Asking When in Czech - CzechClass101

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Lesson Transcript

Ahoj, já jsem Veronika. Hi everybody! I am Veronika.

Welcome to CzechClass101.com’s “Česky za 3 minuty”. The fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn Czech.

In the last lesson, you learned how to ask "Where" questions in Czech.

This time, we are going to ask questions with the interrogative word "When?"

Let’s go! Tak začneme!

Imagine you want to ask when your roommate is coming back home. You will ask him Kdy se vrátíš domů?

[slowly] Kdy se vrátíš domů?

So let’s break down this answer.

First we had-

kdy, which is the basic translation of "When" in Czech.

Se vrátíš is the reflexive verb "to come back", vrátit se in Czech. Here it is in the 2nd person present indicative.

And finally domů, which is literally "to home."

So, all together it is Kdy se vrátíš domů? which is "When will you come back home?"

So in Czech, "When" is generally translated as the word kdy. For example, if you want to ask "When were you born?" you will say Kdy ses narodil? if you are asking a male and Kdy ses narodila? if you are asking a female.

As in English, the interrogative word is placed in the 1st position and then the verb.

So let’s have a look at another example.

How can you say "When did you arrive?"

It is really simple, since it is exactly the same pattern - if you are asking a male, you will say Kdy jsi přijel? and if you are asking a female, it will be Kdy jsi přijela?

First we have kdy, which is "When".

The second word is jsi which literally means “are”. It is the modal verb být in 2nd person present indicative tense.

And finally přijel or přijela which is the past participle of the verb přijet, meaning "to arrive".

Did you notice a difference between the sentences Kdy se vrátíš domů? and Kdy jsi přijel or přijela?

The first one is talking about a future action – "When are you coming back home?" Whereas the 2nd one is referring to the past "When did you arrive?"

The conclusion is that you can use the interrogative word kdy to talk about any moment, whether past or present.

If you want to ask a question about duration as in "Since when have you been a teacher?" Then you will have to say Od kdy jsi učitel?

Here you also use the present tense if the person is still a teacher but then it’s exactly the same as in English, because "since" is od. So od kdy means "Since when?"

Let’s see how to ask "Until when?" in Czech. It becomes- do kdy

So for example, if you want to ask a friend "Until when are you going to stay here?" It will be Do kdy tady zůstaneš?

But of course there are other ways to ask about time. You can be even more specific by asking about the year, the date or the hour.

For example, you can ask:

- "Which year did you start working?" which will be

Ve kterém roce jsi začal pracovat? for males and Ve kterém roce jsi začala pracovat? for females. Or

- "Which day is better for you?" which will be Který den je pro tebe lepší? Or

- "What hour can we meet?" which is V kolik hodin se můžeme setkat?

Now it’s time for Veronika’s Insights.

To ask how long an action has been taking place in Czech, we could say od kdy, but there is another very simple way to do it!

You just have to use the pattern Jak dlouho? As in Jak dlouho už čekáš? That is "How long have you been waiting?"

Ok, so in this lesson, you learned how to correctly use the interrogative Czech word for "When", kdy, but also its different variations.