Bolí mě srdce.

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Breakdown of Bolí mě srdce.

• bolet: to hurt
• srdce: the heart

Questions & Answers about Bolí mě srdce.

What does each word in Bolí mě srdce. mean literally?

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.

Why is there no word for my?

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.

Why is it mě and not já?

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.