"Františku, jsi stále studentem?"
Translation:František, are you still a student?
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Can you explain why this is "studentem" here? What would "jsi stále student" mean (if it makes sense at all)?
To be somebody or something is used with both Nominative and/or Instrumental cases. Either or. Both are correct. So if you were translating this to Czech 'jsi student' would be accepted.
Though both are correct, the instrumental is slightly more archaic and you would not hear it much, though it might be regional.
I wonder why by response is incorrect? "Are you still a student, František?"
Helpful hint for relative newcomers to the course:
It's best -- or at least "safer" -- not to switch things around in our answers unless not switching would result in a strange translation. Although this is not one of them, some exercise sentences have thousands of acceptable answers; doubling that, simply to account for "unnecessary" order-switching, would create a lot of work for the very few people who maintain the course.
Thanks for the advice. I appreciate it.
As a relative novice to learning Czech, I have heard that word order is generally a fairly loose construct in the language, so I'm always trying to understand when word order needs to be strictly observed and when it is, in fact, open.