What’s the difference between kažkada (kažkas/kažko/kažkam/kažką etc) and kada nors (kas nors/ko nors kam nors/ką nors etc)?

These balloons will come back. Kažkada. Or kada nors.

I am sure you have heard both of these used many times. It’s not just kažkada and kada nors. We have a whole bunch of these kažs and ‘norses in Lithuanian. They both essentially mean „some-“ in English but there are some subtle differences.

They are quite easy to build. All you do is just combine the question word with the appropriate form of „some-“. Someone? Sure, kažkas or kas nors. Somewhere? Kažkur, kur nors. To someone? Kažkam, kam nors… So then what’s kažkada or kada nors? Well you guessed it. It means some time / some day or at some point.

Often you can use one or the other and will mean more or less the same. However, the major difference lies in the idea of whether you know when/who/what… or you don’t know when/who/what etc.

Compare this:

aš kažkada buvau Italijoje - I was in Italy at some point (don’t know when, don’t remember)

kaip manai ar mes kada nors važiuosime į Italiją? - will we ever go to Itay? (here we have „ever“ or at some point in the future, the speaker probably has an idea of when he or she is expecting the travel to happen“

or

vakar naktį į mano namus kažkas atėjo – yesterday someone came into my home (no idea who)

rytoj bus mano gimtadienio šventė ir aš tikiuosi, kad kas nors pas mane ateis – tomorrow it will be my birthday and I hope that somebody will come over

I hope this helps!