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- Topic: Czech >
- "Její jméno je úplně jiné."
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this one is irksome. "quite" seems to have two meanings, whose use supposedly depends on the gradability of the adjective or verb. note the disparity between just these two sources in the example of "this is quite a different problem" under the "completely" meaning in the oxford dictionary vs the "normally meaning of rather" for "quite a/an adjective noun" phrase per bbc.
if one were to tell his wife that, yes, he quite loves her, would she hear completely/totally or fairly/to a certain degree? that would put one's money where his mouth is.
incidentally, czech has its own word that quite matches "quite", docela. so if we want to avoid fuzzying this whole exercise into near uselessness by accepting anything from fairly to utterly, we do have an excuse in the availability of a parallel czech term that matches the ambiguity of the proposed english one.
Is this like some czech (I'm sorry for this wordalike translation) tongue breaker?
No. We have better ones, like "Třistatřiatřicet stříbrných stříkaček stříkalo přes třistatřiatřicet stříbrných střech." To ease your worries, I promise that this one won't make it into the course.
The meaning of "úplně" was given as "definitely" in a previous exercise, I have a note of it, but it was not accepted here although I would have thought it has the same meaning as entirely. I have reported it. The previous discussion about "quite" is interesting, you could even say quite interesting. "Her name is quite different" does indeed mean "...entirely..." with "different", but on the other hand for example "her name is quite nice" means "...somewhat nice."! Very confusing for anyone learning English! .
In this exercise, we accept "completely/totally/absolutely/quite/utterly" besides "entirely". "Her name is definitely different" means something entirely different (lol) and would not be expressed by "úplně".
"úplně" may mean "definitely" in different contexts, not here though. That's how it is with words in different languages, you can't expect a 1:1 equivalence.
Point taken, I shall say no more, though I'm definitely not sure about not definitely!
"Definitely" here would mean "certainly", as in "I'm sure that her name is different". Perhaps her name is only slightly different, but you know for sure that it is different.
