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- Topic: Czech >
- "They are small animals."
"They are small animals."
Translation:To jsou malá zvířata.
13 Comments
This is the common "to jsou/jsou to" pattern. Please do also read other questions and answers here and under other sentences.
Oni jsou... is possible and accepted. But that would be most likely used if you wanted to say about a group of people that they are small animals. Quite weird but possible. But it could also be a group of animals if they are grammatically masculine animate. Anyway "to jsou" or "jsou to" is more natural here.
212
I wrote "To jsou zvirata" (can't write the r correctly here) and it got accepted (as a typo), corrected into "zviratka". On the one had, i forgot the "malá", and on the other hand, i didn't know "zvírátka" and it was not on the word bank. Could anyone please explain?
You forgot the "malá", so Duo found the closest correct answer to your "To jsou zvířata", which happens to be "To jsou zvířátka" and assumed you accidentally left out the "k" (a typo).
"zvířátko" is a diminutive of "zvíře", and a diminutive is close to "little something" in meaning. Thus "malá zvířata" =~ "zvířátka".
212
cool, nice to know that these things exist in czech (i knew the diminutive from german and spanish before, but i didn't even think about it). Thank you!
Yes, it's very common and productive in Czech. There are usually more tiers:
- stůl - a table
- stolek - a small table
- stoleček - a tiny table
- dům - a house
- domek - a small house
- domeček - a cute/beloved house or a house for dolls
- noha - a foot
- nožka - a little foot
- nožička - a baby's foot or a small leg of an object
Sometimes diminutives create new words with a different meaning:
- list - a leaf or a sheet (of paper)
- lístek - a ticket (or a small leaf)
- lísteček - a tiny leaf or a small piece of paper
- nůž - a knife
- nůžky - scissors