"Jak se jmenuje tamhleten hrad?"
Translation:What is the name of that castle?
9 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
This is kind of an indirect, but possibly useful, response to your post.
Tamhletěch is a genitive plural form. Neither the genitive case nor the plural form is needed in this version of the thought conveyed in this sentence. On the other hand...
A more literal -- but weird in English -- translation of the Czech exercise sentence would be, "How does that castle call itself?" Looking at it this way, we see that the castle is the subject of the English sentence, and we can now see why it is in the nominative case in the Czech sentence.
If we had a different English sentence -- "What is the name OF that castle?" -- the Czech sentence could be, "Jaké je jméno tamtoho hradu?" And here the Czech sentence uses the genitive construction (tamtoho hradu), in the singular, because we're talking about only one castle.
To add to Bonehead's good explanation:
You ask "when to use the ...těch extension", which shows your misunderstanding. The "těch" part, or the "ten" part used here, are the main WORDS, no "extensions". They are prefixed by "tam-" (there) and "-hle-" (behold), for a combined meaning of "look, that one over there". Both of these prefixes are optional, and you can leave them out (for a simple "that" meaning).
Now, the main word is "ten" (that's the masculine nominative singular form) and it changes according to gender, case, and number. As you can see in a declension table, for example here: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/ten#Declension ...there are various forms. The form "těch" is genitive plural or locative plural for all genders, so for example "barva (tamhle-)těch aut" = "the color of those cars (over there)" or "o (tamhle-)těch hradech" = "about those castles (over there)".
You can add the prefixes "tam-" or "tamhle-" to any of these forms. Or you add the prefix "-to" or "-hle" to any of them if you need "this" instead of "that".