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- Topic: Czech >
- "Kdo se o něj stará?"
25 Comments
This is so confusing to a Russian-speaker. О ней, O něj, means "of her" in Russian. It's hard to get used to the opposite. And ей, jej, means "her" too in Russian, but "it" in Czech! This is rough!
Same in Polish: "jej" is "her". Veeery confusing! But we have so many other false friends :)
Verb endings are confusing at times as well XD My first instinct would be to translate "vidím" as "we see"... and not "I see".... I get these wrong so often
Sorry, I couldn't type the accents so now I copied. The personal pronoun chart has ně and něj in the same box on the ono line, Acc. after prep, as well as ně in the oni, ony, ona (pl.) line. So ně can be singular or plural, yes? So aren't ně and něj interchangeable except for when you mean plural?
Oh, you mean neuter. OK, I was quite confused because normally one would understand this sentence as masculine unless a neuter subject is clear from the context.
Yeh, for neuter singular accusative there are many forms possible indeed. You can also check http://prirucka.ujc.cas.cz/?id=ono
Both "o ně" and "o něj" are possible neuter singular but I feel that "pro ně" is really bookish and I would never say that and I would hesitate about writing it actively.
O něj is for him? All my Czech books say it is for her so you're really sure about this
As the links shown by va-diim show, it is masculine, "for him". You are probably reading the textbook wrong, they shouldn't really say what you seem to read there.
This word is confusing for other Slavic languages' speakers because there is "о неё" (or "про неё" /pro nějo/ and that is indeed "about her").
So all these times I thought it was (eg) pro něho, that is incorrect and it should be pro něj? Good to learn!!
In Czech you have:
for him - pro něho / pro něj (both)
for her - pro ni
"Does take care" is odd here, unless used for emphasis. For example: A: "Does Žofie take care of him?" -- B: "No." -- A: "Okay, so who DOES take care of him?"
