"A busz gyakran van itt."
Translation:The bus is often here.
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1406
Hungarian usually works more the other way around: you place the verb, and then everything around it. The verb is the centerpiece of a sentence.
The word right in front of the verb is the focus of the sentence. (Hocus focus!) That's the part of the sentence that you want to emphasise while speaking. In this translation it's gyakran - often. You want to express how frequently the bus is here. Other word orders are possible as well:
- A busz van gyakran itt. - What is often here? The bus is.
- A busz gyakran itt van. / Gyakran itt van a busz. - Where is the bus often? It is often here.
- Gyakran a busz van itt. - It is often the bus that is here.
The word before van determines what's emphasised, and the word after gyakran determines which part of the sentence receives the often-ness. Simple as that, once you get used to it. :´)
1406
The consonants in Hungarian should each sound the same, regardless of placement. The proper sound of the 'gy' [ɟ] is a little hard to form, so you tend to resort to [dj], but for all intents and purposes it's the same sound.
it is the recording, i reported that it sound like "yakran" when she speaks it in full sentence, but good when tapping the word itself.
1406
You first take the verb, then put what's important to you in front of it, then put what you're generally talking about in front of that, and arrange the rest of the sentence behind the verb, preferably in an order that makes sense. :)
Topic-focus-verb-rest. (Hocus focus!)
Here you're talking about what's up with the bus (topic), and mention that it's often somewhere, not rarely or never (focus), then follows the verb (van), and then the less important things (itt).
I recommend reading the comment sections throughout this course. There are helpful tips strewn around.
46
Thank you, it really makes sense. But what if I omit van? How do you understand that gyakran is focused?
1406
Well, you cannot omit van in this sentence, since it's talking about where something is. (If you talk about extrinsic values of an object, like location and time, you need to have a form of van.)
But let's take a different example: "Buses are often yellow" - "A buszok gyakran sárgák."
There is not much focus going on here due to the lack of a verb. In spoken language you always have the ability to place emphasis on one or more words. "A buszok gyakran sárgák." or "A buszok gyakran sárgák." In written language you're a bit out of luck; you'd have to rely on context or on the benevolence of your readers not to misinterpret you. Or you rephrase your sentence to something more unambiguous: "Van sok busz, amely sárga" - "There are many buses that are yellow."
So True B3KR17aF, I've heard colleagues and friends complain, that "translating anything into English appears so cumbersome". So after much deliberation they came up with a general solution to exclusively permit English as the sole language which can be translated into English... They propose this circular solution can eliminate our expectations of the English language altogether, alleviate any burdens we place on the poor thing, and thereby globally leave everyone to peacefully translate their languages according their respective conventions.
1406
Yes, that's a good sentence as well. In this case you're putting the focus on the location, since you put itt in front of the verb van: "The bus is often here, instead of in other places."