Too. Many. Consonants.

OK there are some small obstacles when attempting to learn Czech. One of the more obvious is the letter Ř, the voiced partially-fricative raised alveolar trill. Yea, it's easier to say "voiced partially-fricative raised alveolar trill" than it is for an Anglophone to make the sound.

Today, however, we were continuing our lessons on time phrases and learnt the days of the week. All very good. Up until Thursday. Čtvrtek. Yes, you read that correctly: five consonants in a row, and nearly unpronounceable at best. To make it worse, if you want to refer to something that happens on Thursday, you say v Čtvrtek. UPDATE: According to my own notes, "on Thursday" blissfully becomes ve Čtvrtek, so not so bad after all.

Practicing pronunciation in class is amusing on the easiest of days. This time the cacophony was so intense that Manola, an English teacher from Sicily, exploded into laughter and had to leave the classroom to shut herself in the women's restroom to get it out of her system. The noise can only be compared to the death rattle of a Tourrette-syndrome sufferer with a lisp.

Of course I imagine all the people I walk past on the street think I have Tourette's as I walk along muttering to myself Thursday, Thursday, Trhusday, Thsrday, *&#!, Thursday..." etc.

No offense meant to anyone with TS. I've had a coworker with TS, and it didn't look like the bucket o' hilarity that South Park would have us believe. All the same, it really was the best description of the noise we were making.