in [[consonant cluster]]s [[voicing assimilation]] occurs, which matches voicing to the following consonant. The unvoiced counterpart of /ɦ/ is /x/.<ref>{{Harvnb|Dankovičová|1999|p=73}}</ref>

The phoneme represented by the letter ''[[ř]]'' (capital ''Ř'') is very rare among languages and often claimed to be unique to Czech, though it also occurs in some dialects of [[Kashubian language|Kashubian]], and formerly occurred in Polish.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Nichols |first1=Joanna |author1-link=The Evolution of Slavic |date=2018|editor1-last=Klein |editor1-first=Jared |editor2-last=Joseph |editor2-first=Brian |editor3-last=Fritz |editor3-first=Matthias |title=Handbook of Comparative and Historical Indo-European Linguistics |pages=1607}}</ref> It represents the [[raised alveolar non-sonorant trill]] ([[International Phonetic Alphabet|IPA]]: {{IPA|[r̝]}}), a sound somewhere between Czech ''r'' and ''ž'' (example: {{audio|Cs-řeka.ogg|"řeka" (river)}}),<ref name="dyk">{{Harvnb|Harkins|1952|p=6}}</ref> and is present in ''[[Dvořák]]''. In unvoiced environments, /r̝/ is realized as its voiceless allophone [r̝̊], a sound somewhere between Czech ''r'' and ''š''.<ref>{{Harvnb|Dankovičová|1999|p=71}}</ref>

The consonants {{IPA|/r/, /l/, and /m/}} can be [[syllabic consonant|syllabic]], acting as [[syllable nuclei]] in place of a vowel. ''[[Strč prst skrz krk]]'' ("Stick [your] finger through [your] throat") is a well-known Czech [[tongue twister]] using syllabic consonants but no vowels.<ref>{{Harvnb|Naughton|2005|p=5}}</ref>