"A bear is chasing us!"
Translation:Honí nás medvěd!
12 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
It is very strange.
"Ten medvěd honí nás!" is possible for "The bear is chasing US!" when you say he is chasing US and not something else, but for "a bear" it is really strange.
So to think about this in other contexts - that which is adjacent to the exclamation point, is by position, stressed?
The last word in a sentence is normally stressed - it is the new information, the so called comment or focus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topic_and_comment
One cannot say 'medvěd nás honí', to emphasise one is being Chased(!), rather than emph on it being a Bear, rather than, say, a Marmot?! (I am not sure if a bear can be mistaken for anything else! ..For sake of understanding where flexi word order begins and ends!) Thank you.
If this sentence wouldn't an exclamation, than it would be correct. Sentence "Medvěd honí nás." emphasizes word nás. (that it is us who is chased).
I have a question which may seem odd, but I hope you don't mind. Is there a website in Czech with children's rhymes? It is evident that word order is very flexible in Czech. Since I have written a bit of poetry myself, I would therefore like to read some Czech poetry to see how that flexibility can be utilized. However, with my level of Czech, I'd better start with children's rhymes. I just don't know what to search for at Google to find such a website.
I can't answer your question, but I can suggest that you cross-post your question to the general Czech discussion forum. It will probably be seen by more people there than here in a sentence discussion forum. Good luck with your idea!
And what would be the function of "je" there? English only needs the "is" because that's how it forms the continuous tense. You can't translate the "is", that just gives you two different verbs next to each other ("chases" and "is").