"Hány éves?"
Translation:How old is she?
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'vagy' is 2nd person singular though, in the 3rd person case the subject would be 'van' :)
"They" should be accepted as there are no genders in this sense in Hungarian
It doesn’t matter since “they” is third person plural though. “he” or “she” should both be accepted as correct.
Yes, it does matter. "They" is used in native English speech when the subject's gender is unknown.
As Hungarian doesn't have gendered pronouns, the usage of they is completely warranted and should be a possible answer.
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Not really - "they" as a singular form really should not be used that way in a language course. It creates a lot of confusion in the conjugations. Hungarian has specific verb forms for singular and plural, as well as plural forms for the adjectives. In this case, using "they" implies plural, which would be written as "Hány évesek?" - how old are they? This sentence was not written to allow a plural interpretation: Hány éves? - how old is he (or she)?
To solve the possible confusion as to whether it could be "he" or "she", the best approach is to accept either answer, which Duo does. We all understand that it can mean either. Hungarian is difficult enough without adding an English translation complexity.
If there are no gendered pronouns, why am I wrong if I enter "how old is this person"
I would rather translate that as "Hány éves ez a személy". Just use either he or she.
Doesn't it also mean how many years. So if somebody would say: Gues how many years I have been away an I want to respond: How many years?
I made the same mistake. Man it´s been years ago I learned Hungarian, but I think the difference will be in the ending of év. Plural ending was that -k or -t? So "how many years" should be something like: "hany évek" the -s ending is not a grammatical thing, like the object or plural endings, instead it influences the meaning, like here it changes year to how many years. Hard to explain, in other languages you have similar things, but in English I cant come up with a good one.
Is it right that Hány Éves also means How old " are you" no matter there is "Vagy" or not at the end, because it accepts both answer (you+he)
It can be correct, but it depends on the context.
"How old are you ?" (informal, asking a friend or a child) then it needs the "vagy": "Hány éves vagy?"
"How old are you ?" (formal, like an officer asking you, or you want to be polite) then it is either "Hány éves?" or "Hány éves Ön?"
"How old is he / she?" then it's either "Hány éves?" or "Hány éves ő?"
"How old is it ?" then it's either "Hány éves?" or "Hány éves az?"
"How old are you (all)?" then for informal it is "Hány évesek vagytok?" and the polite form is "Hány évesek Önök?"
Sorry, but this is on the notes of Basic 1, so I will copy this part for you.
You will notice that Hungarian sometimes lacks a verb where English has is. For example, while in English you would say What is this?, Hungarian does not have a verb here: Mi ez?
In addition, Hungarian word order is freer than English word order. To ask What is this?, in Hungarian both Mi ez? and Ez mi? are fine.
Be careful! The verb is only lacking when the subject is in the third person and the sentence express a property relating to the subject like Ez mi? “What is this?“, Péter egy diák “Péter is a student.”, or Péter álmos “Péter is tired.”
But please help - where are the notes? I can't find any - is it because I'm using Duolingo on the phone app rather than online? I've paid for my subscription, so it's not that...
In this question, you can only add he or she. You need to think that you can drop the verb van (lenni in singular 3rd person) in this question, but you cannot drop vagyok (singular 1st person) or vagy (singular 2nd person). ;)
The thing is that dropped vagy (or van) was the only part that had information about "you, he/she or even me" in english answer. I think it might confuse students and should be fixed one way or another.
You cannot drop vagy (never in your life), so only you can drop van. It is very simple. ;)
Doublechecked this moment with natives, you are right. Thank you for clarification, though not sure if newbies need to bother with these short forms. When you start learning new language full forms are more useful.
Not so sure about that, lol. This is the way it would be said. You can force "ő" if you really wish, otherwise I can only say this may not be a basic 1 sentence in Hungarian...
Also, pay attention to the examples given above:
Ő means she/he
éves means years old
hány means how many but we need to use only how to construct How old is he?
So, we can construct these sentences
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Ő hány éves? or Hány éves ő?
In both cases, where is the verb? It is not.
If you were to use a non-gendered pronoun in English, as Ö is in Hungarian, could you translate "Hány éves?" as: how old is they? or how old are they?
It would be "how old are they" Translators would use "How old are they?" or "How old is he/she?" Since you have no idea how to determine the gender from the original hungarian
I would not expect the pronouns "he" or "she" to be used in English if you didn't already know who you were talking about. The problem with language-learning exercises is that sentences are taken out of context.
Technically yes, I'm not sure when you would use this sentence for "it", though.