"Jsou ty stroje nové?"
Translation:Are the machines new?
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I got busted for "Are those new machines?" but the translation given was "Are those machines new?" -- not "Are THE machines new?" as is shown above. The reason given for why my answer was wrong was "You used the wrong word," and the underlined ("wrong") word was... "new." So I'm really not understanding why my translation was unacceptable.
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I made the same mistake. The problem here is that "nové" comes after "stroje": "Jsou ty stroje nové?" means "Are those machines new?", while "Jsou ty nové stroje?" means "Are those new machines?"
The difference is actually bigger. "Are those new machine?" is "Jsou to nové stroje?" in Czech.
It's not just a matter of word order, it's a whole different sentence with different syntax. Simple examples:
- Ten muž je mladý. (That man is young.)
- To je mladý muž. (That is a young man.)
Rather "Ony jsou TO ty nové stroje?" (when you are surprised)
but the most natural is just
Jsou to ty nové stroje?
Not just that. Ty is also the plural of "ten" for masculine inanimate and the plural of "ta" (feminine) so it means "the", "those".
I have stroj listed in my notes as "masculine singular". But in this sentence, the plural seems to be feminine (except no "Y" ending for "stroj".) Are my notes wrong? Is stroj fem. singular?
No, stroj is masculine inanimate (and is used in textbooks as one of the paradigms). Stroje is nominative plural here.
SO... Just trying to figure out if a rule can be extracted here. Are ALL masculine inanimate plural subjects with an "e" (instead of "i") or is this just an outlier? And is there a way to tell a masculine "animate" vs. "inanimate". I'm a romance language guy (and English obviously) so this is a new concept for me linguistically.
You may want to add this site to your resource kit... lots of very useful information, but it can be somewhat overwhelming at first glance! Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czech_declension#Nouns.
On the WEB version -- desktop or mobile -- Click on a Skill. Then, if you see a light bulb icon, click on that to bring up the Tips & Notes. If there's no light bulb, there are no T&N for that Skill. Also, they are not currently available in the apps.
Bonehead bass, I'm on my laptop. There is no "skill" tab. There are tabs for Learn, discuss, shop and more. NO T & N nor lightbulb appears when I click the "plural" skill icon I'm currently learning. So... Again, don't know how to get where you seem to be able to go.
The skill is a name for a group of lessons with a common topic. It is the round picture you select before doing exercises.
Janmunroe, On my laptop, I was able to see the Tips lightbulb at the beginning of this lesson, before I clicked on the lesson itself.
No, many masculine inanimate nouns follow the hrad paradigm with the nominative plural hrady.
There is no way. Often you can guess based on the nature of the word. People and animals tend t be animate. Plants and non-living objects are often inanimate. The dictionary will have a definite answer. But some words can have an alternatve form of the other sub-gender (often bookish or poetic). That is an advanced topic though (dny/dni, hroby/hrobové,...).
Thanks. The dictionary I inherited from my Aunt and Uncle do not have the genders for words, just the translations. I'll find a better dictionary.
Do you have a recommendation for an on-line dictionary?
My Czech mother-in-law lives in another state and is not readily available.
The Wiktionary is quite helpful.
If you, for example, look up the noun "stroj" there, you can see it says --- "m inan", which is short for "masculine inanimate" - that's the gender.
Then you can also expand the declension table and see the forms in all cases for both numbers.
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My variant "Are these machines new" Wasn't accepted. Why I cannot translate Ty as these here?
If the meaning was intended to be"these," the Czech sentence would use tyhle or tyto, rather than ty.
Yes, it's wrong. It's "the machines" or "those machines".
"that" is singular: "that machine"