Strč prst skrz krk

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Waveform and spectrogram for the Czech expression.

Strč prst skrz krk (About this sound 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 voweless sentences in Czech and Slovak language, the longest 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[edit]