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- "Pochopili, že se asi stalo n…
"Pochopili, že se asi stalo něco špatného."
Translation:They understood that something bad had probably happened.
17 Comments
They understood that probably something bad had happened? I am not a native English speaker, I don't know whether probably can be there.
Why "něco špatného" and not "něco špatné"? What is the source of genitive here?
This is related to the partitive usage after adverbs of quantity, numbers above four and similar.
Why "něco" is considered an adverb of quantity? Is there anything I can read about it? Unfortunately, Tips for the sections "Numbers" 1-3 don't mention this.
I did not say it is considered an adverb of quantity. It can actually be used that way, but it is not the case here. It is just a similar partitive usage.
Where one can read about rules governing this and similar cases? Are there any other partitives used in the same way?
The partitive means something bad of the all bad things. Some particular thing from the possible bad things. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partitive
Similarly: něco vody - some water, něco chleba - some bread, něco peněz - some money
Related to that is the negative genitive that (unlike Polish or Russian) only works in certain partitive use cases. Especially after nic (which you can regard as an adverb of quantity). Otherwise it is archaic (Nemám peněz.). It remains in some fixed expressions (Není slyšet vlastního slova. Oka jsem nezamhouřil.)
The solution says that I should use the word "likely" instead of "probably", which I agree sounds much better. My objection to this is only that when hovering over "asi" the suggestion "likely" is not in the list, but "probably" is.
"Probably" is even the main translation. It depends on the whole sentence we don't see what you wrote. But most likely :-) you should have used the "Report" button so that your correct translation can be added.
"pochopily" should be accepted as well.Can't report it because after pressing the report button I am not offered the respective option (probably because my answer was "accepted with typo").
I am native AmE, and "something wrong. .. happened" sounds very strange to me. "Something went wrong" is fine in English, but I don't know if that would be an acceptable translation from the perspective of the Czech sentence.
I have no time to dig in the system right now, but see also this discussion https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/35799502
I totally agree with LetitiateT. I am not reporting incorrect/missing version, I'm just asking why the word "wrong" could not be used in that sentence.
Generally, I do not want to be impolite, rude, offensive, whatever .. but I would like to know where I have done a mistake or why that word could not be used. I don't want to use the Report button because I'm not sure if the sentence is correct or not.
Let say I use the Report button. In case that my suggestion is incorrect (and honestly, I'm quite sure that most of my suggestions are incorrect), will I get some explanation why my suggestion is not accepted? I do not think so. So, finally, I use report button and still do not know if I'm right or not (or where I've done the mistake).
I hope I described clearly my point of view.
