"Do you like light blue?"
Translation:Máte rádi světle modrou?
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Why use rádi in this case? If you are asking one person? Is it because máte is plural? Should you use rádi even if asking one person with polite máte?
Since we don't know the gender, number, or degree of familiarity from the English sentence, all second-person variations of the verb and rád are accepted.
Great thanks for the info. I wrote máte rád and it said I was correct but I had a spelling error and said I should have written rádi.
I wrote "Máš rád světlou modrou" but it corrected me to "Máš rád světlou modř". What is this "modř" form? I have never seen an explanation for this.
Since "modrou" is the accusative why is it not "sveltou"? They both should be in agreement with "barva" correct?
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Now I am lost-- Adverbs describe VERBS, so which verb is svetle describing here? I thought that it describes the color blue.
Adverbs modify verbs, ADJECTIVES or some other stuff. Modifying the adjectives is very typical.
"Adverbs comprise a fundamental category of words in most languages. In English, adverbs are typically formed from adjectives by appending -ly and are used to modify verbs, verb phrases, adjectives, other adverbs, and entire sentences, but rarely nouns or noun phrases." https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/adverb#English
When you ask HOW?/JAK?, it is an adverb. Jak modrá je ta barva? Světle.
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Thanks-- that was helpful, although I still do not know how to use this information (the fact that it is an adverb that modifies an adjective) to get SVĚTLE instead of SVĚTLOU, as some of us thought mistakenly (because of the accusative) that it should be.
Czechs learn this stuff at primary school :)
There are four categories of words that undergo declination (i.e. they have case, number, and gender): nouns, adjectives, pronouns, and numbers
There is one category of words that undergo conjugation (i.e. they have person, number, tense, voice (act/pas), aspect (perf/imp), sometimes gender): verbs
All other categories don't undergo any changes, they don't inflect at all and maintain their single form. These are: adverbs, prepositions, conjunctions, interjections, particles.
Adverbs have just one form - světle, modře, málo, pěkně
Adjectives have declension, genders, cases and all that:
světlý, modrý, malý, pěkný
světlá, modrá, malá, pěkná
...
světlou, modrou, malou, pěknou
If it is an adverb, it must be světle, there is no other form of that adverb.
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I am very glad that I brought it up-- bohužel, I did not go to a Czech elementary school, so this very useful information was hidden from me until now. Thanks a lot, Vlada & Agnus!
If I understand your question:
světle = Adverb
světlý = Adjective.
I will also note that "světlá modrák and ktmavá modrá" can also exist but in a different context.
If you have two tins of paints, both blue, but one darker and one lighter, you could refer to those tins as (ta) světlá a tmavá modrá - that light and dark blue.
Both those are not those colour light blue and colour dark blue as names of colours in some colour chart.
What do you mean by "why not"? Was it not accepted? It is certainly acceptable.
It was actually missing from all our accepted variations. We accidentally had "rád/ráda/rádo/rádi/ráda" for all variants with "vy" -- i.e. twice "ráda" but no "rády".
Added now.
i noticed the change from mas radi with an i and mate rady with a y. Would that indicate the plural form?
"Máš rádi" is a mismatch, singular "máš" and plural "rádi" can't be used together.
- ty máš rád -- singular, informal, masculine
- ty máš ráda -- singular, informal, feminine
- vy máte rád -- singular, formal, masculine
- vy máte ráda -- singular, formal, feminine
- vy máte rádi -- plural, both formal and informal, masculine or mixed-gender
- vy máte rády -- plural, both formal and informal, only feminine
bledý is most often best translated as pale, but it really depends on the actual case. A pale lager will be světlý ležák and not bledý (but some might disagree).
But pale blue is fine, it is commonly used.
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the object has to be in accusative! "ja mám modrou barvu." you can keep "barvu" (colour) in your mind. "modrou" refers to it. Hope i was successful to make myself understood. Thx
It would work for "Do you like (the) light blue ones?", where "ones" are some plural neuter objects, such as cars -- "Máte rádi světle modrá (auta)?"
When asking about the light blue color, the word "barva" is implied, which is singular feminine and so it has to be "Máte rádi světle modrou (barvu)?"