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- Topic: Czech >
- "Děkuji, dobrou noc."
27 Comments
I think, for people who don't know one word it is helpfull, to know about the literaly translation, like "good day" for "hello". Otherwise one can be confused about the appearance of words with different sence. It happened to me with "Jak se mate". In German we ask "how goes", in Czech "How make (you)" and in English "how do ...". I was once surprised, when I realized that mate doesn't mean "gehen" (to go).
At the beginning, you only learn phrases - basic greetings etc. It's like that in every language course. After that you learn actual words and learn to create sentences with them. But when you're learning simple phrases, it makes no sense to confuse anyone at that point with what the actual words mean on their own.
And we don't ask "How make (you)" in Czech at all, that's what the literal translation of "How are you" is in Russian, as far as I know. The literal translation of the Czech "Jak se máš/máte?" is "How do you have yourself?" (or "Wie hast du dich?"/"Wie haben Sie sich?") - i.e. the verb used here it "mít" which means "to have".
From the verb делать "to do," Дело means "a thing going on" or "a thing to do," a "dealing". Therefore, Как дела literally means "How are to-do's" or "how are dealings?" "How are things" but "thing" is too vague in English. Дело is a more narrow definition. So "how are things going" or "what's going on" is more accurate.
The symbol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caron is pretty important. If you only missed that and nothing more, it is normally just diagnosed as a typo and accepted.