Lesson 14– Numbers 11- 24 264 756 And Even More!

         In Lesson 11 we learned the numbers 0- 11. Now it's time to learn the rest. Don't worry; our ancestors weren't as creative as the French were while making up the names for numbers.
Let's revise–

0 – nula                               
1 – jedna
2 – dva
3 – tři
4 – čtyři
5 – pět
6 – šest
7 – sedm
8 – osm
9 – devět
10 – deset

        Now let's continue, you virtually just add the suffix -náct but watch out, some of the numbers are not the same.

11 – jedenáct
12 – dvanáct
13 – třináct
14 – čtrnáct
15 – patnáct
16 – šestnáct
17 – sedmnáct
18 – osmnáct
19 – devatenáct

NOTE: Similarily, as in English teen => teenage, in Czech we use náct => náctiletý/á/é (adj.).

          Starting from twenty the numbers are steady and don't change the basic forms, i. e. pět doesn't become pat, etc. (But 50, 60, and 90 do.) The words (numbers) are divided by a space.

20 – dvacet                               30 – třicet
21 – dvacet jedna                      40 – čtyřicet
22 – dvacet dva                         50 – padesát
23 – dvacet tři                           60 – šedesát
24 – dvacet čtyři                        70 – sedmdesát
25 – dvacet pět                          80 – osmdesát
26 – dvacet šest                        90 – devadesát
27 – dvacet sedm                      100 – sto
28 – dvacet osm                        101 – sto jedna
29 – dvacet devět                      132 – sto třicet dva

          Still the same principle... BUT there's one thing you need to take into account. When there are more hundreds than one, you must say hundreds, "sta" instead of hundred "sto". In Czech, we make everything even more complicated so five hundreds and above are "set", e. g. pět set, šest set,...
In thousands, it is the same thing– tisíc, dva tisíce, tři tisíce, čtyři tisíce, pět tisíc, šest tisíc, sedm tisíc, ....

1 000 – tisíc
1 368 – tisíc tři sta šedesát osm
2 547 – dva tisíce pět set čtyřicet sedm
7 149 – sedm tisíc sto čtyřicet devět
1 000 000 – milion
2 000 000 – dva miliony
5 000 000 – pět milionů
24 264 756 – dvacet čtyři milionů dvě sta šedesát                            čtyři tisíc sedm set padesát šest

NOTE: We don't use any dots or commas to write numbers just divide it by spaces after three numbers. However, 1.56 (don't know where, anyway Britain for sure) = 1,56 (Czech and don't know where else).

Sto, tisíc, and milion (or milión) are declined according to paradigms for nouns. Surprise! Sto – prdg. město, tisíc – prdg. stroj, milion – prdg. hrad.

love & peace 
Ciray

How To Use My Czech–English Dictionary

I received an e-mail with a few questions, or suggestions, regarding my blog and this is a part of my response to it. And thank you for the feedback, by the way! (:

There are not many words but I'm doing my best to add as much as I can every day (or when I remember to do it) and I don't want it to be useless. 

One thing is that it's a bit confusing so I'll add large letters to indicate where words starting with the certain letter start ASAP (or when I remember to do that).

How do you find an English word you want to know in Czech? 

Well, this is an online site, not a book, so pressing Ctrl+F can solve pretty much everything.

Why do you need to know the dative of every noun? 

1) It helps you find out in which paradigm the word is declined (suffixes, remember? :) without having to memorize the paradigm for each noun.

2) Depending on which part of the word stays the same (declined and not declined) you continue declining by only changing the suffixes.

Another example:

I think everything is clear from this description but if you have any question, leave a comment below or send me a message. 

love & peace

Ciray

Prdg. MĚSTO– Declension

Město

      SINGULAR                                                     PLURAL

1) (nominative)    město                                       1) města

2) (genitive)         města                                       2) měst

3) (dative)            městu                                       3) městům

4) (accusative)     město                                       4) města

5) (vocative)        město                                       5) města

6) (locative)         městě                                       6) městech

7) (instrumental)  městem                                    7) městy

Things We Do Differently– Saying "I Love You"

"You're my best friend," he said to him, "I love you." "What? You're gay?"

