Breakdown of Pro mě je nejhorší hra ta, kde nikdo nemluví a lidé se jen dívají do telefonu.
Questions & Answers about Pro mě je nejhorší hra ta, kde nikdo nemluví a lidé se jen dívají do telefonu.
Czech personal pronouns change their form depending on case. The preposition pro (“for”) always takes the accusative case.
- já – nominative (I)
- mě / mne – accusative / genitive (me)
- mně / mi – dative / locative (to/for me, about me)
After pro, you must use the accusative form mě (or the slightly more formal mne):
- pro mě / pro mne = for me ✅
- pro já ❌ (wrong case)
- pro mně ❌ (wrong case; mně is dative/locative, not accusative)
So Pro mě is the normal, correct form here.
Pro mě is put at the beginning to emphasize that this is your personal opinion (“for me / in my view”).
You could move it, and the sentence would still be grammatical, with only a small change in emphasis:
- Pro mě je nejhorší hra ta… – “For me, the worst game is the one…” (strong focus on for me).
- Nejhorší hra je pro mě ta… – “The worst game, for me, is the one…” (slightly more neutral).
Czech word order is flexible. Position mostly changes what is emphasized, not the core meaning.
Ta here is a demonstrative pronoun meaning that one / the one and it refers back to hra.
The structure is literally:
Pro mě je nejhorší hra ta, kde…
= “For me, the worst game is the one where…”
Without ta, the sentence is still understandable:
- Pro mě je nejhorší hra, kde nikdo nemluví…
But ta makes the pattern clearer and a bit more natural in Czech:
“the worst game is the one where…”. It also gives a clean anchor for the relative clause kde nikdo nemluví….
Yes, nejhorší means “the worst”.
Czech normally does not use articles (no a, an, the). Instead, definiteness is understood from context and from things like:
- word order
- superlatives (nejhorší, nejlepší, etc.)
- demonstratives (ten/ta/to, tento, tenhle)
Here nejhorší hra is naturally understood as “the worst game”, not just “a worst game”, especially because it’s in a general, evaluative statement (“For me, the worst game is…”).
Both are possible, but they feel a bit different:
- ta, kde nikdo nemluví… – literally “the one where nobody talks…”.
- Very common, sounds natural and conversational.
- ta, která… – “the one that/which…”.
- A bit more formal or explicit, especially if you then say ve které (“in which”) to show the spatial relation.
So you could say:
- Pro mě je nejhorší hra ta, kde nikdo nemluví… ✅
- Pro mě je nejhorší hra ta, ve které nikdo nemluví… ✅ (more explicit/formal)
In everyday speech, kde is very often used like English where/that in such relative clauses.
In Czech, double negation is normal and required, unlike in standard English.
With negative pronouns like nikdo (nobody), nic (nothing), nikdy (never), you must use a negative verb form:
- Nikdo nemluví. = Nobody is speaking. ✅
- Nikdo mluví. ❌ (ungrammatical)
- Někdo mluví. = Someone is speaking. ✅
So nikdo nemluví is the correct and only standard way to say “nobody is talking.”
Jen means “only / just” and limits the action:
- lidé se dívají do telefonu – “people look at their phone.”
- lidé se jen dívají do telefonu – “people only/just look at their phone (and do nothing else).”
It emphasizes that their activity is limited to this one thing, which fits the negative evaluation of the game.
In Czech, some verbs are reflexive by nature; their basic dictionary form already includes se. Dívat se is one of them:
- dívat se (na něco / do něčeho) = to look (at something) / to watch
So:
- lidé se dívají = people are looking
- dívají se = they are looking
Without se (dívat) is not used in this sense. You learn it as a whole unit: dívat se = “to look (at), to watch”.
Se is a clitic (weak, unstressed word). In Czech, clitics want to stand in second position in the clause, right after the first stressed element.
- First stressed element: lidé
- Then clitic: se
- Then adverb: jen
- Then main verb: dívají
So:
- Lidé se jen dívají… ✅ (natural)
- Lidé jen se dívají… ❌ (sounds wrong)
You can move jen around, but se should stay in that early “clitic slot”:
- Lidé se jen dívají…
- Lidé se dívají jen do telefonu.
The verb dívat se can take different prepositions depending on nuance and common usage:
- dívat se na něco – look at something (general)
- dívat se do něčeho – look into something (often a container, book, screen)
With devices like phones, Czech commonly uses:
- dívat se do telefonu / do mobilu – literally “look into the phone” → “stare at their phone (screen)”
You can hear dívat se na telefon, but in this context (“people just stare at their phones”), do telefonu is the very idiomatic choice.
Czech often uses a singular noun in a general way where English would naturally use a plural.
Even though lidé is plural, you can say:
- lidé se dívají do telefonu – people are looking into (their) phone(s)
The idea is “each of them is looking at their phone,” but Czech doesn’t need to mark that plurally. You could say do telefonů, but that sounds more literal and is less common in this everyday idiom.
Possession is often left implicit in Czech when it’s obvious from context, especially with body parts and personal items (hands, heads, phones, etc.):
- Zavřel oči. = He closed (his) eyes.
- Dívají se do telefonu. = They’re looking into (their) phone(s).
You can say do svých telefonů (“into their own phones”) or do svých mobilů, but it sounds more explicit and slightly heavier. In a casual sentence like this, do telefonu is the most natural way to express “at their phones.”
Yes, you can reorder parts of the sentence, keeping grammar and agreement intact:
Original:
- Pro mě je nejhorší hra ta, kde nikdo nemluví a lidé se jen dívají do telefonu.
Possible variants:
- Nejhorší hra je pro mě ta, kde nikdo nemluví…
- Pro mě je ta nejhorší hra ta, kde nikdo nemluví… (a bit redundant/stylistically heavy)
- Ta hra, kde nikdo nemluví a lidé se jen dívají do telefonu, je pro mě nejhorší.
All are grammatically correct; the differences are mainly in what is highlighted (your opinion vs the type of game vs the relative clause). The original version is a very natural, balanced way to say it.