dá se + Infinitive

1. Meaning and Nuance
This pattern expresses practical possibility—whether something is objectively doable. It differs from lze/nelze + infinitiv, which is highly formal, and from the colloquial jde to. It also differs from může se, which often implies permission rather than practical feasibility. The negative form nedá se is highly frequent and often serves as the most natural translation for English adjectives ending in '-able' or '-ible' with negative prefixes (e.g., nedá se to číst = it is unreadable).

2. Grammatical Agreement and Impersonal Use
Because this is a reflexivní pasivum se (reflexive passive), the 'object' of the action is actually the grammatical subject in the nominativ podmětu. Therefore, the verb must agree in number:

• Singular: Ta chyba se dá opravit. (That mistake can be fixed.)
• Plural: Ty chyby se dají opravit. (Those mistakes can be fixed.)

When used with verbs that take a dative object, a prepositional object, or no object at all, the construction becomes impersonal (always 3rd person singular neuter):

• Dá se mu věřit. (He can be trusted. / One can trust him.)
• Nedá se na to dívat. (It is unwatchable. / One cannot look at it.)
• Dá se tam spát. (One can sleep there.)

3. Tenses and Moods
This construction is highly versatile and frequently used across different tenses and moods. A crucial morphological quirk is that while the verb dát is normally perfective, in this specific construction dát se functions as an imperfective verb. This explains why its future tense is formed analytically with bude (budu + infinitiv) rather than using the present form for future meaning. The verb conjugates accordingly:

• Past: Dalo se to opravit. (It could be fixed.)
• Future: Bude se to dát opravit. (It will be possible to fix it.)
• Negative Future: Nebude se to dát opravit. (It won't be possible to fix it.) Note that the auxiliary bude is negated, not the infinitive.
• Conditional: Dalo by se to opravit. (It could be fixed / It would be possible to fix it.)

In colloquial speech, the future form bude se to dát is often replaced by the simpler půjde to.

4. Verbal Aspect
The infinitive can be either perfective or imperfective, which changes the focus of the possibility:

• Perfective: Dá se to udělat. (It can be done/finished. – Focus on successful completion.)
• Imperfective: Dá se to dělat. (It is doable / It can be done continuously. – Focus on the process or general feasibility.)

5. Expressing the Agent
A crucial rule of this construction is that you cannot express the agent using the instrumental case (unlike standard passives). You cannot say *Ta chyba se dá opravit Petrem. If you need to specify who is doing the action, you must rephrase using an active sentence (e.g., Petr může tu chybu opravit).

6. Clitic Word Order
Remember that se is a clitic and must follow the rules for druhá pozice příklonek (second-position clitics). It must stay in the second position of the clause, even in complex tenses. For example: Bude se to dát opravit. (Not *Bude to dát se opravit).

7. Standalone Use
In everyday spoken Czech, it is very common to drop the infinitive entirely when the context is clear. The phrase Dá se to or simply Dá se is frequently used as a standalone response meaning 'It is doable,' 'It is not bad,' or 'It is okay.'

8. The 'Germanism' Myth and Regional Variants
Historically, some purists claimed this was a lazy calque from German (sich lassen). Modern linguistics and the Czech Academy of Sciences have thoroughly debunked this; it is a fully native, standard, and stylistically neutral Czech construction suitable for all registers. Note that in some regions (especially in Bohemia), you might hear the colloquial variant nechá se to + infinitiv (e.g., Nechá se to jíst = It is edible), but this is strictly informal and should be avoided in standard writing.