A question about relative pronouns: který / kdo / kdy etc.

Discussion in 'Grammar & Pronunciation' started by Ctyri koruny, May 14, 2009.

  1. Ctyri koruny

    Ctyri koruny Well-Known Member

    Albert Einstein byl ten muž, který napsal teorii relativity.
    Albert Einstein byl ten muž, kdo napsal teorii relativity. *


    Is there any difference? Are they always interchangeable or is there some defining vs. non defining rule like in English?

    Sorry if someone has asked this before!


    *some other poor sod wrote the theory of relativity and gets no credit for it among the general public, Einstein wrote: Relativity: The Special and General Theory
    but who among us could tell the difference?
     
  2. bibax

    bibax Well-Known Member

    They are not interchangeable at all.

    Znal jsem muže, který pracoval v Irsku.
    but
    Znal jsem někoho, kdo pracoval v Irsku.
     
  3. Alexx

    Alexx Well-Known Member

     
  4. bibax

    bibax Well-Known Member

    In colloquial Czech we often abuse the relative pronoun co:

    Albert Einstein byl ten muž, co napsal teorii relativity.
     
  5. scrimshaw

    scrimshaw Well-Known Member

    Aha, Alexxi, that explains alot.
    When 'co' is used in that position it is colloquial, and gramatically incorrect.
    I was never sure about that.

    To je muž, kterého jsem poznal včera.
    To je něco, co jsem nevěděl.
    Viděl jsem včera někoho, kdo jsem dlouho neviděl. Znal jsem ho ve vysokém škole.
     
  6. wer

    wer Well-Known Member

    It needn’t be. It’s a different kind of subordinate clause and it could be correct sometimes. But the colloquial language uveruses it heavily and pays no attention to the kind of the subordinate clause.
    Also “co za”, a calque of German “was für”, is common in colloquial Czech in place of the natural form “jaký”.
     
  7. Alexx

    Alexx Well-Known Member

    However:

    Albert Einstein byl ten muž, co napsal teorii relativity. - muž is animate, co cannot be used for animate - so this is not gramatically correct, but colloquial


    ____________
    * ve škole - inside the building
    na škole - during school years
     
  8. Ctyri koruny

    Ctyri koruny Well-Known Member

    Aha!

    I think I understand, at least I understand a bit better now, thank you!

    I might just say co all the time hee hee.
     
  9. dzurisova

    dzurisova Well-Known Member

    Probably Sova :wink:
     
  10. bibax

    bibax Well-Known Member

    Sova, the wise old bird that sat on an oak?
    It seems that the more he knows the less he speaks.
    :)
     
  11. Sova

    Sova Well-Known Member

    I resemble that remark!
     
  12. scrimshaw

    scrimshaw Well-Known Member

    Bibax, you missed a perfect rhyme.
    The more he knew, the less he spoke.

    But maybe you already knew that and intentionally put it present tense.
     
  13. bibax

    bibax Well-Known Member

    I know the "poem" very well from my English textbook.

    But our [​IMG] was watching us so silently, that I wanted to instigate him somehow. :wink:
     
  14. Sova

    Sova Well-Known Member

    Zzzzzzzzzz .... What? Oh no--not watching silently, but rather snoozing.

    And no, I haven't seen any indications in the scientific literature that anyone other than Einstein wrote his papers on relativity. Yes, he used Lorentz's already published transformation equations for special relativity, and probably that's where that bit of folklore came from. General relativity, is all his, borrowing the mathematical underpinnings from Reimann. Of course, at some level, everything in science is borrowed/reformulated/refined/reinterpreted/etc. from someone else's work. It's the nature of scientific research to build upon itself.
     
  15. wer

    wer Well-Known Member

    You mean Riemann, I guess.

    There were always rumors on Mileva Marić’s involvement in early Einstein’s work.
     
  16. Ctyri koruny

    Ctyri koruny Well-Known Member

    The " folklore " i was thinking of isn't that he didn't write the general theory of relativity, it's that he DID. While the theory of relativity was already in existence.

    So he didn't write "the theory of relativity". He wrote "the general theory of relativity" Which is exactly what you just said!
     
  17. Sova

    Sova Well-Known Member

    Yes, yes, Riemann (slip of the keyboard). And about Mileva Marić, those rumors are exactly that. Nothing substantive that I have seen or heard. And the rumors seem only to apply to his "special" theory of relativity, not the "general" theory.

    Basically the "general" theory of relativity (published by Einstein in 1916) is exactly what it says it is--a generalization of the "special" theory of relativity (published by Einstein in 1905). The special theory deals only with inertial reference frames (i.e. physics viewed from the point of view of observers who may be moving relative to one another, but not accelerating relative to one another). The general theory covers the accelerating frames of reference as well (his equivalence principle also showed that gravitational forces can be equated with accelerating reference frames--hence the general theory also applies to gravitation).
     

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