I have a problem, well several, regarding Czech but one keeps rearing its ugly head. Namely when does one use 'pokud' to mean 'if'. I know that 'když' and 'jestli' are more or less interchangeable (more or less is good enough for me) but I feel that 'pokud' has a different shade of meaning. I was taught that 'pokud' equals 'provided that' so can I say: 'pokud sníš všechné zeleniny, mužeš mít zmrzlinu' ? if I can, can I also say 'jestli sníš.....' or is that less concrete. I thank in advance whoever helps me with this. Dokud se to nedozvím budu uplně zmatný.
Both sound the same to me, a native speaker. Pokud sníš všechnu zeleninu, dostaneš zmrzlinu. Jestli sníš všechnu zeleninu, dostaneš zmrzlinu. More formal would be: Sníš-li všechnu zeleninu, ... Jestliže sníš ...
As a matter of fact, I think POKUD is the least tricky from the three. All of them are used to express a condition... but KDYŽ can also mean WHEN (The sentence Když ráno vstanu can be ambiguous - meaning both When I get up and If I get up) and JESTLI may be used similarly to WHETHER I can't think of an exemple where POKUD is not equivalent to IF...
Ahoj všichni, I was curious and I looked this word up in my dictionary and I have found a few sentences where, I think, "pokud" can't be replaced with "jestli" without changing the meaning of what is being said. Pokud jde o mne / pokud se tyka Pokud mohu / pokud vím Shouldn't "pokud" be translated as "as far as" in these cases? Lorenzo
Lorenzo, You are right, in the examples you give POKUD can't be replaced by JESTLI, but I would say it's more to do with collocations than meaning... "Pokud jde o mne" would be equivalent to "as far as I'm concerned" "pokud se týká..." = "as for..." but I think "co se týče" is used more frequently "Pokud vím" is something like "unless I'm mistaken" and as for "Pokud mohu" - there's nothing special about it, it's quite the same as "Mohu-li" and it's a formal way to ask for permission (may I... or let me...) (Pokud mohu vyjádřit svůj názor.) With "Pokud mohu soudit" and perhaps a couple of similar phrases the situation is a bit different... Maybe someone else would be able to explain... ;-) [This message has been edited by Missbarbecue (edited 28-11-2003).]