"On the twentieth, it was Kateřina's birthday."
Translation:Dvacátého měla Kateřina narozeniny.
8 Comments
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Why does the verb mela come before Katerina? What is wrong with "Dvacateho, Katerina mela narozeniny"?
I don't get it either. Is there a rule supporting this? Thank you.
It is not just a thing we do. I do not think you will find a rule, you can't have rule for any possible thing that is not done. Usually you have rules for things that are done.
I remember people saying on this forum that the word order in sentences is free. The question was if ""Dvacátého, Kateřina měla narozeniny"?" is syntactically correct. If yes, maybe this option should included in the list?
My comment addresses only the first part of yours. I have heard both that "standard" Czech word order is SVO and that Czech word order is free. Based on my experience, it's "free-er," relative, for example, to English, but it's definitely not open to doing whatever we want with it, and there are plenty of non-SVO constructions... to be lived with, whether we "get" them or not. (I, for one, often don't... but I'm learning to accept the language for what it is and keep plugging away.)
While it is rather 'free' as compared to English, it does not mean there are no rules for word order. Czech is (despite its many quirks) still a S-V-O language. Your suggested sentence is wrong.
Thank you 'endless_sleeper' and 'BoneheadBass' for your answers. English, Russian and Romanian are SVO languages as well, but this type of sentence construction (as we see it above in English) works fine in all of them. I just thought that there might be an explanation in case of Czech. Anyway, I take it as it is.
