"On někdy kupuje mléko tady."

Translation: Sometimes he buys milk here.

[Christine_nl]

Why does the voice say "One" or "Oni"?

[ion1122]

The voice does not say öni", Christine. What you are hearing is "on ně".

[JanLyko]

I hear "On".

[Artashes98]

Christine is absolutely right. Between "on" and "někdy" there is indeed an additional unnecessary sound, and it is clearly audible!

[VladaFu]

I do not hear anything of the sort. If there is anything, it is not something a Czech listener would care about but it perhaps it may annoy an English speaker. In that case be prepared that actual Czech speach from living people may be full of such sounds.

[horsthartm2]

"...from living people..." thanks from "the walking dead". : )
I totally agree about "that actual spoken czech".

[VladaFu]

I think I got what you all may have in mind.

There is a glottal stop between on and někdo. It is necessary to separate the final N in the first word and the starting N in the next word. It is NOT phonemic. A Czech ear does not intepret it as ʔ, ə, or e or uh or however you may call it. It just how we separate sounds that do matter.

Without this sound you would get "oněkdy" instead of "on někdy".

[Artashes98]

Yes, that's it. And to a non-Czech ear it sounds like "onəněkdy". A foreigner would say "on někdy".

[Artashes98]

A foreigner would say "on -minipause- někdy".

[VladaFu]

I'm dubious it is actually phonetically possible in continuous speech. In slow recitation yes, even a Czech native will just pause.

[CaroleDiva1]

I wrote @He sometimes buys

[VladaFu]

And what happened? "He sometimes buys milk here." is accepted, you must report the complete sentence.

It seems you answered with there, instead of here. That is not correct.

[JohnBraga1]

Should "One can sometimes buy milk here" be accepted?

[kacenka9]

Nope. this is not a French ON, this is Czech ON :D so undoubtedly a HE

[InPxgX6K]

Hehe! I came here to complain that before 2nd coffee o'clock I have an irresistible tendency to think of ‘on’ as referring to either an indeterminate subject and/or to first person plural and/or any of the many other usages of French ‘on’.

The fact that both in Czech and French it is conjugated as a 3rd person singular pronoun and gives very similar sentence structures does not exactly help with avoiding interference (I am a fluent French speaker).

[dexter370631]

kedy sa požíva "sometime" a kedy "sometimes"? Vďaka .)

[VladaFu]

Hledejte na webu a najdete dobrá vysvětlení https://www.helpforenglish.cz/article/2012082801-sometimes-vs-sometime

[Pollyhs]

could I also say tady nekdy mleko kupuje?

[VladaFu]

Yes, if you want to stress he does indeed buy it here and not like the other shops where he explicitly does not.

Or when you want to stress that he buys it here and not borrows or steals...

[Pollyhs]

so saying it like that is similar to saying that he always buys it here ... and no where else?

[VladaFu]

No, the point is what constutes the new information in the message, the thing that you want to inforrm about and that is the word "kupuje". You know about the milk already but you are stressing he BUYS it here or that he DOES BUY it here. It is the comment.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topic_and_comment

[adelriosantiago]

Google Translate says that:

never = nikdy

sometimes = někdy

Is this correct? How can I distinguish each one? They sound very similar...

[VladaFu]

It is correct.

They sound different enough, when pronounced correctly, you have to train your speaking and listening by actually speaking and listening.