"Is it useful?"
Translation:Czy to jest przydatne?
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Does this have to include "to" and przydatne? I thought "jest przydatny?" would have worked
In some context "czy jest przydatny/przydatna/przydatne" would be enough. Unfortunately duolingo does not give us much space for context.
If there is "to" in the sentence, adjective has to be neuter, so "przydatne".
"czy jest przydatny/przydatna/przydatne" should be accepted now.
The word "pożyteczny" is rather used in more specific contexts... for example "Insects are useful (?) for the environment". Or recycling is useful for nature. But a machine would rather be "użyteczna" or "przydatna".
If there was a conversation about a computer, for example, the context would tell us that "komputer" is masculine, so when I ask about it in a separate sentence, like this above, would "Czy to jest przydatnY" work, or could I say "Czy TEN jest przydatnY", or still only "Czy to jest przydatne" wold work?
If the computer was mentioned one sentence earlier, you'd just say "Jest przydatny"?
Czy to jest przydatne would work both grammatically and stylistically, but it doesn't really refer to any specific object you have named before, like "Is that useful?"
"ten" in "Czy ten jest przydatny?" would not exactly mean "this" (note that "Is [this/that/it] useful?" mean basically the same) but "this one".
So I guess you already got an answer that Computer A is not useful, you point at Computer B and ask "Is this one useful?". So it is in fact a different sentence.
'To' functions as a subject here, so your proposed word order puts the verb before the subject, which shouldn't be done without a compelling reason.
However, for some reason your sentence doesn't sound so bad. The Polish corpus confirms that your word order in this particular case is only 3 times less common than the main solution. I'd treat it as an exception. Added now.