Learn how to ask "What?"
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| Ahoj, jmenuju se 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 use the verb přijít. |
| In this lesson, we will jump into our lessons dedicated to interrogative words in Czech. Our first one will be the one that is most commonly used to ask a question in Czech, and that is the word for "What." You’ll see that there are many occasions to use it in Czech. |
| So imagine you want to ask your friend "What are you doing?" How will you do it? |
| You will ask- Co děláš? |
| [slowly] Co děláš? |
| Let’s break down this answer- |
| Co is the word for "what" in Czech. |
| Děláš is the 2nd person form of the verb dělat, which we already learned. |
| So, all together it is Co děláš? |
| “What are you doing?” |
| As you can see, in Czech, "What" is mainly translated as co. |
| If you want to sound even more formal, you can use Co děláte? That is the formal form for "What are you doing?" |
| with děláte which is the formal form of the verb dělat. |
| You can use it if you are talking to an older person or your boss. |
| The rule is simple: each time you want to ask a question starting with "What" and followed by a verb, you have to use co in Czech. |
| For example with the verb "to want", "What do you want" will be Co chceš? |
| With the verb jíst meaning "to eat", it will become -> Co jíš? |
| "What" or co in Czech can also be used as a conjunction. |
| So, for example, if you want to say, “I don’t know what he said”, it will be Nevím, co řekl in Czech. |
| Nevím means “I don’t know”, then comes the conjunction co, and finally we have řekl, which is the masculine form of the past tense verb “said”. |
| Now it’s time for Veronika’s Insights. |
| You can also use the expression co if you didn’t understand the other person, but just with your friends or family. It’s more polite to say Co prosím? which literally means "What please?" Of course you can also just say Co! if you are astonished or also shocked. So co is a very useful expression, as you can see! |
| Before ending this lesson, let’s go back and look at all the ways to translate "What" in Czech- |
| - Co děláš? means "What are you doing?" |
| - Nevím, co řekl. means “I don’t know what he said” |
| - Co prosím? literally means “What please?” |
| In this lesson, you learned how to translate the word "What" |
| Next lesson, we will talk about the Czech interrogative word for "Where". |
| Do you know it already? I can promise it’s as easy as "what"! |
| I’ll be waiting for you in the next Česky za 3 minuty lesson. |
| Ahoj! |
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