- Forum >
- Topic: Czech >
- "No, those castles are not bi…
"No, those castles are not big."
Translation:Ne, ty hrady velké nejsou.
28 Comments
I can see your report, it is marked green, that means it is already accepted. A Duolingo bug, trhere is nothing we can do. You can try reporting directly to Duolingo Troubleshooting.
No, it still doesn't work. I've written that answer now and it was marked wrong.
Cool. I was only informing that Duolingo is still giving the answer as wrong. Thanks for your work done in the course. You rock, men!
1413
Is it common or usual to place the (negative) verb after the predicate adjective, or is this done for particular emphasis?
Depends what you call common. Reasonably common, but not the default form. korpus.cz gives 33 hits for "nejsou velké" and 4 hits for "velké nejsou" out of which one should not be counted.
I've got it in mind that there are no articles in Czech, but please, pray-tell, what are 'ty' and 'ten' and the others? And do those change as singular and plural do?
The are demonstratives and they do change. See the Tips and notes for more.
I can't figure out why it's wrong to say "Ne, ty zamky velké nejsou"? It seems to me, zámek (zámky) <=> hrad (hrady).
Ne, ty zámky velké nejsou. IS accepted. We have no report that uses zámky. Probably you had some more typos.
This is what I've found in Wiktionary: The word hrad is used for castles whose main function seems to be defence, while zámek is used for those whose main function seems to be ostentation. For example, the castles of King Edward in Gwynedd are hrady, while the Loire Valley castles are zámky. The difference can be subjective, so that for example Windsor Castle can be called by either term by different speakers.
The words are "zámek" and "hrad".
Hrad is a huge medieval structure on a hill, usually featuring a lot of stone - walls, towers, battlements. Imagine Game of Thrones or L.O.T.R. type of ambiance. Prague was founded around a castle (the Prague Castle - Pražský Hrad).
Zámek is sometimes translated as a manor house or palace. It's typically from a later period than those medieval castles, and it's much more decorated - outside and inside. Imagine dukes and barons and earls, dancing balls and high society and wigs and chandeliers and beautiful furniture.
It's the demonstrative pronoun "ten", meaning "that". The masculine inanimate plural nominative form (and a few other forms) is "ty", it's just a coincidence that it looks the same as the personal pronoun "ty" (you) - it's a different word.
