# Protože schopnost mluvit má Sára svou vážnou nemocí omezenou



## Odriski

Hi Everyone!Haven't seen you for a long time, how are you?Just now I read a news from seznam, and in this news it has a sentence that "Protože schopnost mluvit má Sára svou vážnou nemocí omezenou, je komunikace s dcerou komplikovanější než u jiných dět", the difficulty is the first half sentence "Protože schopnost mluvit má Sára svou vážnou nemocí omezenou", how to translate it into English properly? I know, that "because the limitation of her serious illness, she has the ability to speak" is not logically correct, so what should be the correct meaning?Here is the website:http://www.novinky.cz/domaci/353148-sara-zije-petkrat-dele-nez-ji-predpovedeli.htmlThank you Odriski


----------



## Enquiring Mind

Hi Odriski, it's nice to have another question from you for the forum.  Languages have different ways of allowing the speaker or writer to emphasise particular words to make their meaning clear. Very often (in Western languages), this is through word stress, intonation, and word order. 

English tends to have quite a well established basic word order - subject, object, verb, and emphasis is often conveyed by word stress and intonation, although there is some scope to vary the word order in English too. In Czech, intonation and stress are also used to convey emphasis, but word order is much more flexible than in English, and it is one of the main ways of conveying emphasis, especially in the written word (when you can't hear stress and intonation).

If you use word order in Czech to convey emphasis, the element (word or words) that you want to stress can often come at the *end *of the sentence or clause, and that is what is happening in your example.  In the Czech declension system (1st case - nominative, etc.), _Sára_ can _*only*_ be the _nominative_ (Sára, od Sáry, kvůli Sáře, Sáru, Sáro! o Sáře, se Sárou), so _Sára_ must be the subject of this clause. In theory, _schopnost _(which looks the same in both nominative and accusative singular) could also be the subject, but the verb (_má_) is singular, so there can only be one subject, and we know that _Sára_ can only be nominative, so it must be the subject. Therefore, _schopnost_ must be the accusative and therefore is the object.  
_
Protože schopnost mluvit má Sára svou vážnou nemocí omezenou_
Because ability to speak has Sara because of her serious illness limited
Conjunction object verb subject adverbial phrase adjective/past participle [in the accusative, agreeing with the object also in the accusative. Perhaps your confusion stems from the fact that _omezenou_ could also be instrumental, agreeing with _nemocí_, but that's not the case here. It's accusative, referring back to _schopnost_. The word _omezenou_ is at the end of the clause purely for emphasis.]

_Protože Sára má schopnost mluvit omezenou _[- čím?] _svou vážnou nemocí _

In terms of [fairly literal] translation, you have: "Because Sara has limited ability to speak due to (her) serious illness..." That is perfectly acceptable, but in news style, we can make it flow better, partly by  avoiding abstract nouns [which are used in Slavic and Romance languages where English prefers a verb form - often a gerund (~ing form] and by not starting the sentence with "because", so (in English newswriting style):

Sara's serious illness makes it difficult for her to speak, so communication ...
Sara is so ill that she finds it difficult to speak, so communication ...
[Many more options too, of course.]


----------



## Odriski

Thank you, Mr Mind, thank you for such detailed explanation, although I have learned Czech for more than 1 year, sometime can still be confused by the word order


----------



## bibax

There is a common stylistic clumsiness in the given sentence:

"Protože schopnost mluvit má Sára svou vážnou nemocí *omezenou*, ..."

Better:

"Protože schopnost mluvit má Sára svou vážnou nemocí *omezenu*, ..."


----------

