"Is he looking at us?"
Translation:Dívá se na nás?
19 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
It is a strange word order for a question to start with an object. At least in this case.
Just strange or also wrong?
It seems like it would work if you already knew he was looking at someone/thing but you were emphasizing the question of if it was your group that he was looking at.
Wrong, if your aim is to learn how natives read and write. If you want to emphasize nás, place it final and stress it when pronouncing.
If you just want to argue with some author of some exam, we can't help you with that.
Nevím, jestli je pozorovat totéž co look. Každopádně by bylo dost práce to dát do všech vět o koukání. "Is he watching us". je akceptováno.
Of course "On se dívá na nás?" would be also correct, wouldn't it?
"se" must be in the second position.
Also note that "On se dívá na nás?" is a declarative question (He's looking at us?) AND it's stressing "on".
QQ: Is that word order stressing on simply because the pronoun is included or because it's first? This whole "what's being stressed" thing with word order is... stressful. :-)
Yes, with personal pronouns in the nominative the bare inclusion is stressing them :-D
- Dívá se on na nás? is clunky
- Dívá se na nás on? stresses "on" even more, contrasting it with something else (maybe the previous sentence was concerned with whether someone else was looking at us)
BUT this is tricky. The neutral question would be "Dívá se na nás?" -- this doesn't stress anything. What happens if we want to stress "na nás"? It's unstressed in the second position, and it's stressed in the last position (as focus). But in "Dívá se na nás?" the second position is also the last position. When written, it's unstressed. When spoken, we can use our voice to stress it: "Dívá se na nás?" -- same as we could do in English. Or we can add another element to the sentence to create the distinction between second position and last position. Thus, adding "on" here doesn't have to be about stressing "on" but to help us stress something else:
- On se na nás dívá? - He's looking at us? (is he a creep? time to panic?)
- On se dívá na nás? - He's not looking at those guys over there but at us?
And yes, depending on the actual situation, both of these (the last two variants I just mentioned) can be stressful. :)
Yes, "Is he the one...", usable for that. But I won't add it because it's marginal. You're also making "na nás" the topic, so combined with "on" being the focus, it's a lot of unusual stress -- like "As for us, is he the one looking at us?"
"Dívá se na nás on?" would be more common for "Is he the one looking at us?"
593
Thanks, that's excactly i've focused on, seems i getting closer to czech. "Has HE (this damon) taken US as a target."