"Zbývá osm set osmnáct korun."
Translation:Eight hundred and eighteen crowns is left.
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I cannot believe "... crowns is left" is correct, I would have said ".... crowns are left".
Grammatically the use of the singular verb is correct. https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/599/01/ See #7
My own instinct is to pluralize it, and I think colloquially a lot of people would.
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This came up in the past. Since a word for word translation is often impossible, I feel that imposing the Czech use of singular verbs when dealing with multiple objects into English is odd at best. At the reference suggested above I find: There were one hundred and thirty-five pieces in the puzzle, which is correct in English.
We would never force Czech grammar in English, that would just be nonsense.
https://ell.stackexchange.com/questions/119536/are-amounts-of-money-singular-or-plural
https://erinwrightwriting.com/use-plural-singular-verbs-money/
https://awelu.srv.lu.se/grammar-and-words/common-problems-and-how-to-avoid-them/subject-verb-agreement/sums-of-money-and-periods-of-time/
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It is, because you are not talking about plural actual individual crowns (as in your puzzle pieces) but their singular amount value. The meaning is always more important than keeping strictly to one form. That's a mere formality. In English every rule has exceptions after all.
Correct English would be "is left", because we are talking about a single sum of money. However one frequently hears "are" in common use.
Before I had a word of Czech I would use "koruna" when shopping in the country, or even when changing money at home. Should it be necessary to anglicise the word in this course? I reminds me of a old coin (=5/-) which had gone out of circulation before I was born although its half (2/6) survived until we adopted decimalisation. Would you translate "pound" as "libra" in the case of En.Cz, or "dollar" to "údolí"?
We definitely translate many curencies, especially the traditional ones or older ones. Libra for sure, no-one knows what a pound is unless they learned English. Sometimes even full "libra šterlinků" for "pound sterling". Libra used to be a unit of mass used even in central Europe, after all.
Frank, šilink (Austrian or English), marka, drachma, these disappeared but were used like this. Even the small ones like pence (even in singular ta pence), fenik...
Or even historical stuff like pistole (met in The Three Musketeers).
When it comes to the English crown, halfcrown, twopence, halfpenny and similar special coins, we mostly do not have any special names, but we would translate them as dvoupence, půlpence. (I have a nice pre-decimal set at home. A farthing is pretty funny now when people use brass coins to cover their floor.) I would hesitate about půlkoruna for the risk of confusion, but if the context is clear... No word for a bob but we do have babka for a buck and it can probably also be used for a quid.
We do have niklák for a nickel and čtvrťák for a quarter dollar.
Thank you both for your interesting replies. The custom here would be to use the name used in the country itself. When Cz joins the Euro the problem, as far as I am concerned, will be solved!
I read it as "When Cz joins the Euro problem..." :D
English loves to borrow words. English would hate to lose the opportunity to have more words like Koruna and Praha and koláče and whatnot alongside of the now-dull Crown and Prague and pies :D
“English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.” - James D. Nicoll
In my experience it is the other way around. English imposed its words and pronunciations on other languages. In any event there are more useful things to be doing now that the storm is dying down.
"Pound" most certainly always translates to "libra" in Czech (whether it refers to a unit of weight or to currency).
"Dollar" translates to "dolar" (single L), although, interestingly, the original currency was "tolar", used in Bohemia - the US Dollar is named after that currency. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thaler (not "údolí")
And when we talk about Scandinavian currencies, we call them koruna (švédská, norská...), not "krone".