Bolí mě srdce.

Word by word:

• Bolí = hurts / is hurting
• mě = me
• srdce = heart

So the literal structure is closer to The heart hurts me than to the English My heart hurts.

That sounds odd in English, but it is a very normal Czech pattern with bolet.

Czech often leaves out possessive words like my with body parts when the owner is obvious.

So:

• Bolí mě srdce. = My heart hurts.

If you say moje srdce, it usually sounds more emphatic, contrastive, or emotional:

• Bolí mě moje srdce. = It’s my heart that hurts / my own heart hurts

In ordinary speech, the shorter version is more natural.

Because já means I as the subject, but here the person feeling the pain is not the grammatical subject.

With bolet, the thing that hurts is the subject, and the person affected is expressed like an object:

• srdce = the thing that hurts
• mě = the person who feels it

So:

• já = I
• mě = me

That is why Bolí já srdce would be wrong.

Here mě is in the accusative.

The verb bolet commonly works like this:

• Bolí mě hlava. = My head hurts.
• Bolí ho zub. = His tooth hurts.
• Bolí nás záda. = Our backs hurt.

So the pattern is basically:

[thing that hurts] + bolet + [person in accusative]

Yes. Srdce is the grammatical subject.

You can tell because:

1. It is the thing doing the hurting
2. The verb agrees with it: bolí is 3rd person singular, matching singular srdce

This is one of the places where Czech differs from English. In English, we usually make the person the subject: My heart hurts. In Czech, the body part can be the subject instead.

Also, srdce looks the same in nominative and accusative, so the form itself does not help much here. The sentence pattern and verb agreement do.

Because the verb agrees with srdce, not with mě.

• srdce = singular
• so the verb is bolí = it hurts / hurts

Czech is not saying I hurt. It is saying the heart hurts me.

If the subject were plural, the verb form would stay bolí in the present tense:

• Bolí mě oči. = My eyes hurt.
• Bolí mě záda. = My back hurts / literally My back hurts me (grammatically plural in Czech)

So the important thing is: the verb follows the thing that hurts, not the person who feels the pain.

Yes, you can also say Srdce mě bolí.

Czech word order is more flexible than English, but the versions do not feel exactly the same.

• Bolí mě srdce. = very natural, neutral
• Srdce mě bolí. = also natural, with more focus on heart
• Mě bolí srdce. = puts more emphasis on me, often contrastive

One important detail: mě is a clitic, so it often likes to stand near the beginning of the sentence, typically in the second position area. That is why Bolí mě srdce sounds very natural.

By default, most people will understand it as physical pain in the heart/chest area.

In the right context, it can also sound emotional or poetic, but that is not the most basic reading.

For emotional pain, Czech often uses other expressions, for example:

• Mám zlomené srdce. = I have a broken heart.
• Bolí mě to u srdce. = It hurts me in the heart / emotionally painful

So Bolí mě srdce can be figurative in context, but its plain meaning is usually physical.

Yes, srdce is a classic Czech-looking word.

A rough pronunciation guide:

• Bolí ≈ BOH-lee
• mě ≈ m-nyeh
• srdce ≈ srrt-seh

A few notes:

• The r in srdce is pronounced without a full vowel before it.
• The final ce sounds like tseh.
• The stress in Czech is normally on the first syllable of the word, so BOLÍ and SRDCE.

English speakers often want to insert a vowel into srdce, but Czech really does allow that consonant-heavy shape.

Because Czech has no articles.

So srdce can mean:

• heart
• the heart
• a heart

The exact meaning depends on context.

In this sentence, English naturally uses my heart, but Czech expresses that idea without an article and usually without a possessive pronoun too:

• Bolí mě srdce.

That is a very typical Czech way to talk about body parts.

You keep the same pattern and change the pronoun or the noun.

For other people:

• Bolí tě srdce. = Your heart hurts.
• Bolí ho srdce. = His heart hurts.
• Bolí ji srdce. = Her heart hurts.
• Bolí nás srdce. = Our heart hurts / our hearts hurt
• Bolí vás srdce. = Your heart hurts
• Bolí je srdce. = Their heart hurts / hearts hurt

For other body parts:

• Bolí mě hlava. = My head hurts.
• Bolí mě žaludek. = My stomach hurts.
• Bolí mě noha. = My leg hurts.
• Bolí mě zuby. = My teeth hurt.

This is one of the most useful everyday sentence patterns in Czech.