Lesson 20– Noun-adjective Agreement, Vocabulary (body parts & colours)

Hello, kids, I'm back with another lesson.
This time we have an excerpt from Starlight's story as an example text. I chose this one because there are two topics I would like to talk about today: Noun-adjective agreement and vocabulary (colours and body parts). Let's get started!

'Měla dlouhé vlasy, jejich barva byla mezi blond a světlou hnědou. A oči byly hnědé, nebo aspoň tak z dálky vypadaly. Roztomilý nos, plné rty, jemně růžová líčka...'
(From the Chapter 1 of 1989, edited)

We already have past tense here. That is why I dedicated my last lesson to it. If you haven't read it yet, please, check it out, it will help you to understand better.
'Měla' is the past tense form of the verb 'mít' which means 'to have' (full conjugation table is found here). 'Byla' and 'byly' are past forms of 'být' (to be). 'Vypadaly' comes from 'vypadat'.
'Jejich' is a possessive pronoun; I mentioned them in Lesson 13. It is the subject of the sentence, therefore it is not inflected. Now let's find out the meaning of all of the other words.

Vocabulary

barva, f. (barvy; prdg. žena) ['bur-vah] colour; noun
dálka, f. (dálky, exception: 3rd case: dálce; prdg. škola) ['du:ll-cah] distance; noun
dlouhý/á/é ['dlow-hee:] long; adj.
hnědý/á/é ['hnye-dee:] brown; adj.
jemně ['ye-mnye] slightly, softly; adv.
líčko, n. (líčka; prdg. město) ['leech-coh] cheek; noun
mezi ['meh-zee] between, among; prep.
nos, m. (nosu; prdg. hrad)['nos] nose; noun
oči (sing.: oko), f. (očí; prdg. kost) ['o-tchi] eyes; noun – quite complicated, I'm going to talk about it later
plný/á/é ['pl-nee:] full; adj. 
ret, m. (rtu; prdg. hrad) ['ret] lip; noun
růžový/á/é ['roo:-zyo-vee:] pink; adj.
tak ['tuck] like that, that way, so; adv.

The rest of the words has already been mentioned in some lessons before, so they can be found in my Czech-English dictionary.
Knowing these words, you should now be able to translate the sentences. Yet, to make sure you fully understand them, I'll go through them with you.

'Měla dlouhé vlasy...' I think this is clear. Note that the adjective and the noun have to 'agree'. I talked about this in Lesson 8 and I'm going to talk about it more in this lesson. One important thing is that we talk about hair in plural (like in French – les cheveux), not like in English. 'Vlasy jsou...' not 'Vlasy je...' but you can say 'Vlas je...' if you're talking about one hair. Translation: She had long hair...

'...jejich barva byla mezi blond a světlou hnědou.' When talking about something's colour, you have to use the colour's name as a noun. 'Barva mých očí je hnědá.'  (=My eyes' colour is brown.) BUT 'Mé oči jsou hnědé.' (=My eyes are brown.) Translation: '...its colour was between blonde and light brown.'

'A oči byly hnědé, nebo aspoň tak z dálky vypadaly.' I see there could be a problem with the word 'tak'. Aside from its being used as a 'filler' (it's basically the Czech equivalent of 'well' or 'so') it is also used as an adverb. As a translation, I used 'like that'. Let's take a look at the verb 'vypadat'. We talked about this verb in Lesson 18 and you already know that we usually use it with 'jako' or 'jak' (no difference in this case). Together it means 'to look like'. And if you don't want to repeat 'they looked like they were brown', you can just say 'they looked like that'. The same can be done in Czech– 'vypadaly jako hnědé' => 'vypadaly tak' (you have to omit 'jako', 'tak' itself means 'like that'). Translation: And [her] eyes were brown, or at least they looked like that from a distance.

The last sentence will be explained in the following part.

