"S ní bys neměla prohrát."
Translation:You should not lose to her.
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Why doesn't the preposition "s" here indicate with? As in "With her (like, on the team) you shouldn't lose"
we do accept that meaning. but it is more interesting to clearly show the adversarial sense.
what is the difference between saying :" S ní nemáš prohrát" , and S ní bys neměl prohrát"?
The first one is a bit strange, but it means "You are not supposed to ", a reminder of some istruction. The other is in the conditional mood and is an instruction, but weakened, what should ideally happen.
845
"You should not lose to her." is ordinarily used BEFORE the game. However, "S ní bys neměla prohrát." sounds, to my ear, as a statement AFTER the defeat, as "You should not have lost to her", or "You were not supposed to lose to her". Which English translation conveys the exact meaning of the Czech sentence?
No, "S ní bys neměla prohrát" is also used before the game.
After the game, you'd say "S ní jsi neměla prohrát" (You should not have lost to her). or possibly "S ní bys neměla prohrávat" (You should not lose to her generally/ever).
- 845
If it is used before the game, then, doing this exercise the other way around, can I translate the straightforward English expression "You should not lose to her." with the straightforward Czech expression "S ní nemáš prohrát"? What would conditional give me here, only a degree of politeness?
Well, "S ní nemáš prohrát" is quite strange.
"S ní bys neměla prohrát" expresses both meanings of "should not" - the likely one: "it's unlikely that you will lose to her" as well as the sort of warning: "it would be unadvisable to lose to her".
The plain "S ní nemáš prohrát" is straight "You're not supposed to lose to her" and it's a bit bizarre. It's like "your skill is so superior that you'd have lose deliberately, otherwise you always win by default, and remember, we agreed that you wouldn't deliberately lose to this woman." ...so yes, "You shouldn't lose to her" can also mean this, but it's quite marginal, isn't it?
- 594
I understood "you would not have lost with her." how should i know when "s" might be "to"? Only from context? Thx
It can also mean "you should not lose with her." - that's accepted. It can't be "you should not have lost", as that would be "neměla jsi" not "neměla bys prohrát". And it can't be "you would not have lost", as that would be "neprohrála bys".
Don't worry about "s" meaning "to", it's just this particular verb where we have "lose to someone" in English but "prohrát s někým" in Czech. The same meaning can also be expressed with "lose against someone" in English and "prohrát proti někomu" in Czech and here the prepositions match perfectly.