Original author: nueby
Original Duolingo forum link: https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/30304525
A potentially helpful hint for sorting the sentence order with "to" in pronoun positions (To je moje auto., Je to staré auto.), but not in adjective positions (To auto je moje.):
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When "to" means "it", consider it a clitic (like "ho"), so put it in the second slot (or in the cluster of words in that slot if there are more clitics, following the clitic cluster priorities from left to right).
When "to" means "that" or "this" (This is my wife.), consider it a regular word following the regular rules for w.o. (left positioning for topic, right for focus).When it works as an adjective ("to auto"), "to" moves around with its noun phrase, following the regular w.o. rules.
I am borrowing the pronoun/adjective distinction from English. Czechs call both of these "ukazovací zájmeno" (demonstrative pronoun), and then we predictably do not know what we are talking about half the time when explaining the translatability of the demonstratives between Czech and English.
We started discussing word order issues in the I do not drink coffee comment in this discussion (Editor's note: see below). The topic is one of the focus areas we are tweaking on the way to the new version of the course.
Referenced in the above post: I am so confused by the word order in Czech. by MathiasRudP
Ahoj.
Is there any way to know in what order the sentence should be in?
fx Já na poslední auto necekám
Is translated to:
I am not waiting for the last car.
But directly translated it would be:
I for the last car am not waiting. Right? So is there a thumb-rule i can use?
--- Relevant comments: ---
Mirokha: The rule of thumb is: the meaningful word comes the last. In this example: "I am not waiting" (for whatever). If it were the last car, what is important, I would say: "Nečekám na poslední auto."
Reply by svrsheque: for speakers of fixed-order languages, it may be really hard to get what "meaningful" and "important" means. it could be easier to consider something like I do not drink coffee.
when figuring out what the key piece of information is there, we need to appreciate what the speaker is really saying, maybe even picture the situation. first, we need to know english well enough to know that the speaker is talking about their custom, not their activity in progress.
but are they just listing beverages that they do not drink? then it would be the english-like translation Nepiju kávu.
if they are refusing an offer of coffee from someone, maybe with the coffee smell already in the air, "coffee" became the topic before the speaker even opened their mouth, and "kávu" needs to be demoted in the ordering. (the shift to the left for things closer to being the known topic than the key piece of information being communicated is very important for ever figuring this out to approach the native level.) the key, new piece of information is that the speaker does not drink it, so "nepiju" goes last. Kávu nepiju.
we would normally accept both of these versions plus a few variants with "já". of those, the most natural one for the rejection of beverage with the smell of coffee in the air, is Já kávu nepiju. although Kávu já nepiju. is also fine.
let's deal with some weird ones. Kávu nepiju já. is somehow presenting "já" as the key element. why? maybe there is a set of beverages being given at a meeting to a dozen people, and the beverage person remembers being told to include one hot chocolate for a guy that does not drink coffee. when they deliver the tray, they may ask the czech for "Who was against coffee?", and the response from the hot chocolate participant could be as given here. it is close to being an unacceptable translation, but if the sentence we are translating were pronounced I do not drink coffee., it would work. some of us would accept the translation.
it could be useful to consider a bad translation. Nepiju kávu já. feels downright moronic. i don't have a PhD in linguistics, but the issue seems to be that we presented "já" as key, but we also presented "kávu" as more key than "nepiju". there just does not seem to be a context where that would work, no question it could be a natural answer to, no sentence stress that makes it sound less deranged. we would likely reject that translation.
a note of caution, though. the ordering by importance to the message is just one thing impacting the czech word order. there is also the issue of words that like to or in some cases must be in the second slot in the sentence. let's call them clitics. short object pronouns are a good example.
let's replace "kávu" with "ji" in the hot chocolate drinker's response to "Who was against coffee?" now Kávu nepiju já. becomes Nepiju ji já. rather than Ji nepiju já. the takeaway here is that clitic behavior trumps messaging significance in ordering the czech sentence.
i guess after all this text it is clear why i wanted the simplest of examples 