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- Topic: Czech >
- "Kluci se často perou."
5 Comments
1439
- prát = to do laundry, to wash clothes
- prát se (reflexive) = to fight
Examples:
- Kluci často perou = Boys often do laundry
- Kluci se často perou = Boys often fight
Fun fact: it's the same in Polish: prać = to do laundry; prać się = to fight, although the second one is very colloquial.
I'm guessing that this dates back to the time when one beat laundry to wash it.
424
since Prat se is an imperfect verb, shouldn't "boys are often fighting" be accepted for an answer?
There is little connection between perfective/imperfective verbs in Czech and simple/progressive tense in English. If anything, the imperfective aspect tends to be expressed by simple tenses, and the perfective aspect sometimes by progressive tenses - i.e. the other way around from what you're suggesting.
The plain "Kluci se perou" (imperfective) could of course mean both "The boys are fighting" and "Boys fight".
That aside, I don't think English likes the combination of "often" and a progressive tense, they don't match well. https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=often+do%2Care+often+doing&year_start=1800&corpus=26&smoothing=3&year_end=2019&direct_url=t1%3B%2Coften%20do%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Care%20often%20doing%3B%2Cc0