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- "Františku, čí je to pták?"
14 Comments
While it's a literal translation of the original sentence, that word order is unusual in "everyday" English. It might be used in specific situations, for example, to express anger or surprise. It's not an accepted alternative at this time.
I disagree - I think it's a perfectly normal everyday English construction to say "Whose is that bird?". I'm a perfectly normal everyday English user!
As a 77 year old native English speaker I have to agree with butterfly. "Whose is that bird?" is a perfectly normal word order and should be accepted as such.
962
I'm another native (UK) English speaker, and I agree that it's perfectly natural word order. I get caught out by this translation every time I come across it, because I can't see "whose is the bird" as wrong.
When I clicked on "čí" to get the translation, the robot gave a long sentence in Czech instead of only one word. Is the word pronounced "chee?"
FWIW, to my (native AmE) "learner" ear, that word order just sounds weird, but I can't explain why it sounds weird, and I can't say whether your suggestion works or doesn't. Perhaps one of the CZ natives on the team will jump in. But "Františku, čí je ten pták? is accepted.
It sounds strange. It is possible to use "tamten" and "tamhleten" this way, but not just "ten". It is the same word order as "František, whose bird is that one?", but I have found only a single sentence ending with "...je ten?" in the whole corpus and even that one is not a good example.
That is accepted. You must report the complete sentence. Do not discuss, but use the report button if you just think it should be accepted. Do bot clutter the discussion with questions that are just reports dressed in the form of a question. These will be removed.
