# studovat - conjugation: formal, informal



## djwebb1969

While I was in Prague recently, people told me this was correct:

*studuju*
studuješ
studuje
studujeme
studujete
*studují*

Now I look at Wiktionary, and it tells me the formal forms of the 1st sing and the 3rd plural are studuji and studují, and the informal forms are studuju and studujou. Yet I asked about this several times in Prague - I met a Czech man with fluent Russian who explained many things to me - and I wonder why he recommended a conjugation table to me that has an informal form for the 1s and and a formal form for the 3pl.

Can someone confirm that studuji and studují are formal only, and that studuju and studujou are preferable in speech? Also, would it be right to presume that studuji and studují are rarely heard? Thanks.


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## Spikaly

In normal spoken language only -u and -ou ending is used in this type of verbs, really nobody uses the -i and -í ending, except some very formal speech or in TV, -i ending in 1st person singular is definitely more obsolete than -í ending in 3rd person plural, I mean, you can hear sometimes -í ending when somobody is trying to speak more formally, but -i ending in 1st person singular became very old-fashioned and it is practically unheard.

In written language, again, -i ending is nowadays less used than -u ending, -í ending is still more used in written language than -ou ending when you want to write correctly, non-colloquially.


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## djwebb1969

Thanks for the explanation, Spikaly.


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## risa2000

Spikaly said:


> In normal spoken language only -u and -ou ending is used in this type of verbs, really nobody uses the -i and -í ending, except some very formal speech or in TV...


Actually I do and I know quite a lot of people who do as well . Do not make assumption based on local geographic or demographic experience. Using correct forms (as quoted) is perfectly correct and understandable by everybody. The spoken forms are perfectly understandable too, but they always sound to me a bit off when I hear them with an alien accent - because it implies the speaker learned the wrong forms to use .


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## djwebb1969

Risa2000, that's interesting. I find foreigners who use words like "aye" for "yes" in their English sound a bit off too. So I know what you mean.


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## bibax

For me studuju is acceptable, but studujou sounds terrible even in everyday informal speech. In Old Czech the original endings were -u and -ú. They systematically changed in -i and -í after the palatal/soft consonants: dušu -> duši, majú -> mají, but beru, berú -> beru, berou. Some Moravian dialects are more conservative in this respect: you can hear dušu, majú, berú like in Old Czech.


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