Learn how to ask "When?"
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| 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 ask "Where" questions in Czech. |
| This time, we are going to ask questions with the interrogative word "When?" |
| Let’s go! Tak začneme! |
| Imagine you want to ask when your roommate is coming back home. You will ask him Kdy se vrátíš domů? |
| [slowly] Kdy se vrátíš domů? |
| So let’s break down this answer. |
| First we had- |
| kdy, which is the basic translation of "When" in Czech. |
| Se vrátíš is the reflexive verb "to come back", vrátit se in Czech. Here it is in the 2nd person present indicative. |
| And finally domů, which is literally "to home." |
| So, all together it is Kdy se vrátíš domů? which is "When will you come back home?" |
| So in Czech, "When" is generally translated as the word kdy. For example, if you want to ask "When were you born?" you will say Kdy ses narodil? if you are asking a male and Kdy ses narodila? if you are asking a female. |
| As in English, the interrogative word is placed in the 1st position and then the verb. |
| So let’s have a look at another example. |
| How can you say "When did you arrive?" |
| It is really simple, since it is exactly the same pattern - if you are asking a male, you will say Kdy jsi přijel? and if you are asking a female, it will be Kdy jsi přijela? |
| First we have kdy, which is "When". |
| The second word is jsi which literally means “are”. It is the modal verb být in 2nd person present indicative tense. |
| And finally přijel or přijela which is the past participle of the verb přijet, meaning "to arrive". |
| Did you notice a difference between the sentences Kdy se vrátíš domů? and Kdy jsi přijel or přijela? |
| The first one is talking about a future action – "When are you coming back home?" Whereas the 2nd one is referring to the past "When did you arrive?" |
| The conclusion is that you can use the interrogative word kdy to talk about any moment, whether past or present. |
| If you want to ask a question about duration as in "Since when have you been a teacher?" Then you will have to say Od kdy jsi učitel? |
| Here you also use the present tense if the person is still a teacher but then it’s exactly the same as in English, because "since" is od. So od kdy means "Since when?" |
| Let’s see how to ask "Until when?" in Czech. It becomes- do kdy |
| So for example, if you want to ask a friend "Until when are you going to stay here?" It will be Do kdy tady zůstaneš? |
| But of course there are other ways to ask about time. You can be even more specific by asking about the year, the date or the hour. |
| For example, you can ask: |
| - "Which year did you start working?" which will be |
| Ve kterém roce jsi začal pracovat? for males and Ve kterém roce jsi začala pracovat? for females. Or |
| - "Which day is better for you?" which will be Který den je pro tebe lepší? Or |
| - "What hour can we meet?" which is V kolik hodin se můžeme setkat? |
| Now it’s time for Veronika’s Insights. |
| To ask how long an action has been taking place in Czech, we could say od kdy, but there is another very simple way to do it! |
| You just have to use the pattern Jak dlouho? As in Jak dlouho už čekáš? That is "How long have you been waiting?" |
| Ok, so in this lesson, you learned how to correctly use the interrogative Czech word for "When", kdy, but also its different variations. |
| Next lesson you’ll learn more about asking questions with "Who" in Czech. |
| I’ll be waiting for you in the next Česky za 3 minuty lesson. |
| Ahoj! |
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