Vocabulary (Review)

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Lesson Transcript

Ahoj, já jsem Veronika. Hi everybody! I am Veronika.
Welcome to CzechClass101.com’s “Česky za 3 minuty”. The fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn Czech.
In the last lesson, you learned how to talk about your plans. In this lesson, we are going to deal with the verb ”to be” in Czech, být.
We will also discuss how to talk about your nationality.
When you meet a new person in the Czech Republic, they might ask you:
Jaké jste národnosti? which is the equivalent of "Where do you come from?"
Let’s break this down.
Jaké means "Of what?"
národnosti is "nationality" in genitive,
jste is a conjugated form of the “to be” verb být.
All together it's Jaké jste národnosti?
[slowly] Jaké jste národnosti?
Answering this question is very easy! You just say jsem which means "I am", then your nationality.
For example: Jsem Američan.
[slowly] Jsem Američan.
Just replace Američan with your own nationality.
"I am Spanish" is Jsem Španěl.
"I am Italian" is Jsem Ital.
"I am Chinese" is Jsem Číňan.
Be careful, because this is how you refer to your nationality if you are male. For the feminine form, you usually have to add -ka at the end of the nationality.
For example, if you are an American woman, you will say: Jsem Američanka.
Spanish women say:
Jsem Španělka.
For Italian women it is:
Jsem Italka.
For Chinese women it is:
Jsem Číňanka.
and so on.
To return the question you can simply say A vy? which is "And you?" in a polite way.
Now it’s time for Veronika’s tips.
If the male form of your nationality ends with an -ec, like for example Brazilec meaning “Brazilian” or Japonec meaning “Japanese”, you have to remove the -ec ending if you want to make a feminine version.
So if you want to say Brazilian woman, you take Brazilec, remove the -ec, so it becomes Brazil- and then you add the -ka to it. Brazilka.
Or for Japanese, the female version is Japonka.
In this lesson you learned how to talk about nationalities.
Next time we’ll continue to study the verb být and see how to use it to talk about locations. By the way, do you know how to ask someone where they are in Czech? I'll be waiting for you with the answer in the next Česky za 3 minuty lesson.
Ahoj!

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