Město

 Město v ghorah jest malě, ale čisto i šumno.

The town in the mountains is small, but clean and lively.

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1. Město vs. gorod

• Proto-Slavic roots:
  
• město originally meant “place, location” and later “settlement, town” (related to mětь = to measure, assign).
• gordъ (modern gorod, hrad, grad) meant “fortified settlement” and comes from the verb gorditi (to fence, fortify).
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• Interslavic choice:
  
• Město is pan-Slavic and understood by all Slavs. Even where gorod/grad is used, město is usually understood as “town/city”.
• Gorod feels more East Slavic or archaic in some contexts, and in West/South Slavic may only mean “castle” or “walled town”.
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• Conclusion: If you want the neutral, everyday “city/town” in Interslavic, město is the safer root. Gorod works when you mean “fortified city” or historically walled settlement.

2. Horah vs. górach (and the “h” question)

• Proto-Slavic root: gora = “mountain, hill, forested upland”.
• Sound shift: In East Slavic and some South Slavic areas, original g stayed [g]. In Czech, Slovak, Ukrainian, Belarusian, and some others, g shifted to [ɦ] (written “h”).
• Interslavic rule: Standard spelling prefers gora for Proto-Slavic g because it’s the original root. “h” is used only when reflecting languages where it’s the historical sound (e.g., borrowing from Greek χ or Germanic h).
• Conclusion: For historical Proto-Slavic correctness, write gorah (locative plural). If you want a modern Ukrainian/Czech feel, horah is fine, but it’s not the original.

3. čisto vs. čiste

• Grammar:
  
• čisto is the neuter singular nominative form of the adjective “clean” and matches neuter nouns like město.
• čiste would be plural nominative or feminine singular accusative, so it doesn’t agree with singular neuter město.
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• Why not just “čiste”: It would be ungrammatical here unless you were describing multiple neuter things or a plural noun.
• Conclusion: “Město … jest čisto” is correct because město is neuter singular, so the adjective must also be neuter singular: čisto.

4. čisto vs cisto

In Interslavic (and Proto-Slavic historically), the word is spelled čisto, not cisto, because:

• č represents the postalveolar affricate /t͡ʃ/ (like English “ch” in church), which is the correct consonant in the Proto-Slavic root čistъ (“clean, pure”).
• c in Slavic orthographies (and Interslavic) always represents /t͡s/ (like “ts” in cats), which is a completely different sound and would make it wrong both historically and phonetically.

So:

• čisto = “clean” (correct, from Proto-Slavic čistъ).
• cisto would be read as /t͡sisto/, which is not a Slavic form.

Pronunciation

• Soft “č” here is not palatalized, it’s a hard postalveolar sound /t͡ʃ/, the same in all Slavic languages.
• The i after č does not soften it to /t͡ɕ/ — in Slavic phonology, č is inherently hard.