Sometimes the most basic things in a language can be the most difficult to grasp, especially if your mother tongue uses them in a completely different way. I have been trying to teach my husband (whose mother tongue is Latin American Spanish) the usage of TY and VY for almost two years and I still don’t think he can really understand the difference. That’s why I decided to write it down, so that he can see it “black on white”, as we Czechs say (well, we actually say “ať to vidí černé na bílém”). And so that our students can understand the usage better as well!
In the Czech language you have to distinguish between addressing other people in formal and informal situations. If you speak to your friends or family members, you would usually address them by TY, the 2nd person singular. If you speak (or for example write an e-mail) to a stranger (no matter if it is your doctor, a policeman or a shop assistant) or to an elder, you would usually address them by VY, which is the 2nd person plural (and it doesn’t matter if it is just one person or if there are more of them – so basically you address the doctor as if there were actually at least two of them there).
Once you are addressing more people at the same time, you don’t need to worry too much whether the occasion is rather formal or informal, as you will address them by VY in any case, no matter if they are your family members or strangers.
You can check this table summarizing all personal plurals in Czech, so that it gets more clear.
Let’s have a look at several widely used languages and compare their features for formality and informality with Czech: text here.
French
French-speaking students shouldn’t have any problems with mastering the usage of TY and VY, as their usage is pretty similar to the French tu and vous. Both languages even have similar one-word verbs meaning “to address someone informally” (tykat in Czech and tutoyer in French) and “to address someone formally” (vykat in Czech and vouvoyer in French).
German
German speakers do differentiate between addressing people in formal and informal situations, however for the formal addressing they use the 3rd person plural (Sie) instead of the 2nd person plural (and again it doesn’t matter if we are addressing only one person or more). The 2nd person plural is used only for informal addressing of groups of people.
Interestingly, this form of addressing people by the 3rd person plural used to exist also in the Czech language (under the influence of German), but nowadays it somehow appears only in Jewish jokes.
English
The distinction between the formal and informal addressing of people disappeared from English in the 18th century, which is the reason why any grammatical explanation of the Czech language in English is so difficult and lengthy.
Spanish Spanish
By “Spanish Spanish” I mean the Spanish language spoken by the people of Spain. It has a clear distinction between formal and informal, singular and plural (altogether 4 different verb forms), making the matters more clear than they are in the Czech language. The formality is expressed by the 3rd person as in German, but in Spanish we distinguish also between singular (Usted) and plural (Ustedes). Which basically means that if you are a Spanish speaker and you want to learn Czech, you need to make a little switch in your brain and try to accept the fact that from now on, when you address a stranger, you have just one form and it is the same one as if you were using the 2nd person plural vosotros.
Very simply put:
- tú → TY
- vosotros/Usted/Ustedes → VY
By the way, the 3rd person singular was also used in the Czech language in the 18th century (and for example in Polish it is used until now), so it is not something unique to Spanish.
Latin American Spanish
In Latin American Spanish the 2nd person plural (the one that is at the center of this humble analysis) does not exist. They just decided that they can survive without it. As you might guess, it can get quite complicated to teach someone the triple usage of something that does not exist in their mother tongue at all. Latin American Spanish uses the informal tú and the formal Usted just as the “Spanish Spanish”, but it uses the 3rd person plural Ustedes for both informal and formal addressing of groups of people. Which is probably why my husband for some reason (= this reason) knows how to make the 3rd person plural in Czech, but still is not able to remember how to use TY and VY.
In some countries (especially Argentina) they also have the pronoun vos which (probably) means “something between tú and Usted”. To make matters even more confusing, some speakers of Latin American Spanish (by “some speakers” I mean for example my husband) tend to use tú and Usted in an inverted way, using the formal one in the family and the informal one for example when talking to a shop assistant.
Are you confused enough? If you are starting with Czech and want to grasp the basic rules before you get too lost, you can learn with our free video course: