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- Topic: Hungarian >
- "A busz gyakran van itt."
36 Comments
Why in the basic lesson are adverbs? Wofur? Niedość, że mam problem, żeby przyswoić szyk zdania i zaimki osobowe to ci mi rzucają kłody pod nogi.
does the position of the word 'van' matter. usually is its place after the question word or adverb. but here it is place before it.
763
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. :´)
So it is closer to french as i know, sadly dualingo doesn't teach french to hungariam
Does "gy" have a different pronunciation at the beginning of a word? It could just be the speed, but in this example it doesn't sound like the same palatized d sound in words like "vagy".
- 763
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.
I've got a little experience with linguistics and IPA (I sing opera for a living) so I think I've got the [ɟ] pretty well figured out. Must just be the recording. Didn't realize that the placement was irrelevant. Thanks for enlightening me!
The stress is somewhat different in the two sentences. In the Hungarian, the stress is on "gyakran", in your English translation it is on "here".
Shouldn't it be A busz gyakran itt van since the verb seems to go at the end?
'A busz gyakran itt van' is also perfectly correct, with a really tiny difference - not stressing 'gyakran' (often) that much as in 'A busz gyakran van itt'.
I winged this one and somehow got it right they added a random new word without intro ducing
How does 'The bus is often here' differ from 'The bus is often over here"?
I don't quite get the meaning of the sentence. The bus travels often through this area? Or is it just near a central bus station? A busz means a certain bus, not busses general, right? Sorry, English is not my mother tongue so sometimes my brain gets locked up by two translations.
I think "the bus travels often through this area" is not a bad approach. In this case the "busz" could also mean a bus line.
Another possibility I think is to talk about a certain place, a parking lot maybe, and talk that the bus can be often found there.
What is the best way to arrange a hungarian sentence? I am really confused
- 763
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.
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Thank you, it really makes sense. But what if I omit van? How do you understand that gyakran is focused?
- 763
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."
the translation into English is strange and unnatural. the translation “The bus comes often here” should be also correct even though it does not correspond to the original word by word. to me this is a wrong example for the level of beginners.
- 763
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."