Seriously, if you ever decide to express your affection or favor towards someone in Czech, don't say "I love you" (= miluji tě). Not even a mom to her child. We just don't say this because it sounds weird. Save it for your spouse or dear half or whoever you actually love in an intimate, romantic way. 

When you want to say the English "I love you" to a friend/mom/dad/child, just use "I like you" (= mám tě rád/a depending on whether you're a boy or a girl)– and even that is too emotional for us. 

Prdg. PÁN (divák) – Declension

Pán

      SINGULAR                                                     PLURAL

1) (nominative)    pán                                     1) páni/pánové

2) (genitive)         pána                                    2) pánů

3) (dative)            pánovi/pánu                        3) pánům

4) (accusative)     pána                                   4) pány

5) (vocative)        pane (diváku)                     5) páni/pánové

6) (locative)         pánovi/ pánu                       6) pánech (divácích)

7) (instrumental)  pánem                                 7) pány

Pán represents another forms of singular vocative and plural locative cases because some nouns declined according to pán sounded weird with the suffixes -e or -ech so they were replaced with the suffixes -u or -ích. In my dictionary, nouns declined according to the paradigm divák (declined the same way as pán except for the two endings) are assigned the paradigm divák.

Things We Do Differently– Capital Letters

The capitals are a dangerous enemy to lots of Czechs. There are not many rules but we are just... lazy. I know, I use this as an excuse too often. But we are.

I've made a short list of rules you should follow when writing in Czech. There are not all of them but the most important are, of course, included.

• Every sentence starts with a capital letter. 
• Days of the week, months, and seasons of the year start with a small letter.
• Names (of people, countries, planets, etc.) are written with a capital at the beginning.
• A citizen of a certain state (nouns: Čech/Češka, Polák/Polka, ...) is written with a capital.
• An adjective formed from a noun (e. g. Amerika=> americký) starts with a small letter. (Applies to names.)
• Languages start with a small letter (e. g. angličtina, čeština, arabština, etc.)

love & peace

Ciray

Lesson 11– Numbers 0-10

Hello everyone,

     it's been almost a month since my last lesson so my remorses started doing their work and here I am writing, baby!

      I've figured out that nobody would continue learning if I started talking about all the cases back and forward, forward back, upside down, downside up. Therefore I decided to start BUT I'm not going to dedicate next seven lessons to cases only. There will probably be (if I get around to do it = when I feel not so lazy as usual) a few vocabulary, different grammar (the important parts for beginners), and conversational lessons and me chattering about latest news that nobody cares about. Seems like a lot of fun, huh?

      Today's lesson is very special. People usually learn this when they're in kindergartens but we were too awesome to do it. Wait, there's no point in doing an epic intro for this topic because I've already named the post after it. Phhhhhhhit.

Čísla od 0 do 10

0    nula ['noo-lah]

1    jedna ['ye-dnah]

2    dva ['dvah]

3    tři ['trzi]

4    čtyři ['tchtee-rzie]

5    pět ['pyet]

6    šest ['shest]

7    sedm ['seh-dm]

8    osm ['oa-sm]

9    devět ['de-vyet]

10  deset ['deh-set]

     Nula is declined according to žena paradigm. Jedna and dva have masculine, neuter, and feminine forms:

Jeden stůl. Jedna židle. Jedno kolo.
Dva stoly. Dvě židle. Dvě kola.

      So science, such knowledge, huh?
     And every numeral can be declined.

VOCABULARY:
Calm down, it's just three words.

číslo, n. (čísla; prdg. město) ['tchee:sloh] number; noun
od ['odd] from, since; prep.
do ['doh] to; prep.

PS: This is my first post from my new bedroom! Yay!

love & peace
Ciray

Prdg. ŽENA (škola) – Declension

Žena

      SINGULAR                                                     PLURAL

1) (nominative)    žena                                     1) ženy

2) (genitive)         ženy                                     2) žen

3) (dative)            ženě (škole)                         3) ženám

4) (accusative)     ženu                                     4) ženy

5) (vocative)        ženo                                     5) ženy

6) (locative)         ženě (škole)                         6) ženách

7) (instrumental) ženou                                    7) ženami

Škola represents another forms of singular dative and locative cases because some nouns declined according to žena sounded weird with the suffix -ě so it was replaced with the suffix -e. In my dictionary, nouns declined according to the paradigm škola (declined the same way as žena except for the two endings) are assigned the paradigm škola.

