10.6 – Na jak dlouho? Going for an Amount of Time

In this lesson we are going to learn how to express for how long. In English we typically say things like:

• I am going to Prague for a week.
• Pavla is going to the park for an hour.
• How long are you going to Europe for?

These types of sentences express how long one intends to go to a place for (i.e. – once they get there, how long they intend to stay). In order to say this in Czech, we will simply use the preposition na  time expression (in the accusative case). Take a look at the following examples:

Jedu do Prahy na týden.

‘I am going to Prague for a week.’

Pavla jde do parku na hodinu.

‘Pavla is going to the park for an hour.’

Na jak dlouho jedete do Evropy?

‘How long are you going to Europe for?’

OK, so that’s really most of what we have to take care of.

Final Note on Quantity Expressions

When we learned the Czech Counting Rule, we learned that with the numbers 5  and words like hodně, několik, etc. are followed by the genitive plural. This rule still applies with the above time expressions. In other words, the counting rule trumps everything and so you will still see the genitive used after these words. See examples below:

Jedu do Brna na pět týdnů.

‘I am going to  Brno for five weeks.’

Půjdu tam na několik minut.

‘I’ll go there for a few minutes.’

Images used in this document come from these sources.