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- "They understood that somethi…
"They understood that something bad had probably happened."
Translation:Pochopili, že se asi stalo něco špatného.
14 Comments
Why not? Consult a dictionary for špatný. And you need a genitive after něco (conult Tips and notes or some other grammar).
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I screwed up word order: "Pochopili že asi něco špatného se stalo". Would it have been correct if I put se in "second" place like this: "Pochopili že se asi něco špatného stalo"?
Could you please add this variant then? I mean "Pochopili že se asi něco špatného stalo"
Probably yes. It is not very natural, but it is our tradition here to accept even quite marginal orders when they are not ridiculous. It very strongly stresses that it really DID happen, not that it was bad.
Or maybe we will just disable the exercise because we already have several thousands of translations.
Thank you for the explanation of what the differences in word order communicate. But that leads me to another question. How would one discern from this sentence that the emphasis is on something bad? And not that it actually happened? For reference, I'm seeing the English and have to put the correct Czech word order.
It is really somewhat strange to order it this way. If there were another word, like "Pochopili, že se asi něco špatného opravdu stalo." (really happened), it would be much clearer why you want to stress the verb and it would sound much more natural.
Thanks for trying to answer my question. It's still not clear to me what I should or should not be emphasizing when I see the text in English first. I'm not trying to be difficult, rather I'm trying to get an understanding of how to pick the most appropriate word order.
Check https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topic_and_comment The comment typically comes to the end, but see the text about the word order implications.
