Ahoj, Praha!
à notre très cher collègue et 'baptême', Anton Antonovich
Vital Information wrote:
[A]s an aside, I learned the other night that the capital of the Czech Republic is Praha, and no one has any idea why it is pronounced Prague in English (I mean none of the Czech speakers present.)
The sound represented by <h> in Czech is for the most part not the sound generally represented by <h> in English (as in, e.g., '
happy'). The Czech sound in question generally tends to have more friction than English <h->; in simple terms it resembles somewhat in 'raspiness' the <ch> in German
Bach or Scots
loch (though the Czech sound is not so raspy as the Scots one). In addition, in most positions Czech <h> is a
voiced consonant, that is, during its production the vocal chords vibrate. Consequently, the sound of Czech <h> very closely resembles the sound indicated by Dutch <g> in the pronunciation of standard Dutch current in Belgium (and to an increasingly limited degree in adjacent portions of the south of the Netherlands). The sound is usually described as being a
voiced velar fricative. It stands thus in a paradigmatic relationship with the sound represented by the spelling <ch>, which is a
voiceless velar fricative. Note, however, that when Czech <h> occurs in word final position or as the second element in the cluster <sh> (e.g., in
na shledanou 'see you later!'), it loses its voicing and is pronounced in the same manner as Czech <ch>; thus,
duh and
duch are pronounced in precisely the same manner.
The Czech <h> is the reflex of Indo-Euopean *
g when not subject to palatalisation. In Czech, Slovak and Sorbian, Balto-Slavic or Proto-Slavic *
g was subject to lenition and in intervocalic position thereby became a fricative (parallel developments are found dialectally elsewhere in Slavic). E.g., *
bagus 'God' > Russian
bog, Polish
bóg (with a stop) but Czech
buºh (<u> with superscripted <o>), Sorbian
bóh with a fricative which was voiced until the vowel of the final syllable was lost. Still in intervocalic position and thus still the voiced velar fricative is the <h> in Czech
noha, Sorbian
noha vs. Russian
nogá, Polish
noga, Serbo-croatian
nòga, all from Proto-Slavic *
noga. Similarly in intervocalic position and thus a
voiced velar fricative is the Czech <h> in the word ultimately in question here:
Praha.
The name of the city Prague, Czech
Praha, was most likely borrowed from the Slavic dialect of Bohemia (what we later know as Czech) into the High German of neighbouring central and southern Germany in the Carolingian period (late 8th to 9th century A.D.), perhaps in the course of Charlemagne's campaigns to pacify and conquer the eastern borders of his empire, if not a little earlier, as a result of more casual intercourse between Bavarians and Bohemians. Textual references to the Bohemians and neighbouring Slavic groups are found already in the Carolingian
Annals of Saint Bertin and
Annals of Fulda. I do not believe Prague itself is mentioned in those texts but I know it is mentioned by Ibrahim Ibn Ja9qub in the 10th century as being a major town and commercial centre in the region.
Since High German (in contrast to Low German, Dutch and the English of that time) did not have a voiced velar fricative, a sound substitution of the nearest (acoustically and articulatorily) consonant in High German was necessary when the toponym
Praha was borrowed, hence, it was likely borrowed as *
Praga or
Prage; subsequent loss of the unstressed final vowel would yield <Prag>, pronounced in High German with
-k as a result of final devoicing. English <Prague> was surely borrowed not directly from Czech but rather via German (though possibly with other intermediaries) and retains the voiced velar stop imposed by High German phonology, either directly or as a matter of spelling pronunciation.
Voilà, c'est tout simple.
Antonius
ANB
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