Moje babička nikdy nejí jídlo v restauraci, chce jíst doma.

My grandmother never eats food in a restaurant, she wants to eat at home.

Breakdown of Moje babička nikdy nejí jídlo v restauraci, chce jíst doma.

• můj: my
• jídlo: the food
• chtít: to want
• v: in

Questions & Answers about Moje babička nikdy nejí jídlo v restauraci, chce jíst doma.

Why do we have both nikdy and nejí – isn’t that a double negative?

In Czech, you must use this “double negative.”

• nikdy = never
• nejí = does not eat

Czech uses negative concord: when you have a negative adverb or pronoun (like nikdy, nikdo, nic), the verb also has to be negative.

So:

• ✅ Moje babička nikdy nejí jídlo v restauraci.
• ❌ Moje babička nikdy jí jídlo v restauraci. (ungrammatical in standard Czech)

The English idea “never eats” is expressed as never not-eats in Czech grammar, but for Czechs this is just normal negation, not “double” in the English sense.

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Where does nikdy normally go in the sentence? Could I say Moje babička nejí nikdy jídlo v restauraci?