"Čekám na muže."
Translation:I am waiting for my husband.
29 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
This is a tricky one. As a native speaker I would always understand that as "my husband". Because if she (or he) was waiting for 'a man' they would say 'some' or 'one' or use some other determinant.
Čekám na nějakého muže. Čekám na jednoho muže.
If this sentence was used by a male that I know is married to a woman, I would be completely confused and likely ask "whose husband"?
I understand how this is confusing and am sorry about that.
292
I completely forgot that muž means "man" and wrote "husband" because of Russian, and I accidentally got it right. Muž i žena is "husband and wife" in Russian.
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As someone studying both Czech and Russian, I appreciate your posting, va-diim. Very useful bit of information.
292
Thanks! Some people get annoyed that I do that. You should try Ukrainian and Polish on Duolingo too. They really bridge the gap between Russian and Czech.
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"If this sentence was used by a male that I know is married to a woman, I would be completely confused and likely ask "whose husband"?", what about if a male like me would tell you? Diky
292
I love Slavic languages!
Slovak: Čakám na muža.
Polish: Czekam na męża.
Belarusian: Čakaju muža.
Serbian/Croatian: Čekam muža.
Slovenian: Čakam moža.
Macedonian: Čekam maž.
The "my" in "for my husband" comes from the need of some determiner in English. The sentence would be incomplete with just "for husband". So in English we add "my" before the husband to completely specify it. In Czech it is quite clear she is waiting for her husband.
I am not a native English speaker but I think "my man" is not a correct way to refer to "my husband" in English.
You can also understand the Czech sentence as "I am waiting for a man.". Then no "my" is necessary, but again English requires an indefinite article here, just "for man" would be ungrammatical.
292
It's not slang. It's the same in Russian and other Slavic languages. It's understood as "my husband" when there is no explicit personal pronoun. However, in Russian, the word for "man," mužčína, is not used to mean "husband" (which incidentally is muž in Russian).
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V češtině by to muselo být " na svého muže" nebo "na manžela", jinak ta věta nemá smysl. Čekám na muže má obecný význam, tzn. na jakéhokoliv muže.