Further noun case w/ preposition questions

Discussion in 'Grammar & Pronunciation' started by johanetk, Oct 9, 2006.

  1. johanetk

    johanetk Member

    Ack. Another question. :shock:

    Let me just say, I have checked on LocalLingo, but once again, I'll need further explanation. I understand how the Czech language has conjagation, and how each word has a different case. Now, I understand the Czech nouns, and the prepositions, and everything that determines the case, and even what the word letters change to.

    What I don't understand is the verbs. I don't know how to change the letters at the end (or beginning?) and I don't know how to determine it's case. And even AFTER I know how to determine the case, I'll still need to know how to change it to the correct usage.

    I apologize, for when I hear the answer I'll probably feel stupid. :cry:
     
  2. Wayne05

    Wayne05 Member

    škola is a classic feminine noun. In fact many dictionaries use it as one of the example cases. As such, it changes the a to u in the accusative.

    This is actually declination instead of conjugation, which is the changes to verbs.

    Like most Czech nouns the basic part remains the same...škol.. and only the ending changes as it is declined. So the answer is školu.

    For an english speaker, the accusative is the direct object and the dative is the indirect object. The Czech challenge is the remaining cases. Most of these are driven by the prepositions. I will not bore you with the rational behind the case structure there. It is just best to learn the remaining cases with a preposition. So that it is always v Praze and z Prahy to you.

    I hope that helps :D
     
  3. Wayne05

    Wayne05 Member

    Hmmm.....

    Part of the thread that included the question about škola disappeared.

    Either that or senility is catching up to me faster than I thought.

    The conjugations of the verbs are fairly straight forward for most verbs. The irregular verb just have to be learned individually. The good news is that there are fewer tenses than English or many other languages, but like Spanish and the other romance languages, it does change by person.

    Hang in there. It may be all greek to you know, but it turns into Czech eventually. :D
     
  4. dzurisova

    dzurisova Well-Known Member

  5. Sova

    Sova Well-Known Member

    johanetk,

    Just for clarification and to build on what Wayne05 has said, when nouns (or adjectives that modify them) change, it is called declination (or declension), and the pattern by which it declines is called the case. When verbs change, it is called conjugation.

    Conjugation in Czech verbs is determined by the person[e.g. 1st person (I)], number (plural or singular, and archaically dual), and, in some tenses, gender (feminine, neuter, or masculine). There are four basic patterns of verb conjugation in Czech which are listed on Local Lingo's verb page. These classifications are determined by the ending of the infiinitive form of the verb (e.g. "to study" = "studovat"). As an example, if you want to say, "I study ...", you would change the infinitive "studovat" to "(Ja) studuji ...," since "I" is the first person singular, and so on. The beginning is unchanged. This is the way to make the present tense in Czech (note again some of the common irregular forms at the bottom of the aforementioned Local Lingo page).

    Now having said that, note that there is also "aspect" in verbs (perfective and imperfective), for which I will refer you to another thread, Aspect: A Novel, and to the Local Lingo Aspect page. In short, most verbs have aspect pairs, one imperfective and one perfective, which mean largely the same thing (or at least, the infinitives usually translate to the same word in English); however the imperfective refers to ongoing or repeated action, whereas perfective refers to a single action with a definite beginning and end.

    For a primer on past tense, I'll refer you to Zeisig's post on the thread appropriately named past tense.
     

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