Noun-adjective agreement

I'm not sure whether this is the official name for it. Ergh. Well, this is pretty much about the gender, case and number of the noun. I have already mentioned that we decline the adjectives too and I've also told you the two patterns which are jarní and mladý. According to these two, you are able to decline any adjective. Let's divide all of the adjectives we know into these two groups:
Jarní- další, menší, nervózní, světlejší, vlastní, zálkadní
Mladý- černý/á/é, dlouhý/á/é, dobrý/á/é, hubený/á/é, chladný/á/é, chutný/á/é, jistý/á/é, ledový/á/é, malý/á/é, náctiletý/á/é, naštvaný/á/é, nějaký/á/é, některý/á/é, nemocný/á/é, plný/á/é, podobný/á/é, překvapený/á/é, připravený/á/é, roztomilý/á/é, slaný/á/é, slovanský/á/é, smutný/á/é, světlý/á/é, šťastný/á/é, štíhlý/á/é, růžový/á/é, unavený/á/é, vysoký/á/é, zeleninový/á/é, zklamaný/á/é, zmatený/á/é
As you can see, the pattern 'jarní' has only one form for the first case of singular and plural.
See these examples:
bratr, m.      další bratr        další bratři
sestra, f.       další sestra       další sestry
číslo, n.        další číslo         další čísla
The pattern 'mladý' has much more complicated declension and is commoner than 'jarní'. However, there are two comparative forms of adjectives– menší and světlejší. These are, as you know, derived from malý and světlý. Based on this, you can easily deduce that comparatives are always declined according to 'jarní'.
Examples:
bratr, m.     malý bratr          malí bratři
sestra, f.      malá sestra        malé sestry
číslo, n.       malé číslo          malá čísla
The full declension tables are in Czech Language Course section.

Vocabulary

Body Parts

I'm actually planning to make a video on body parts because hearing the pronunciation from a native speaker is probably better than a dictionary's 'pronunciation brackets'. When it's done, I'll post a link. This doesn't need any commenting so. I'm presenting a 'Body parts' wordlist!

We already know these:
líčko, n. (líčka; prdg. město) ['lee:tch-coh] cheek; noun
nos, m. (nosu; prdg. hrad)['nos] nose; noun
oči (sing.: oko), f. pl. (očí; prdg. kost) ['o-tchi] eyes; noun
ret, m. (rtu; prdg. hrad) ['ret] lip; noun

Let's add another facial parts:
brada, f. (brady; prdg. žena) ['brah-dah] chin; noun
čelo, n. (čela; prdg. město) ['tche-loh] forehead; noun
oko, n. (oka; prdg. město) ['oa-coh] eye; noun
pusa, f. (pusy; prdg. škola) ['poo-sah] mouth, kiss; noun
ucho, n. (ucha; prdg. město)  ['oo:-cho] ear; noun
ústa, f. pl. (úst; prdg. města-pl.) ['oo.s-tah] mouth; noun
uši (sing. ucho), f. pl. (uší; prdg. kost) ['oo-shi] ears; noun

And some basic words to be able to name what we've broken:
noha, f. (nohy; prdg. škola; 3rd case, sing.-noze) ['no-hah] leg; noun
paže, f. (paže; prdg. růže) ['pah-zye] arm; noun
prst, m. (prstu; prdg. hrad) ['prst] finger, toe; noun
ruka, f. (ruky; prdg. škola; 3rd case, sing.-ruce; pl. ruce) ['roo-cah] hand; noun

Colours

Basic colours always end in -á (except for special ones, e. g. fuchsia, etc.), it is so probably because we used to say 'černá barva' or 'šedá barva' so it was shortened to 'černá' and 'šedá'. This is why they are declined like adjectives (according to the pattern mladý).

We already know these:

černá, f. ['tcher-na:h] black; noun
hnědá, f. ['hnye-da:h] brown; noun

růžová, f. ['roo:-zyo-va::] pink; noun

Let's add some:

bílá, f. ['bee:-la:h] white; noun

červená, f. ['tcher-ve-na:h] red; noun

fialová, f. ['fee-ah-loa-va:h] purple; noun

modrá, f. ['mod-ra:h] blue; noun

oranžová, f. ['oa-ran-zyo-va:h] orange; noun

šedá, f. ['sheh-da:h] grey; noun

zelená, f. ['ze-leh-na:h] green; noun

žlutá, f. ['zyloo-ta:h] yellow; noun

What is your favourite colour? Jaká je tvá (vaše) oblíbená barva?
My favourite colour is ... Má oblíbená barva je...

love & peace
Ciray