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- Topic: Czech >
- "Ta myš je malá."
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I'm sorry, but in the hearing exercise I heard "Ta myši je malá". I don't know whether this comes from the j after the mouse or what else. It's even grammatically incorrect. But I heard it.
So I had the option to choose words. And that's what the audio played, I chose and it accepted. When I opened the comments to see what gives, it says Myš... so there is something happening with this one or for some reason both Myš and Myši are correct.
I do not understand. Were you choosing words in a type what you hear exercise? I have never seen that before.
Myši is certainly wrong here. What you hear as the "i" is actually just a glottal stop that separates the š and the j. The audio is correct and there is no "i" there.
I think it was the choose what you hear from word bubbles. I just listened to it again and I still hear a very clear extra 'I' sound that's not present if I have Google translate say the sentence.
It is nothing that would be phonemic in Czech. It just separates the two words.
Sorry, for the stupid question: is mys masculine or feminine? I thought most word finishing with a consonant are masculine.
Myš is feminine. Myš, gen. myši as kost, gen. kosti.
Such a rule does not exist. There are several declination types for each gender:
Masculine: pán, hrad, muž, stroj, předseda, soudce
Feminine: žena, růže, píseň, kost
Neuter: město, moře, kuře, stavení
As you can see, there is no consonant/vowel ending rule. You have to remember the gender of each word (or the declination).
You're not crazy...! One of my textbooks notes that "Nouns ending in a consonant are VERY LIKELY to be masculine" and "Nouns ending in A are USUALLY feminine." IMO, statements like these are presented to the learner as clues as to gender, but definitely not as absolute rules. So they can be helpful... and they can also muddy the waters a bit, as I know from personal experience!
There is some truth in it. That's why the joke can work in a song "Žil jednou jeden myš a te měl v domě skrýš..." invented originally by a schoolboy. It is intentionally ungrammatical, bucause we have a different word for a male mouse.
