Translate the following into good Czech (hint as well as your usual Czech use: ten, ta, to, jeden, jedna, jedno and ono)
Articles, the, an, a and so on
Words in bold are connected to other words in bold in the same sentence.
Words in [ ] do not have to be translated and are very complicated for good students or are slang to make it, slightly, less boring.
Articles are easy, students find articles difficult. This is silly because articles are easy.
Czech has articles, “ten, ta, to” etc, but people are often too lazy to use them. I understand Czech articles and I am an Englishman. A piece of good Czech language has articles and it uses the articles. Go back and add some articles [you lazy git]!
Articles are crucial to convey precise meaning – “to give meanings in general or one precise meaning” - not very clear but understandable and still correct English although very similar to ambiguous Czech.
or we could say:
Articles are crucial to convey a precise meaning. – to give one specific meaning.
– much clearer English, therefore better and less confusing – unlike the Czech language for me!
People get confused about when to use “the” or “a” or “ ” no article. This again, is easy.
Sand is much the same in the Czech language as it is in the English language.
Sand means “all sand everywhere” or “any sand anywhere” or “all sand anywhere” or “any sand everywhere”.
The sand I want to talk about is on a beach in Australia. It is the second time I have mentioned sand, so now I can talk about “the sand” so that you know I mean one specific area of sand.
The sand is too much to count, there is a lot of it, it is still uncountable.
“A beach” was one of many and it was the first time I mentioned the word beach.
The sand in Australia is different to the sand in Romania. The Australian sand is yellow – so now I talk about two different separate types of sand. However it is still uncountable.
A piece of Australian sand is yellow. I can count a piece of sand because it is small and I can separate it from the others.
A piece of Romanian sand is black.
1. “In general ___ Romanian sand is black.” the lack of article means “99% of Romanian sand is black”
2. “The Romanian sand is black, in general.” meaning “specifically the sand of Romania and 99% is black”.
1 and 2 mean much the same thing. You understand now! See! Easy!
[If you want to try to understand very difficult English read this, in the conversation before sentence:
- we were also talking about sand or beaches or something else to do with sand (and sand is uncountable)
- we were talking about Romania previously. (One thing in Romania is countable) ]
Finally let us talk about books.
There are many books in the world – too many to count i.e. uncountable therefore we do not say “the”.
However:
“The books that I like are science fiction books” – these are countable, either because there are not too many to count. E.g.
“Yes there are a lot of science fiction books but there are maybe 1,500,000 one million five hundred thousand science fiction books in the world.” Countable, if you wanted to count each one. [you’re a saddo if you do!]
Or maybe there are too many to count but I put them into one big group “the science fiction books in the world are too many to count” then they are also “the science fiction books” because I ‘cheated’ and put them into one group, like “the sand on one beach”,
“The science fiction books of this world” and “The sand in this world”
A book that I like is called “Dorsai!” – one specific book again countable – if you can’t count to one, leave my class now :-)
The book is about ‘a group of men from the planet Dorsai’ many men but we do not know who they are; however they are one group.
The men are soldiers - it is the second time I have talked about those men and that group of men so now I call them “the men”
Now add the table from the black board and you are finished.
Test fill in the gaps
_____ Articles are important. When we talk about something in general or when there is too many to count we can have _______ article.
If we talk about a smaller group then we use _______
If we talk about one thing of many we use ________
If we talk about one specific thing that we know or should know we use _________
