"Kávu mají dobrou."
Translation:They have good coffee.
14 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
This all depends on information already given in a conversation. If people are talking about a restaurant and complain about food, but then someone says "Kávu mají dobrou", it means he/she is pointing out that the coffee there is actually good. (it can also suggest that the coffee is the only thing good there)
"Jídlo je tam zlé, ale kávu mají dobrou." (The food is bad there, but they have good coffee.)
68
I am enjoying learning Czech on Duolingo, but some of the unnusual word order is slowing me down.
I understood the general meaning of "kávu mají dobrou" but I had to stop, scratch my head and read the comments. :) Would it be possible to add extra context to some of these sentences?
I did a double take when I read that sentence because the word order looked very German to me: "..., aber Kaffee haben sie guten!" What a nice surprise to find out that it carries exactly the same meaning as in German!
BTW: In German, this word order is perfectly normal everyday spoken/informal language. Is it rather informal in Czech too?
I believe the issue is twofold: 1) “The coffee (that) they have is good,” is a sentence of two clauses with an elided conjunction (that), while the Czech here is a simple sentence. 2) “is” (—> “je”) is not in the sentence; only coffee, have, and good.
So while your translation is semantically similar, it differs syntactically.
I’m happy to be corrected if wrong, but I do believe those are the issues here! :)