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- Topic: Czech >
- "This yellow car is hers."
"This yellow car is hers."
Translation:Tento žlutý automobil je její.
16 Comments
444
I wrote "tohle žluto auto je její" but not accepted. Not sure why not accepted. Will submit as should be.
I wrote 'tento žlutý auto je jeji' and it was wrong. In many other sentences 'auto' is valid.
I wrote ' Tento žlutý auto je jeji' and the translation gave mě 'Tento žlutý automobil je jeji'. So I asked why 'auto'. wasn't accepted.
Because auto is neuter. It must be "toto žluté auto". Automobil is masculine so "tento žlutý automobil".
- 483
I always thought that AUTO was just an abbreviation of AUTOMOBIL(E). It is interesting to learn that in Czech, losing the MOBIL(E) ending neuters the masculine automobil...
Well, nouns ending in -o are neuter without exception, so as soon as "automobil" got shortened to "auto" the gender shift came automatically with it.
Gender commonly adapts to the form of the word. Another example is "taxi" - a neuter word. It doesn't decline at all, which is acceptable in the accusative ("Volám taxi" - I'm calling a taxi), but becomes unusable in other cases ("Jedu taxi (where's my instrumental mark???)" - I'm taking a taxi). This is why almost everyone uses "taxík" instead. The "-ík" ending makes it masculine. And now we can comfortably say "Jedu taxíkem". A more slang version of the same word is "tágo", which is neuter again thanks to its ending -> "Jedu tágem."
Why "To žluté auto je její" is not accepted? "This" can be both "to" and "tohle"
No, "this" can be "toto" or "tohle". "To" is either "that" or just "the".
The only time "this" can also be simply "to" is when we begin with "to je / je to..." (or "to jsou / jsou to..." for "these are...") but even there it's better to stick with "this" = "toto/tohle".
