"Ő lány."
Translation:She is a girl.
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Honestly, there is not much to say beyond that, but I'm happy to share all the same. Please keep in mind, of course, that can I speak only for myself.
Depending on how I have outwardly presented myself (i.e., my gender expression) people have "read" me as a woman, man, or something in between. Internally, I do personally feel a bit more like a woman than a man (is the name Violet a giveaway?), but I don't really feel like either. So my gender identity, regardless of my gender expression, is kind of neutral or non-binary (this is what I mean by "genderqueer"). Subsequently I really appreciate gender-neutral speech, like the various gender-neutral pronouns in English (such as the singular "they," probably the most popular) or the equivalent "hen" in Swedish. The fact that such pronouns are inherently gender-neutral in Hungarian and in fact are typically omitted altogether is even better!
I hope that satisfies your curiosity (I mean that sincerely!). Thank you for asking.
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you can often drop the "egy" article. for example, in this context, you know "ő" can only be one person, so it's logical not to highlight the quantity one more time. It's different with English I know, where "She's girl" would sound rather silly.
It may be easier to understand that in this sample sentence the "to be" is silent. For a Hungarian speaker it would be evident that there is the verb, but simply not pronounced. It is not so unique, e.g. Russian langauge also omits (implies) the "to be" in sentences like this: "oна девушка" is literally the same as in Hungarian, word by word. Another example: "he is an engineer" would translate "ő mérnök" in Hungarian, and "он инженер" in Russian. "To be" is obviously there for the native speakers. Strangely enough, if you read a book where the caveman says "she girl" in caveman-English, the Hungarian translation will most probably sound like "ő van lány" and Hungarian reader will be happy and understand that Mr. Caveman speaks English wrong.
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Van shall not be used in a "x is y" sentence. It's simply "x-y" Even with the other personal cases, the to be verb would go to the end of the sentence.
Sure, I confirm. ;) It is even harder to translate a sentence like "she told that he would bring it (e.g. a not specified animal) to her from his flat where its cage was." All we can do is try to find good workarounds. For literature it sometimes really tricky. You cannot translate the famous graffitti "God is black! - Yes, she is!" - it simply won't come through!
There is ambiguity in Finnish as well, täkki (quilt, duvet) vs takki (jacket, coat) for example. Curiously, I know I've read that one reason for the plain ones is that ae would cause ambiguity but I can't think of a single such case whereas I could easily come up with 10 ä vs a ambiguities. The other reason is that typing väärällään (full of) as vaeaeraellaeaen takes more effort and makes it more unintelligible than simply typing vaarallaan (which by itself means "with his/her/their danger").
In the near past when telegrams were a daily form of communication with very restricted code set they used aa = á, ee = é, oe=ö, ue=ü, etc. Ő and ű were probably omitted or substituted with oeoe and ueue.
In the even less distant past when IRC and ICQ went crazy for accented characters we used o: for ö, u: for ü, o" for ő, etc. and a' .. u' for á .. ú. But we usually omitted the accent when it was not too much confusion. In really bad needs you can use the latter method but in common use this is not really present. In texting (especially by iPhone users) accents frequently omitted and this phenomenon makes even more funny troubles than autotext.
For advanced learners: there are two little towns called Vereb and Szár. They appear in this joke: Vereb vonatállomáson tréfából megkérdezi az utas a vasutast: "Nem hiányzik egy vessző az állomásnév tábláról?" "De igen!" - válaszol a másik. "Régebben volt is, de egy nagy szél jött, és elvitte Szár állomására!"
(Vereb is almost like "veréb" [sparrow] and Szár is almost like "szar" [shit], FYI. ;) )
In case of Hungarian where pronouns are gender-neutral, (s)he could be a boy, too, or a man. Let's see an example:
– Most nem tudok menni, itt van Gabi. – Gabi? Ő fiú? – Ő lány.
("I can't go now, Gabi is here." "Gabi? Is he a boy?" "She's a girl.")
You may want to know for this dialogue that "Gabi" can be diminutive form of Gábor (Gabriel) and Gabriella, and won't inform about the bearer's sex. The dialogue is a bit lame to avoid gender-specific answer/question before the point—but in daily routine life these situations are pretty common.