"Podívejte se, Matěji, to není možné!"
Translation:Look, Matěj, that is not possible!
18 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
I typed in "Have a look, Matej, it is not possible!". Duolingo marked my sentence as incorrect because I didn't put a caron above e in Matěj, and said that I "used the wrong word". Should this really be considered a mistake? If not, is it fixable?
Yes. We should have Matej available on the English side everywhere (as well as Frantisek and Zofie...) but at times we missed few, so keep pointing those out. We fix them as we come across them.
Would "hele" work here instead of "podivejte se"? Just curious if they have the same meaning/usage.
Did I misunderstand when I was told in another discussion that podivejte (the ejte ending) is plural whereas podivej (the (ej ending ) is singular? In this sentence, Matej is being spoken to ( Mateji) and he is only one person-singluar and yet podivejte is used. Please clarify. Thanks
The second person plural form is used when speaking to more than one person OR when speaking to one person with whom the speaker has a more formal/less familiar relationship, or when there is a "status" difference in the relationship. Here the conversation could be between two people who don't know each other that well or, say, between a manager and one of his/her employees.
A bit, but not completely, German uses the third person plural for the formal singular.
In the past, Czechs who copied the German way, would say "Oni jsou" instead of "Vy jste". You can now meet it in Jewish anecdotes.
For a broader picture, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%E2%80%93V_distinction
This is a guess: You answer may have been rejected because it used "is impossible" instead of "is not possible." The Czech sentence might use "to je nemožné" instead of "to není možné" for "that is impossible."
Actually we have been accepting "impossible", but not "have a look". I suppose I can add "have a look" ;-)
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Thanks for the answer. Yes, that is it. I just wanted to say that "impossible" and "not possible" is the same thing and it should be correct.
I wrote, "Look here, Matěj, that is not possible". In English, "Look here" is a fairly common expression suggesting that the person, Matěj, in this case, needs to reconsider his position. This does not work as a translation for this sentence?
"Look here" is indeed used in that way, at least in AmE, though it may be a regional usage. If there's not much danger of confusing learners -- especially non-English natives -- with the inclusion of "here" if it's shown as a "correction" answer, it may be fine as an accepted alternative.
Thank you! I really appreciate how responsive this forum is to all our questions.