More structure...kinda

And now, for the next exciting, czechtastic piece of vocabulary...

únor

(ta-daaa!)

aka

February.

Which
comes
very
obscurely
very
obscurely
indeed
from
some
word
that
means
the
dripping
of
ice.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.

Drip.


Drip.


Dri-
-
-
-ip

There is no other similar word alas. Unless you count "Februaryish". But this particular bit of vocab does start us down the long and winding road of Czech diacritics, with its extra-special "ú". meaning a long "u". Or ooooooooo.

Sometimes you can see the long "u" written with a little circle above it, like this: "ů". It sounds the same, but harkens back to a dim and distant past, in which the letter "o" was mysteriously involved in the word, before something, possibly angry diacritics or vengeful graphemes, ate it. Or maybe just the top bit.

Drip

Sometimes... sometimes... the "o" comes back.

Drip

But not in ůnor, because it's not spelled with the little "o", but with an acute and rather dashing accent, as in únor. How can you tell when to make your ooooo with dash not dot? Well, the dash happens when "u" comes at the beginning of the word.

In 1848 (count 'em, baby) some madmen decided that no Czech national renaissance could possibly be complete without an orthographical overhaul and decided that the "ou" (oh-ooo) dipthong at the beginning of the roots of words should be changed to "ú". Because that's how it was pronounced.

But somewhen around the same time, the long "o" ("ó") was being pronounced, "uo" (ooo-ohh - I like it when the beat goes -), and so to save paper in a time of wood-pulp and vellum scarcity, they decided to write the "o" part of the dipthong (-thong, -thong, -thong, -thong) much, much smaller above the "u". And then, the pronounciation changed, and the rest is history... er... orthography.