# Francouz, Ital, Španěl, Rus... - accusative



## djwebb1969

Hi, I studied Russian before, and so there are certain things I can carry over into study of Czech. 

But as far as I understand it the accusative of animate Masculine nouns takes -a after hard and -e after soft consonants. 

I have had no problems so far with the hard (h, ch, k, r, d, t, n) and soft (z', s', c', r', d', t', n', c, j) consonants. Please excuse the lack of the correct symbols.

But it is the ambiguous ones (b, f, l, m, p, s, v, z) that may present a problem.

In my textbook: Francouz - ends with a z - and yet the accusative is Francouze and not Francouza. How can you be sure about these in advance? Do you need to look them all up one by one? Is z always considered soft for the purposes of the accusative?

I also had a problem with přítel, which has přítele in the accusative. But I theorised that the Russian ending -tel' has a soft l, so I could guess that that ambiguous letter l in this ending at least was probably to be considered soft for the purposes of declension. Similarly with učitel, which has učitele, and not *učitela.

Is there any way to be sure or do you have to know each individual word and its declension?


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## djwebb1969

What would the accusatives of Ital, Španěl and Rus be? These all end in ambiguous consonants.


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## Enquiring Mind

Hi dj,


> What would the accusatives of Ital, Španěl and Rus be?


 Ital*a*, Španěl*a*, Rus*a*.

Russian grammar has many broad similarities with Czech grammar, but it's by no means the same.** *

Here are a couple of online Czech grammars, both of them a little idiosyncratic in their different ways, but both are worth studying. The English translations of the grammar examples in the Tahal are generally very good, but a bit iffy in some of the sections on the complex English tenses. But overall it's very useful, and covers some of the finer points that tend to be omitted from most of the English-language Czech grammars that I've seen over the years.

Czech, by Laura A. Janda and Charles E. Townsend, © SEELRC 2002.
Karel Tahal: A Grammar of Czech as a Foreign Language, © FACTUM CZ, s.r.o., 2010. [Click on the top result, it downloads and opens the pdf file.]

Ať se Vám hezky čte! (You can't say that in quite the same way in Russian .)***


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## djwebb1969

thank you for that, enquiring mind. Do you have a reason why francouze has an -e? I see -tel is a general exception and always takes -e, but francouze requires explanation...


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## djwebb1969

Thank you very much for the Tahal link. That will come in hand all the time.


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## Enquiring Mind

_"Nouns ending in neutral consonants (b, p, m, v, s, z, l) take throughout the declension either the hard or soft set of endings; the hard type is more frequent except after l, where the distribution is almost equal."_   (A Practical Czech Course for English-Speaking Students, Miloš Sova, SPN Praha 1962, p 268.)

So it's a bit hit and miss, and unfortunately you just have to learn them.


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## hypoch

Hi dj,

those are all very interesting points you mention. As for  the Z-ending, do you know any other words apart from Francouz? I've been  cudgelling my brain but can't think of anything else.

As an  additional point of interest, in (some) Moravian dialects (mine at  least, i.e. middle Moravian) you can easily say "Francouza". Actually,  this would be my first choice when speaking, even though I'm well aware  it feels distinctly Moravian. Don't let this confuse you though, this is  not the standardized Czech you're studying.

Pěkný den


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## Enquiring Mind

Just reposting the apparently broken link to the Janda-Townsend "Czech" which I posted yesterday in #3 but can no longer edit (because it's over 24 hours old).  [It's a pdf file.]


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## djwebb1969

Enquiring Mind, I've got Routledge's Essential Czech grammar on the way. I hope it's usable!


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## Tchesko

hypoch said:


> As for  the Z-ending, do you know any other words apart from Francouz?  I've been  cudgelling my brain but can't think of anything else.



