# Slovak: Do you remember the day that we were going to. . .



## mateo19

Ahojte! (I finally remembered to make it plural.)

I was wondering how you express when you were going to do something in Slovak.  For example:

Do you remember the day that _we were going to eat lunch_ together?  I made a CD for you, and _I was going to give_ it to you, but as you know, in the end we did not meet.

Pamätaš si ten deň, keď my . . . obedovať . . . spolu?  Urobil som CD pre teba, a ja . . .  dať ti . . . ale ako vieš, v koniece (ending of koniec-?) sme sa nestretnúli.

Ďakujem za pomoc!


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## Jana337

> Ahojte! (I finally remembered to make it plural.)


Oh my, who told you that? "Ahoj" is not a verb so it should not be made plural. While some people do it, there are many of us who cannot stand it. In a list of the most hated words I've seen, various corrupted versions of "ahoj" ranked pretty high. 

I'd say:  Pamätaš si ten deň, kedy sme spolu mali ísť na obed? Urobil som pre teba CD a chcel som ti ho dať, ale nakoniec sme sa nestretli.

The usual disclaimer applies.


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## winpoj

""Ahoj" is not a verb so it should not be made plural."
Oh really? I thought it was the correct thing to do in Slovak, although not in Czech, of course.


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## Jana337

winpoj said:


> ""Ahoj" is not a verb so it should not be made plural."
> Oh really? I thought it was the correct thing to do in Slovak, although not in Czech, of course.


Oops. If you are right, I made a wrong assumption based on Czech.

This topic now has its own thread: http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=1048307


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## robin74

You'd use the "mať" verb like this:

Pamätaš si ten deň, keď sme mali obedovať spolu? Urobil som CD pre teba, a mal som dať ti ho ale ako vieš, konečne sme sa nestretnúli.

I hope natives speaker will agree 

As for declining "koniec" - remember the moving "e"? It's the same here.
koniec / konca / koncu / konce / koncom.


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## winpoj

"a mal som dať ti ho"

Absolutely certain this is a bad word order.

"a mal som ti ho dať" might be better.

Plus, I find Jana's version better. What Robin is saying is more like "I was supposed to give it to you".


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## mateo19

As a learner of a Slavic language, one of the most difficult things for me to come to understand is the aspect of the verbs.  I know that most verbs have two aspects, perfective and imperfective (like dať and davať)  . . And I think that this explains the difference between Robin's and Jana'stranslations?:

Robin said, "sme sa nestretnúli" and Jana said, "sme sa nestretli".

Is one, "we were not meeting" and the other "we did not meet"?

My books lists stretnúť sa -perf- and stretať sa -imp-.


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## robin74

Sorry, my bad, I just copied your sentence without looking.
The correct form of "stretnúť"  is "stretli".
The imperfective form (of "stretať") would be "stretali".


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## Jana337

mateo19 said:


> As a learner of a Slavic language, one of the most difficult things for me to come to understand is the aspect of the verbs.  I know that most verbs have two aspects, perfective and imperfective (like dať and davať)  . . And I think that this explains the difference between Robin's and Jana'stranslations?:
> 
> Robin said, "sme sa nestretnúli" and Jana said, "sme sa nestretli".
> 
> Is one, "we were not meeting" and the other "we did not meet"?
> 
> My books lists stretnúť sa -perf- and stretať sa -imp-.


No, this has nothing to do with aspects.

Judging from Czech again, "nestretnuli" (I think it is not spelled with "ú") would be a colloquial, (perhaps) easier to pronounce version of "nestretli". The aspect is the same. In this case, it must be necessarily perfective - one meeting only.


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## mateo19

Ahojte znovu,

Although I opened this thread almost a week ago, I wanted to return upon it because I still don't understand the last part of the sentence:

... in the end we did not meet.
... nakoniec sme sa ne-? ? ?

This is why I don't understand:
There are two aspects, imperfective and perfective.
*Stretať sa *is imperfective and *Stretnúť sa* is perfective.

"We did not meet" requires the perfective (right?) since it was a one time action, not a continous action.  I don't want to say "we were not meeting".

The past tense in Slovak, most of the time, is formed by removing the " ť " from the infinitve and adding an " l ".  Thus we obtain:
*Stretal *and *Stretnúl*

*Stretnúť *would be like *minuť --> minul*, right?  Is there an irregularity here that I'm missing?  Thank you very much for explaining this to me.  I appreciate your help!


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## robin74

mateo19 said:


> *Stretnúť *would be like *minuť --> minul*, right?


No.
While most verbs indeed would form the past tense by replacing ť with l, some don't, and "stretnúť" is such a verb. The singular past form is "stretol", and "o" is lost in the plural ("stretli") and the feminine ("stretla") forms.


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## jazyk

I don't know if this is like Czech, but in standard Czech most verbs ending in -nout replace this ending with l/la/lo/li/ly in the past: bodnout - bodl/bodla/bodlo/bodli/bodly, but colloquially you may also hear bodnul/bodnula/bodnulo/bodnuli/bodnuly.


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## Encolpius

Jana337 said:


> Oh my, who told you that? "Ahoj" is not a verb so it should not be made plural. While some people do it, there are many of us who cannot stand it. In a list of the most hated words I've seen, various corrupted versions of "ahoj" ranked pretty high.
> 
> I'd say: Pamätaš si ten deň, kedy sme spolu mali ísť na obed? Urobil som pre teba CD a chcel som ti ho dať, ale nakoniec sme sa nestretli.
> 
> The usual disclaimer applies.


 
Ahojte in Slovak is very very correct.


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## mateo19

Robin, you are completely correct.  I finally found the conjugation for the past tense, and it is indeed irregular!  That's why I didn't understand at first. To me, the past forms of *s*tretať sa and *s*tretnúť sa looked very familiar.  From now on I will remember that stretnúť = stretol.  Thank you everyone for the patience.   It is most appreciated!

Majte sa pekne a do videnia.


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