"After two days, I began to understand her."
Translation:Já jsem ji po dvou dnech začal chápat.
13 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
How about "Po dvou dnech, začal jsem ji chápat." BTW, it's really funny that even though the word order is supposed to be flexible, that is actually what I'm messing up most often :D
"Po dvou dnech jsem ji začal chápat" is accepted. I think (someone will correct me if I'm wrong), your suggested word order doesn't work due to the infamous Second Position rule, which would want jsem to appear after the first unit of meaning.
That is correct. I will add that unlike English, Czech does not displace the adverbial with a comma, it is an integral part of the clause and counts as the phrase in the first position: "Po dvou dnech jsem ji začal..."
982
Czech is my fourth Slavic language and seems to be the most rigid in world ordering. Commonly the Slavic languages in word ordering tend to be rhythmical which makes them quite poetical. It's very well seen especially in Polish.
And I still don't catch the Czech rhythm too )
First of all, I very much appreciate the amount of work that went into these modules. I am, at the same time, perplexed by some of the inconstancies. In this same lesson I was given an English sentence that began the same way as this one, an adverbial clause followed by a comma. In that example the Czech was the same. And the comments indicated that when a clause like that is fronted in English, it is also fronted in Czech. But this one does not follow that pattern. Can someone explain how i should have discerned the difference in these seemingly similar examples?
I guess this is not right----Jsem ji po dvou dnech začala chápat ----because jsem must be in second place?
Yes, dropping "já" creates a shift: "Po dvou dnech jsem ji začala chápat." Another option is: "Začala jsem ji chápat po dvou dnech"... and more. See how no matter how the surrounding words shuffle around, "jsem ji" remains in the unstressed (=second) position.
So wondering what's wrong with this order (which was not accepted). "Po dvou dnech já jsem ji začal chápat". Isn't that second unit of meaning a new clause and therefore needs "ja" to be there in order to have jsem ji in 2nd position?
There's only one clause here. A clause contains a non-infinitive non-auxiliary verb (= a main verb). A two-clause sentence containts two such verbs (for example: He stayed at home because it was raining.)
Don't be confused by the use of commas in English, they tell you nothing about the number of clauses. Why would "I began to understand her after two days" magically become two clauses when the adverbial gets fronted and nothing else changes?