"Yesterday the doors of sixteen apartments were open."
Translation:Včera byly dveře šestnácti bytů otevřené.
16 Comments
Since the moderators haven't responded to the previous comments properly, I will bring this up one more time. Why isn't the option Včera dveře šestnácti bytů byly otevřené accepted here?
The order is just strange. There is no clitic that would require the second position here but still "byly" probably wants to stay there because "dveře šestnácti bytů" is really long. Other speakers may find it fine though, sometimes it is enough to read the sentence aloud several times in a row and it will start to feel more acceptable...
Just: "Dveře šestnácti bytů byly otevřené." is perfectly fine.
why is my answer not accepted- včera dvěře šestnácti bytů byly otevřené ?
is it related to the word order in Czech? where can I find more info on that?
Exactly. Plus one typo, "dvěře" instead of "dveře".
"Včera dveře šestnácti bytů byly otevřené." will be added as a correct answer?
239
Why is "u" instead of "z or ze" used in the red answer I was given? Can it be understood as in the correct sentence given above? I thought "u" was translated into "by" and "z" meant of. Is it dropped as "for" is dropped in a sentence like "Frantisek ceka Katerinu."?
- 239
In trying to say the doors of 16 apartments--dvere z sestnacti bytu. One correct answer omits a translated word for "of." Is it understood as for/pro would be with cekam? Also, Tom's original question in this thread has me confused, too. Would it not make sense to place were and open closer together?
It most natural to avoid any preposition. The genitive case is enough to express that relation. It is the purpose of the genitive case in indoeuropean languages. You won't use z or ze here, but you can use od (from 16 flats) or u (at 16 flats).
- 39
For me the issue is that the verb (byly otevřene) is split by the dveře šestnacti bytu, which is pretty long, and could in some cases be even longer (the doors of 16 new apartments on the fourth floor... etc.). So splitting the verb and forcing the reader to wait to the end of the sentence to find out what happened to the doors is a bit much. For more on this issue read Mark Twain's wonderful story: The awful German language...
We do that quite often. The example here does not sound strange at all.
In German, for example, they put the past participle always at the and as a grammatical rule.
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Again I recommend Mark Twain's The Awful German Language (available online) for a hilarious discussion of this issue ;-)