Lesson 8 – Simple sentences, ZSD

Dear students,

     this is the moment you've been waiting for. We'll learn... HOW TO COMPOSE A SENTENCE. YIPPEE!
     OK, it's probably not such an achievement but let's be modest and, eventually, you might be surprised.

     So, Czech and English sentence structures do not fatally differ, at least not in their gists. We start with subject followed by a verb and then we place an object into the sentence. Here ends the simple part.

Let me itroduce you the structure of a Czech sentence:

BOOM! Don't worry, I know there's too much information in that picture. I'll explain it all. But, at first, I'm going to answer the question you've been asking from the very beginning of this article, which is: What is ZSD?

ZSD

Základní stavební dvojice consists of two words– the subject and the verb (subject-verb agreement). Why is it so important? When little children learn to write sentences, they write what they hear and mostly it's correct. However, "y" and "i" are read the same way in Czech and it's hard for them to find out which one they should use, especially in verbs, because they have no "permanent" form. Let me explain– the noun "myš" even if inflected (myši, myší) is always written with "y" after the letter "m" and the suffixes for each case never differs neither. Now, the verb zpívat (= to sing; conjugated here) is written with "í" after "p" but when conjugated– in past tense and plural– there are three different endings: -ali, -aly, -ala.

Which one should you use?

The suffix -ali is used when the subject is in plural and it's masculine. And, similarly to French, it can be masculine and feminine (when it's multiple subject or when you refer to feminine and masculine subjects as "they" "=oni").

We use -aly when the subject is plural and feminine.

And -ala if it's plural and neuter.

The subject has to correspond with the verb no matter what. These are the deciding aspects: number (plural or singular), person (first, second, or third), tense (present, past, or future), mood (indicative, imperative, optative, interrogatory, or, conditional), gender (masculine, feminine, or, neuter), and aspect (perfective and imperfective).

I'm not going to bother you with all of these. You only need to learn to distiguish the number, person, tense, and gender.

This is a lot of information so let me simplify and clarify. This is our model sentence:

Pes si hraje s malou kostí.

The subject is "pes" which is a masculine and singular noun. The verb is "si hraje"; now look into the conjugation table of the verb hrát si and find the appropriate form– si hraje. Found it? If so, you already know that the person is third (on/ona/ono) and because the verb in this person doesn't change depending on the gender of the subject, you don't have to worry about the gender (even though it's obvious); and the tense is present. Together, subject and verb, create ZSD.
As to the rest of the sentence, I don't want to scare the hell out of you but the adjective malou is also inflected because in Czech we inflect them along with the noun they precede/follow. Fortunately, there are only two paradigms for adjectives:  mladý and jarní. The adjective malý (mentioned above in the model sentence, inflected) is inflected according to the paradigm mladý. I'll dedicate another lesson to the nouns of this sentence. 

love & peace
Ciray

Lesson 7– Grammar (cases, declension of nouns)

Let's move on. There are lots of things to learn. :)

You don't have to learn anything from this yet. I just want you to understand, what it means. Enjoy!

Introduction: What are the grammatical cases?

Today's lesson is about grammatical cases. I can hear you saying: "I don't need them, they'll understand me anyway." Yes, we do understand but if you put some effort into learning them, it will pay off.

If you speak Finnish, German, Sanskrit, or Latin (or any other inflected language), you will probably find it easier to learn than those who don't even know what "grammatical cases" actually mean.

For those who don't know what they are (yes, they, there's a lot of them):

When you say: "I drank a cup of tea," the subject "I" is in its basic form (nominative case).

If you say: "The cup of tea drank me," (ok, perhaps you don't say this) the object "me" is declined.

English doesn't use the declension of nouns, pronouns, numerals and adjectives (except for exceptions). The German language has four cases and they are markedly easier than the Czech ones because you only have genders as the deciding factor for the type of declension (der, die, das [ein, eine, ein]).

To explain the system in the Czech language, I'll use Latin as an example: When you learn a list of nouns, apart from the gender, you have to memorize their suffixes in the genitive case, too. This is the way to find out how to decline a word. But I'll provide you with some tips to help you with recognizing it.

POI: Both Latin and Czech have 7 grammatical cases.

