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- "To je medvěd mojí tety."
20 Comments
My translation was: "That is the bear of my aunt." This was marked incorrect, and instead, the following correct answer was given: "That is the bear of my aunt's.". I believe, that the given answer is incorrect. Either, one uses "bear OF my AUNT", or if one want's to use aunt with apastrophe -s, then it should be "my AUNT'S bear". Hence, the translation "that is the bear of my aunt" should be marked correct. Don't you think?
36
garpike is correct that the pleonastic genitive might be correctly used here by some speakers. However, you are also right, RianVanGijlswijk, that the non-pleonastc "bear of my aunt" should be accepted as correct.
- 2023
The pleonastic genitive is not incorrect, it just sounds strange in this unlikely sentence involving bears. Replace 'bear' with something a bit more usual, and, for example, 'that is a friend of my aunt's' sounds absolutely fine to me.
- 36
Note:
That is my aunt's bear = To je medvěd mojí tety.
That is my aunts' bear = To je medvěd mých tet.
The second example sentence in ion1122' s post indicates that the bear belongs to more than one aunt. He is helpfully showing the difference in the Czech sentences based on the difference in the English sentences.
Ok, I didn't see the apostrophe in the second sentence. Thank you
Are there stereotypes about bears and Czechs? Just curious why is this phrase here :-)
- 36
No. Although the meaning is similar, your suggestion would be a different sentence in Czech.
In the DL sentence, "that" is a demonstrative pronoun, whereas in your suggestion, "that" is a demonstrative adjective.
In Czech, the demonstrative adjective ten/ta/to declines according to case and the gender of the following noun. In contrast, the demonstrative pronoun "to" (used in the DL sentence here) does not decline.
The Czech word "to" is used both for the neuter form of the adjective, and also for the indeclinable pronoun. That causes some confusion for English-speaking learners!
Using "that" as an adjective, the Czech would be "ten medvěd je ..." instead of "to je medvěd ...".
That's a brilliantly clear explanation of the (apparently) omnipresent "to" and its relationship to the demonstrative version - thank you. And also great to see the aunt's/aunts' examples in Czech next to each other in your comment above here - also really useful for clarification.
Can you also say "to je medved mojí tetĕ" ? Like you are asking for the dative object "Whom does the bear belong to?
No, dative is used when giving something to someone, when the action directs something to someone. Píšu tetě, dám medvěda tetě...
- 36
Your suggestion is similar in meaning, but it is a different sentence from the Czech and its English translation than is presented here.
For one thing, there is no phrase meaning "the bear" in the original Czech. In that sentence, the "to" is not a demonstrative adjective meaning "the" or "that". If it were, then it would come immediately before the noun, and it would be inflected (to/ty/ten, etc) to show masculine singular. In other words, it would be 'ten'.
In the exercise here, the "to" is a demonstrative pronoun (not adjective), and it means "it" or "that".
We call it a demonstrative pronoun anyway, but otherwise your explanation is accurate.
