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- Topic: Czech >
- "Ženy to chápou."
9 Comments
223
"The women understand it" is grammatically correct. I assume that it is not a good translation here because it refers to a specific group of women and not to women in general.
38
Not only that, katrinkadee, but the Czech sentence contains no demonstrative (such as to, ty, etc.) That is a pretty good indication that 'the' should not be arbitrarily inserted into the English.
In translating, you sometimes need to insert a "the" into the English, even when there is no demonstrative in the Czech, in order to be idiomatic; but you should not do so routinely.
But I probably get what you mean.
Ženy ho/jej chápou. relates to some particular object in masculine or neuter (ten dopis, ten článek, to sdělení, to psaní) .
Ženy to chápou. relates to some "it". Some concept or abstract or concrete object, the thing we were discussing... It can be a clause "Ženy chápou to, že...".
The so-called "second position rule." You can learn a bit about it here: https://mluvtecesky.net/en/grammar/word_order.