29 Comments
Can "magasat" mean "tall person?" Like if you're in the store but you can't reach something on the top shelf and neither can the person working in that aisle, could he or she ask you "Te egy magasat vársz"
I typed "Are you waiting for someone tall?" and it wasn't accepted so I reported it.
It actually told me that "a tall 1" is a correct answer. Um ... no. Maybe if yOuR 12 YeaRz oLd N RitE lyk dis ...
Not sure, but I typed "are you waiting for a tall person?" and my answer was accepted.
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Yes. In most cases adjectives that are used as nouns are used for people. You even have some job titles derived from adjectives: munkás - worker, someone who has work (munka); rendező - director, the organising one (from rendez - organise)
Wow. Okay, this explains why my Hungarian boyfriend will say ''the poors'' for ''poor people''. That's so cool to understand why.
Why don't you get on this bus? Are you waiting for a tall one?
"Miért nem szállsz fel erre a buszra? Te egy magasat vársz?"
"Magasat" does NOT mean a tall person at all. Yes, it can be implied in context but otherwise it just means a "tall one", a tall anything. This translation is misleading, in my opinion. It is not like "fiatal", which idiomatically means "a young person". A "magas" is just a "tall (whatever)". Which may be a person, too.
True adjectives very rarely imply a person without context. But adjectives that became de facto nouns may indeed. And these adjectives had been derived from other words, usually. Just like RyagonIV's examples:
work - worker - munka - munkás
direct - director - rendez - rendező
manage - manager - igazgat - igazgató
Both English and Hungarian are full of words like these. They may not be the same type of word but the idea is very similar.
On "the poor" vs "the poors", Hungarian tends to use the singular much more often than English does. Think of sentences like "Are there any apples here?" vs "Van itt alma?"
But Hungarian can treat adjectives just like nouns. They can be plural, they can have suffixes, just like nouns. English likes to use the phantom noun "one". In Hungarian, that phantom is built into the adjective, so to speak. "The poor" would be "the poor ones". "The English" would be "the English people". But that noun, phantom or not, may be omitted in English. Hungarian does not need that because Hungarian can attach the suffix directly to the adjective: "a szegényEK", "az angolOK".
Only if the context implies. "I am waiting for a short person. Are you waiting for a tall one?"
"A tall one" here would be translated as "egy magasat".
I just feel so sorry for the people who actually want to learn Hungarian..
To my surprise, I'm actually finding it easier than some other languages I've dabbled in - it's very different than others, but there's a kind of logic to the way that Hungarian compiles words out of small kernels (like magas - magasat) which appeals to me.
No need to feel sorry for anybody :-)
It's not the language. It's the course!
Some of the example sentences in the course are really awkward, like this one. Maybe they'll improve it later.
Whatever you do, don't describe a beer as "tall" when in Hungary. At a bar in Budapest, I asked for a "magas" sor, and the bartender had a good laugh at that... all in good fun though. Lesson learned!
I'm assuming "Nagy" would have been a better descriptor? As in "Egy nagy sort szeretnek kerni." (sorry, no accents on this keyboard.)
you can change the language of your keyboard on the taskbar. Then you only have to memorize where the characters that you need are ;) (doing it for a few years and it works fine after a while)
does this mean drink? sometimes people call a beer "a tall one" or "tall boy"
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Unless you expect your drink to be poured in an exceptionally lengthy glass, no. :)
If you want a large beer, you say so: egy nagy sört.
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Imagine you're meeting a friend standing at a corner and he informs you that he's waiting for somebody. You look around a bit and see an exceptionally tall man strolling your way, so you ask "Are you waiting for a tall one?" Bit awkward-sounding in English, but fully acceptable in Hungarian.
Is 'egy' pronounced differenty in this sentence? It sounds more like and english 'g' than a 'j' which is what it usually sounds like doesn't it?
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The letter 'gy' makes a specific sound that doesn't appear in English. It's pretty much always the same sound, but its surroundings might change the pronounciation a bit.
"Gy" makes a [ɟ] sound, a so-called "voiced palatal stop". It sounds a bit like a combined sound of English 'd' and 'y'. The sound is formed similar to pronouncing a 'd', but instead of laying your tongue tip behind your teeth, you press the middle of the tongue flat against your hard palate.
I am live in Hungary ( so sorry for my english) , and honestly I can't undestand the meaning too...and this is sad. Te magasat vársz is not a full sentence.