It's not that easy to find masculine animate nouns ending in -z...
I only found 2 of them:

kněz - ACC kněze (priest)
plaz - ACC plaza (reptile, seldom used in singular)

But online dictionaries say there are actually a few more (I left out some archaic or slang words):

bonz - a or e (Buddhist monk)
dikobraz - a (porcupine)
dřevokaz - a (Trypodendron beetle), similarly listokaz /a (Anisoplia  beetle), luskokaz /a (Bruchus beetle), révokaz /a (grape phylloxera  insect), sosnokaz /a (pine beauty moth), všekaz /a (termite) and also  penězokaz /a (currency counterfeiter) and stávkokaz /a (strikebreaker):  all these end in -kaz, derived from the verb kazit (spoil, ruin,  destroy);
hrdlořez - a (slang for murderer)
Irokéz - e (Iroquois, Native American tribe)
Kirgiz - a (Kirghiz, inhabitant of Kirghizstan)
markýz - e or a (marquis)
perohryz - a (writer, depreciative), similarly rudohryz /a (miner, obsolete) and zeměhryz /a (peasant, depreciative)
pořez - a (stout guy)
šimpanz - e (chimpanzee)
vítěz - e (winner) - this is the only frequent word in this list


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## djwebb1969

Thank you for that. I wonder if the word for priest is related to the word for "prince" in Russian? (knjaz')


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## bibax

djwebb1969 said:


> I wonder if the word for priest is related to the word for "prince" in Russian? (knjaz')


It is the same word, a very old loanword from Germanic kuning (König, king). The meaning 'priest' is later (cca 13th c.).

Did you hear about the so called Czech (Bohemian) umlaut?

Old Czech: kňaz' (gen. kňaz'a), after the Bohemian umlaut: kněz' (knězě) and finally kněz (kněze), after depalatalization of z.

In Moravia you can hear kňaz (gen. kňaza) without the Bohemian umlaut.


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## djwebb1969

Thanks, interesting.


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## Moravian

djwebb1969 said:


> Is there any way to be sure or do you have to know each individual word and its declension?




Have you heard about the "pattern words" in Czech? I'd expect that a student of Czech language would use them when learning other words. In this case _Francouz _has a declencion of _muž_.


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## djwebb1969

Moravian said:


> Have you heard about the "pattern words" in Czech? I'd expect that a student of Czech language would use them when learning other words. In this case _Francouz _has a declencion of _muž_.



That is a baffling reply. And how do you suppose someone would know that _Francouz_ was declined like _muž? _This was my original question. It is no help at all to point out these words are declined alike - my question related to HOW YOU WOULD KNOW, without looking up each word separately, whether a word was declined like _muž_, given that z is not soft. The reply above about _hrdlořez_ shows that there is no way of knowing. So where is the "pattern"?


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## Moravian

djwebb1969 said:


> And how do you suppose someone would know that _Francouz_ was declined like _muž? _



I was expecting you would know that when you learn the word. I never had to study Czech language but if did, I would probably learn the words with these patterns that apply to them. Similarly as I learn German words with their gender and plural suffixes.



djwebb1969 said:


> So where is the "pattern"?



_Muž _is the pattern. As is _pán_, _předseda _and _soudce _(in masculine animate).


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## bibax

Essentially you can choose any noun from a certain group as the "pattern" (model word). In older grammar books the masculine model nouns were chlap, oráč, dub, meč, gen. chlapa, oráče, etc.

In Old Czech the nouns chlap and oráč were declined the same way: e.g. gen. chlapa, oráča.

The ending -a was later change to -ě/-e, but only after the "soft" consonants (the Bohemian umlaut):

oráča -> oráče

The problem with z, s, l, etc. is that these consonants were originally either "soft" or "hard". For example in Old Czech the ľ in učiteľ was "soft" (palatalized) like in Slovak or Russian (учитель). So the ending -a has changed to -e: učiteľ*a* -> učiteľ*e*. Later the palatalization of -ľ was lost, but the change remained: učitel*e*.

Old Czech ďábel (Rus. дьявол) had "hard" l at the end, so the genitive is ďábl*a *(without the umlaut).


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## djwebb1969

Good explanation, Bibax. _Muž _can represent the paradigm, but it's still a problem to identify which words in -z follow this paradigm (see _hrdlořez_ vs. _dikobraz_ above) for the reasons you gave.


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## bibax

You have to learn Old Czech before the umlaut.

The (Central) Bohemian umlaut did not spread to Moravia and Slovakia. Thus the Moravian dialects and Slovak have chlap*a*, muž*a*, oráč*a*, etc.


