Breakdown of З часом мені не так страшно говорити.
Questions & Answers about З часом мені не так страшно говорити.
З часом literally means “with time” and is best translated as “over time / as time goes by”.
Nuances:
з часом – neutral, very common:
- “with time, over time, eventually”
- Focuses on a gradual change.
через деякий час – “after some time”:
- More like “after a certain period (passes)”.
- Sounds a bit more concrete/point-like in time than з часом.
з плином часу – “with the flow of time / as time passes”:
- More literary/formal or poetic.
- Emphasizes the passage of time itself.
In your sentence, З часом мені не так страшно говорити, з часом is the most natural everyday choice to express a gradual change in how scary speaking feels.
Ukrainian often uses the dative case to mark the “experiencer” of feelings, states, and sensations. Instead of saying “I am scared”, it uses a structure closer to “To me it is scary”.
- мені = “to me / for me” (dative of я “I”)
- The feeling (страшно) is impersonal; it doesn’t grammatically belong to “I” as a subject.
So:
- Мені страшно. – “I’m scared.” (literally: “To me, it’s scary.”)
- Мені не так страшно. – “I’m not so scared.”
- Мені приємно. – “I feel good / It’s pleasant to me.”
In your sentence, мені marks who is experiencing the feeling of fear when speaking.
Страшно comes from the adjective страшний (“scary, frightening”) but in this form it functions as a predicative adverb (also sometimes described as an impersonal predicative).
You can think of it as meaning “it is scary / it feels scary”.
Key points:
- It does not agree with any noun in gender/number (it’s always страшно in this use).
- It’s used in impersonal feeling/state constructions, often with:
- a dative experiencer: мені / тобі / йому страшно
- and/or an infinitive: мені страшно говорити – “I’m scared to speak.”
So in мені не так страшно говорити, страшно is the word that carries the idea of fear; the sentence has no explicit grammatical subject like “it”.
All three are negative, but they focus on different nuances:
не так страшно – “not so scary (anymore) / not as scary”
- Implies comparison: either compared to the past, to expectations, or to something else.
- Fits well with з часом: over time, the degree of fear changes.
не дуже страшно – “not very scary / not too scary”
- Focus on degree, but without a clear comparison to a previous state.
- Sounds like a more static evaluation: “It’s not that scary (in general).”
вже не страшно – “(it’s) not scary anymore”
- Focus on change in state: it used to be scary, now it isn’t.
- Stronger, more final than не так страшно.
Your sentence with не так страшно suggests that speaking is still a bit scary, but less scary than before.
In the present tense, Ukrainian very often omits the verb “to be” (є) in sentences like this. It is understood but not written or spoken.
So structurally, you can imagine:
- (Є) мені не так страшно говорити.
– “(It is) not so scary for me to speak.”
But in natural Ukrainian:
- Мені не так страшно говорити.
The verb є appears more regularly in:
- The past: Мені було страшно. – “I was scared.”
- The future: Мені буде страшно. – “I will be scared.”
- For emphasis/contrast: Тут є проблема. – “There is a problem here.”
In normal, neutral present‑tense statements like yours, є is simply dropped.
Yes, this is a very common Ukrainian pattern:
Dative experiencer + predicative word + infinitive
Мені страшно говорити. – “I’m scared to speak.”
Here:
- говорити is an infinitive (“to speak”).
- It tells us what action causes the feeling.
- The structure is impersonal:
- Мені (dative) + страшно (predicative adverb) + говорити (infinitive).
Other examples:
- Мені лінь вставати. – “I’m too lazy to get up.”
- Тобі приємно з ним говорити. – “It’s pleasant for you to talk with him.”
- Йому важко працювати вночі. – “It’s hard for him to work at night.”
So говорити works just like English “to speak” after “It is scary to…”.
Word order in Ukrainian is quite flexible, but it affects emphasis and naturalness.
Most natural for a neutral statement:
- З часом мені не так страшно говорити.
(Initial З часом sets the time frame: Over time…)
Other options:
Мені з часом не так страшно говорити.
- Also possible.
- Slightly more focus on мені (“for me, over time, it’s not so scary…”).
Мені не так страшно говорити з часом.
- Sounds awkward or confusing.
- з часом at the end could be misunderstood as modifying говорити (“to speak with time”), which doesn’t really work.
So the original order (З часом мені не так страшно говорити) is smooth and idiomatic; Мені з часом… is acceptable but less neutral.
Часом here is the instrumental singular form of час (“time”).
- час (nom.) → часом (instr.)
With the preposition з/із/зі, the instrumental is often used to mean:
- “together with”, “by means of”, or in time expressions, “as X passes / with the passing of X”.
So з часом literally is “with time” in the sense of “as time goes (by) / in the course of time”. This is why you see часом in the instrumental.
Pronunciation:
- страшно – [стра́ш-но]
- Stress on the first syllable: стра́шно.
- шн is pronounced as a consonant cluster [ʃn] (like “shn” in “push + n”).
Tips for English speakers:
- Don’t add an extra vowel between ш and н:
- Not “stra-shu-no” but стра́шно → something like “STRASH-no”.
- Keep a short and clear, not like English “ei” or “ay”.
So you can approximate it as STRAHSH-no, with the stress on STRAHSH.
Yes, З часом мені вже не так страшно говорити is perfectly correct and natural.
Adding вже (“already”) emphasizes the change over time and the current result:
без вже:
З часом мені не так страшно говорити.
– Over time, it’s not as scary (general, descriptive).з вже:
З часом мені вже не так страшно говорити.
– By now, over time, it has already become not so scary for me to speak.
So вже highlights that the reduced fear is a result that has now been reached.