"Jeho nevidím."

Translation: I do not see him.

[Shathu_Entayla]

I now it's explained in the description of this skill but... I dont really understand why and when to use "neho" instead of "jeho", or even "ho" instead of "jeho"... I feel really like I'm doing it randomly xDDD.

[kacenka9]

Well, there is some randomness in it. It mostly depends on a flow of the sentence. When 'him' is the first word in a sentence, it never is HO. Just does not sound right. While if you use a pronoun JÁ here, it would change to Já ho nevidím. Simply because Já jeho nevidím is a mouthful. Yet some people actually would say that as well. It would point out that they see other people but not him. So, to a certain point, it is a hit and miss type of a word.

[Shathu_Entayla]

Ok! Anyway it's useful, beacuse there's some kind of creteria. Not linguistic but kinda "soundy-feely" one. That's much more than nothing and... it will make me we aware of how czech sounds. That's cool! Díiiiky! :D

[va-diim]

and, něho is used after a preposition, for example,

Čekám na něho.

[standelf]

I believe this is also a valid linguistic reason. The same thing with personal pronouns occurs in my mother tongue as well. Also, there is something called "Principle of economy" in language, the fact that languages follow one overarching principle - "the principle of least effort". We feel good and it sounds cool when we say a lot in a few words :) Soundy-feely is also linguistics!

[Shathu_Entayla]

Hahaha, yes, of course it is! But, I thing that, in this case, maybe not everytime is a question of "language economy". Don't know yet, I don't know that much czech, but could not to be the case.

Let's see... Sound-feely mode, activated! ;D

[StephenMil224287]

"Czech in a nutshell" summary does not have jeho but "401 Czech verbs" has it.

[Frank162861]

Would "Jeho" always be a person? Could it not refer to any masculine noun? In which case it would translate to "I don't see it".

[AgnusOinas]

In a normal sentence: "Nevidím ho", the pronoun can refer to any masculine noun, so it can be "it", indeed (Kde je ten pavouk? Nevidím ho! - Where is that spider? I don't see it!)

But the pronoun is stressed here ("HIM I don't see, although I see someone else") and even though I'm trying, I can't quite imagine using it for anything else than a person. In my spider example, I'd just include the noun instead: "Toho pavouka nevidím!")

[svrsheque]

insufficient animacy or lack of personhood?

[AgnusOinas]

Spiders are about 100 times more animated than I wish them to be.

But honestly, I'm not really sure how to explain that "Jeho nevidím" can't be "it" (except under some weird circumstances) while "Nevidím ho" can.