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## Spikaly

Tchesko said:


> bonz - a or e (Buddhist monk)



bonz (neživotné) je taky od bonzovat, jako když někdo na někoho něco řekne.



> No bonz na vlastní rodiče chutná nejlépe.


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## Tchesko

Spikaly said:


> bonz (neživotné) je taky od bonzovat, jako když někdo na někoho něco řekne.



To je pravda, a taky pořez (neživotné) je od řezat: řezání dříví na pile nebo také množství nařezaného dříví.

_Pořez vlastní kulatiny provádíme v místě firmy. We will saw your logs at the company's premises._

But that has got hardly anything to do with the price of tea in China.


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## francisgranada

Tchesko said:


> ...
> kněz - ACC kněze (priest)
> plaz - ACC plaza (reptile, seldom used in singular)
> ...
> bonz - a or e (Buddhist monk)
> dikobraz - a (porcupine)
> dřevokaz - a (Trypodendron beetle), similarly listokaz /a (Anisoplia  beetle), luskokaz /a (Bruchus beetle), révokaz /a (grape phylloxera  insect), sosnokaz /a (pine beauty moth), všekaz /a (termite) and also  penězokaz /a (currency counterfeiter) and stávkokaz /a (strikebreaker):  all these end in -kaz, derived from the verb kazit (spoil, ruin,  destroy);
> hrdlořez - a (slang for murderer)
> Irokéz - e (Iroquois, Native American tribe)
> Kirgiz - a (Kirghiz, inhabitant of Kirghizstan)
> markýz - e or a (marquis)
> perohryz - a (writer, depreciative), similarly rudohryz /a (miner, obsolete) and zeměhryz /a (peasant, depreciative)
> pořez - a (stout guy)
> šimpanz - e (chimpanzee)
> vítěz - e (winner) - this is the only frequent word in this list


I have the impression that in this list only _vítěz _and _kněz _are really "problematic" as in this cases we cannot spontaneously recognize the originally soft *z'*, otherwise the accusative ending is *-a* in all the words of Slavic origin. The ending *-e* appears also in foreign words where we can suppose an original *-s*, e.g. _Irokéz _(<_Iroquoi*s*_), _markýz _(<_marqui*s*_)... This may be also the case of _francouz _(<*_francous_<German _Franzose< _Romance _France*s*e/Francai*s*/Francoi*s*_).


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## Spikaly

> kněz - ACC kněze (priest)
> plaz - ACC plaza (reptile, seldom used in singular)
> ...
> bonz - a or e (Buddhist monk)
> dikobraz - a (porcupine)
> dřevokaz - a (Trypodendron beetle), similarly listokaz /a (Anisoplia   beetle), luskokaz /a (Bruchus beetle), révokaz /a (grape phylloxera   insect), sosnokaz /a (pine beauty moth), všekaz /a (termite) and also   penězokaz /a (currency counterfeiter) and stávkokaz /a (strikebreaker):   all these end in -kaz, derived from the verb kazit (spoil, ruin,   destroy);
> hrdlořez - a (slang for murderer)
> Irokéz - e (Iroquois, Native American tribe)
> Kirgiz - a (Kirghiz, inhabitant of Kirghizstan)
> markýz - e or a (marquis)
> perohryz - a (writer, depreciative), similarly rudohryz /a (miner, obsolete) and zeměhryz /a (peasant, depreciative)
> pořez - a (stout guy)
> šimpanz - e (chimpanzee)
> vítěz - e (winner) - this is the only frequent word in this list



According to Internetová jazyková příručka:

dřevokaz - also -e
listokaz - also -e
révokaz - also -e
všekaz - also -e
penězokaz - also -e
stávkokaz - also -e
Kyrgyz - not "Kirgiz"


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## djwebb1969

Thank you all for a fruitful thread.


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## Tchesko

Spikaly said:


> According to Internetová jazyková příručka:
> 
> dřevokaz - also -e
> listokaz - also -e
> révokaz - also -e
> všekaz - also -e
> penězokaz - also -e
> stávkokaz - also -e
> Kyrgyz - not "Kirgiz"



Well, my list originates from Slovník spisovného jazyka českého which dates back to the 1960s and reflects the then linguistic norms.
So there is also some time variation in the admissible endings.


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