Czech Medical Translation Service

The word order in Czech serves a similar function to sentence stress and articles in English. Often all the permutations of words in a clause are possible. While the permutations mostly share the same meaning, they differ in the topic–focus articulation. For example: Češi udělali revoluci (The Czechs made a revolution), Revoluci udělali Češi (It was the Czechs who made the revolution), and Češi revoluci udělali (The Czechs did make a revolution). Usually the word order follows the pattern based on importance of the words expressed – from the least important to the most important. By saying Revoluci udělali Češi the speaker stresses that it was the Czechs and not, e.g. the Germans or Slovaks, who made a revolution. By saying Češi revoluci udělali, the speaker stresses that the revolution has been done, this being far more important than that it was the Czechs who stood behind it. Combined with sentence voice melody, which is the same for each type of sentence – announcing, questioning and an imperative, and which marks the end of each sentence, one can easily understand the important context of what is said by just listening to the final word in each sentence.

By using different melodies can be stress moved to different word and to add information. For example: Češi udělali revoluci (The Czechs made a revolution) pronounced with acoustic stress to word revoluci with little delay before this word means: The Czechs did make a revolution as (and only as) a response to a concrete situation. This same meaning can also be shown in written form: Češi udělali – revoluci.