lehí

Lehí is a verb form found in several Slavic languages, most notably Czech and Slovak, where it functions as the third‑person singular present indicative of the verb ležet (Czech) or ležať (Slovak), meaning “to lie” in the sense of reclining or being situated. In Czech, the full conjugation of ležet is: já ležím, ty ležíš, on/ona/ono **leží**, my ležíme, vy ležíte, oni/ony leží. The form lehí appears in dialectal or colloquial speech, often reflecting regional phonological variation that drops the final consonant of the standard form leží. Similar phonetic simplification occurs in certain Slovak dialects, where ležať yields lehí for the third‑person singular.

The morphology of lehí illustrates a common process in Slavic languages where vowel length and final consonants can be altered or omitted in informal contexts, resulting in variants that coexist with the standard form. Historically, the root *lež- derives from Proto‑Slavic *ležьti, which is related to the Proto‑Indo‑European root *legh‑ meaning “to lie down.” The lexical item is used both literally (e.g., “He lies on the sofa”) and figuratively (e.g., “The town lies on the riverbank”).

In written Czech and Slovak, lehí is not recognized as a standard form and therefore appears mainly in spoken language, regional literature, or transcriptions of dialect speech. Its usage is an example of how living languages adapt written norms to reflect everyday pronunciation.