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- "Zajímá mne příroda v jižních…
"Zajímá mne příroda v jižních Čechách."
Translation:I am interested in the nature in southern Bohemia.
19 Comments
1002
I'm not sure whether the links Vlada provides are still working. I couldn't see a reference to 'nature' there. I am a native English speaker and former English teacher in the Czech Republic, and 'the nature' is a very common English error among Czech speakers when they mean countryside, natural areas, wilderness. The problem is that there isn't one good translation for the word priroda, and I can't think of a single word catch all. Most American English speakers would use a completely different word, like 'the forest' or 'national parks', but we'd have to know more context.
In short, 'the nature' is one of those stubborn Czech errors that frustrate English teachers, judging by how many colleague-to-colleague jokes we made about it.
'The nature' can be used in a completely different context (ie., philosophical). Philosophers write about 'the nature' of things, but that's not what's being talked about here.
I think that the sentence "I am interested in (the) countryside in southern Bohemia" should be accepted as well..?
Not really. Yes, Czechs very often make the mistake of using "nature" instead of "countryside", but that does not mean these mean the same.
This is simplified, but moving outward from a large city.... CITY (heavily built-up and densely populated) - SUBURBS (built-up and well-populated areas on the outskirts of a city) - COUNTRYSIDE (collection of smaller towns and villages in less built-up areas, with greater distances and a more rural environment separating them) - NATURE (not much civilization around; think especially but not exclusively: deep forest, jungle, desert, arctic areas).
I feel a difference in the Czech sentences:
Chodím do přírody. - I go to (the) countryside. I go to the rural part of the country, forests, meadows and so on...
Zajímám se o přírodu. - for me that is being interested in the (popular) scientific aspects of nature in that area (more or less https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_history ).
Yes, there is a distinction between the meaning of the word as a location (as in my examples) vs. as a phenomenon or topic of interest (as in this exercise). Thanks for posting those two sentences, because they make the difference in usage in Czech very clear!
- 1002
Yes, I feel the difference too. In the second example, 'nature' as an area of interest or study, would never have an article (i.e., I am interested in nature)
Yes, "krajina" is "landscape", could also probably be "countryside" in the right context.
- 515
Am I missing some subtlety such that "Nature in southern Bohemia interests me" is not a correct translation?
"Nature in southern Bohemia interests me" is accepted. We have no reports for this sentence, but if that was your exact answer, you may have run into the Duo grading bug.
It feels a bit pompous in English but I suppose we could say "I am interested in the flora and fauna of southern Bohemia". "I am interested in the nature in southern Bohemia" doesn't actually make sense in English.
Flora and fauna is really something specific and simply different from "nature".
I understand this sentence specifically is about natural history or the beauty of nature or but perhaps it is about something else, raywalsh has already made a comment above, please read it.
Yes we actually do know that Czechs often abuse the word "nature". Yes, we do know that one goes to countryside while in Czech we "chodíme do přírody". But also be aware that BoneheadBass is a native-English-speaker contributor and did not have such problems with this sentence.
:( Er, I thought I was contributing to the discussion. Flora and Fauna seems like a pretty good way of describing Natural History.
