"To není muž, ale kluk."

Translation: He is not a man but a boy.

[divinespleen]

Why is it not "On neni muz, ale kluk"? It seems like on (he) would be more appropriate than to (it) if you are talking about a person

[ScottishScones]

"to" doesn't actually mean "it", it translates to "that" albeit the form for neutral nouns, not masculine ones. That is what confused me, why not use "tem" rather than "to"?

[RerissonC]

I would guess that "ten" has to appear together with the noun ("ten muz je..."); maybe "to" can appear alone...

[VladaFu]

This is the special and so confusing sentence type "To je", "To jsou", "Je to", "Jsou to...". You will find much morein the Tips and notes and many other sentence discussions.

[deactivated user]

Isn't the correct English equivalent "THAT is not a man, but a boy."?

[BoneheadBass]

That is also an accepted translation.

[RoliSchladming]

Read above about this sentence being special. Why use it then? Ten instead of to wouldn't mislead people.

[VladaFu]

Ten instead of to would be an unusual sentence. (Possible, but in a specific context - "That one is...").

This is the extremely common way how we use the so called copula (copula = linking verb, connection verb) sentences with a noun predicate. In Czech these sentences always use TO for all genders and numbers (TO JSEM, TO JSI, TO JSME, TO JE, TO JSOU, JSOU TO, JSEM TO,...). Why use it then? Because that is how it is done. It is the normal way. You cannot just put something else there.