The Czech system of noun declension

As I mentioned before, the Czech language has seven grammatical cases. Is it too many for you? Try learning Finnish. As you may know, almost every noun (not all!) has a simple form and a plural form. If you can multiply, you already know, that we've got to the final number of suffixes a noun can have. It's fourteen. 

Shall I tell you the total of all of the suffixes? Sure, but if you get discouraged easily, don't read it. It should be 196 plus some exceptions. You don't need to faint right now. Let me finish. 

It's 56 for feminine, 56 for neutrum, and as usual, men just have to complicate everything– so it's 84 for masculine. 

Feminine gender has four paradigms of noun declension. These are: žena (woman), růže (rose), píseň (song), and kost (bone), (škola [school], ves [village]).

Neutrum– four paradigms: město (town), moře (sea), kuře (chicken), and stavení (building).

Masculine– six paradigms: pán (sir, lord), hrad (castle), muž (man), stroj (engine, machine), předseda (chairman), soudce (judge), (kůň [horse],divák [spectator], zámek [lock, chateau], otec [father]); they are divided into two groups: animate (pán, muž, předseda, soudce, host, kůň, otec) and inaminate (hrad, stroj, zámek)– this makes no difference, as regards the noun declension. 

NOTE: The paradigms in brackets are declined the same way as one of the regular paradigms but at least one of the suffixes is different. (hrad– zámek, žena– škola, pán– host).

The seven cases

They have names that you don't have to learn, I'll refer to them as the first, the second, the third, the fourth, the fifth, the sixth, and the seventh case. But if you're the kind of a language geek I like, you'll definitely find it useful. 

1.     Nominative

2.     Genitive 

3.     Dative

4.     Accusative

5.     Vocative

6.     Locative

7.     Instrumental

How to figure out, which of the cases should be used

Ta žena dostala růži. (= That woman (has/had) received a rose.) As you can see, a subject of a sentence is always in the first (nominative) case. Who (has/had) received a rose? That woman. The object "růži" is in the forth (accusative) case. Unfortunately, there is no way of recognizing the case immediately. One thing you can say for sure is that the object is never in the first (nominative) case (but of course, there's one exception). The Czechs have a list of questions (and prepositions, in some cases) as a "helping tool", but for you, it's useless because it doesn't tell you much. When you start to think like Czechs, (congrats and) you can check it out. The list is consisted of questions you ask about the object, e. g. "What did (or has/had) that woman receive(-d)?" 

1.     Nominative– Kdo? Co? (=Who? What?) (Asking about the object to find out, whether it's animate or inanimate.)

2.     Genitive– Bez/z koho/čeho? (=Without/out of/from whom/what?) 

3.     Dative– Komu? Čemu? (=To whom/what? [Example: Give it to her.])

4.     Accusative– Koho? Co? (=Whom? What? [Example: Do it for me.])

5.     Vocative– Oslovujeme, voláme. (=We address, we call. This is a case for addressing. Ex.: Man!)

6.     Locative– O kom/čem? (=About who/what?)

7.     Instrumental– S kým/čím? (=With who/what?)

For foreigners, there are lists of prepositions for each case.

To be continued...

Biz,

Ciray

Conjugation– BÝT (to be)

PRESENT TENSE

Já jsem                                     My jsme

Ty jsi                                        Vy jste

On/a/o je                                  Oni/y/a jsou

FUTURE TENSE

Já budu                                    My budeme

Ty budeš                                  Vy budete

On/a/o bude                             Oni/y/a budou

PAST TENSE

Já jsem byl/a                            My jsme byli/y/a

Ty jsi byl/a/o                            Vy jste byl/i/y/a

On/a/o byl/a/o                          Oni/y/a byli/y/a

IMPERATIVE

Já ----                                         My buďme

Ty buď                                      Vy buďte

On/a/o ať je                              Oni/y/a ať jsou


Example sentences:
Jsem naštvaná. (I'm angry. [Feminine subject.])
Rána jsou v zimě chladná. (The mornings are cold in winter.)
Buď tady v šest hodin. (Be here at six o'clock.)
Včera jsme byli ve škole. (We were at school yesterday.)
Byl jsem rozrušený. když mi volala. (I was distraught when she called me. [The first subject is masculine.])