Fun with Czech! [cont. from p.94] #projectPrague
Yesterday's Czech lesson was in the Locative case.
Locative, lokál, the declension for the state of being in a location. Used only after v (in), na (on or to), po (past, after, on, to, for, by - yes, all of them), při (by, nearby, with) & o (about, with). Although s is normally "with". Except if the word starts with a vowel, then it's se, ( Read more... )
Sorry for all the hassle I inadvertently put you through.
OK, mea culpa. Because nobody I've asked except perhaps my teacher Lucie and you knows this stuff, I wrongly assumed that it was like English teaching and it wasn't taught. My bad.
I do know the numbers, thanks to my NGDAVLI mnemonic, but it's an additional conversion step. I also have tried to memorise the list of questions, but it doesn't help a foreign learner at all. If you know the endings, the questions let you ID the case. But I don't know the endings; I need to perform a (fully-conscious) grammatical analysis first, work out subject, object, type of object, take a guess at the gender and the role, and then try to remember an appropriate ending for that case in that gender in that number.
The little questions are just kicking me in the guts while I am already on the ground struggling. They are more work, not a hand up.
It's a bit like waistcoastmark said above: how an Anglophone tells "he" from "him" is largely what sounds right. If you don't know if it should be "he" or "him" or why, then you can't work out whether it should be "who" or "whom". The real question is, "when and why should you use he and when him?" That is a substantially more difficult question.
The names of cases give me a clue as to why I should use each. The numbers do not; it's an additional step. If I know the number I still have to work out the name and then go from there. The tables of endings in my head, blurred and smudgy and scribbled-upon as they are, aren't numbered on a list.
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