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- "To jsou stará zvířata?"
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could it not be: "Are those animals old?"
or would that be something like: "Jsou to zvirata stará?"
I would also like to know why it can't be 'Are those animals old?"
"Are those old animals" and "are those animals old" seem interchangeable to me.
Yes, I can see the words are in different order, but in my experience with Czech word order doesn't always matter. I was wondering if there's a rule I'm missing for why the word order changes the meaning in this case.
555
To illustrate the difference, imagine the following answer: "Are those old animals?" - "No, they are old trees." In the other question: "Are those animals old?" the same answer would not make sense: it is understood that we are definitely talking about animals.
This is not just a different order! Not in Czech and not in English.
are ... old? jsou ... stará?
ta zvířata ... those animals
are those ... old? jsou to stará ...?
Please do read the rest of this discussion.
Maybe it would translate as 'tohle' (adding 'hle' to emphasize 'this one'). Native can clarify this?
This is the alway repeating type of sentence "To je...", "To jsou....", "Jsou to...", "Je to...". You will meet it iver and over and over. And you will find people asking in the respective discussions over and over and over. So you can look into those other discussions for explanations as well.
We imply used "To" here to refer to something indeterminate, both singular and plural.
Thank you for your reply. I do read many discussions without always commenting. This one was relevant, but still incomplete. https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/24800541 And I try to utilise the tips and notes. As a beginner in Czech I have few other resources for usage, though. I like to use dictionaries with usage examples. With the Duo learning system, you can often push ahead, without full understanding. Now I am reviewing the early sections, as one must do in any language learning. Finally, with respect to your last sentence, this structure is familiar in other languages.
The correct answer is given as a question but the voice falls at the end.
The old voice always did exactly that but the new voice sounds like a question to me. We cannot change it anyway. Note that Czech is more "monotone" that what you may be used to:
"It should also be noted that the intonation of ordinary spontaneous Czech is quite flat; when speaking in foreign languages, Czech speakers therefore often come off as bored or disinterested. This “flatness” concerns not only the low pitch range, but also the quite low number of tone units per utterance. We illustrate the frequent absence of significant pitch movements on the following utterance." https://fonetika.ff.cuni.cz/en/czech-phonetics/
I have translated "Are that animals old?" and it was not accepted. Can someone explain why "to" cannot be translated as "that"? Thank you!
