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- Topic: Hungarian >
- "Én fekszek."
18 Comments
In English, if someone just says "I lie", it would mean different. I would say this is more "I am lying down".
Hungarian uses the prefix "-le" for down, so it would be "en lefekszek" for I am lying down. They are very particular about their directions.
Yes, I'm aware. My point was that this is not an appropriate English translation, because this would not be said in English, because it would be interpreted as meaning "I am not telling the truth." If someone wanted to express this, they would say "I am lying down" or "I am lying flat". It doesn't mean that they are performing the action of lying down (lefekszek). That would be "I lie down".
It is a different verb: hazudni. Ő hazudik: he is telling a lie. Lie is a homonym word in English.
Exactly: I'm aware they are different concepts and different words but I was expressing my agreement with david.altmayer that the English sentence could be clearer. Thank you for the new vocab though!
I agree 100%. I actually thought from the hint that it meant "I am not telling the truth" and was thinking about making a smarty pants comment about whether this hint could be trusted.
In English, "I am lying" all by itself always refers to telling falsehoods, never to the position of one's body. To change the meaning you need to specify a place - lying in bed, or on a sofa. In this case it is necessary to say "lying down" to supply the location (or dummy location of you want to think of it that way).
there's some disagreement whether "fekszek" is grammatically correct. if i remember right, it's a regional thing, there are regions where that's what they use, and there are regions where it sounds uneducated.
the "rule" behind it (without grammatical terms, since i don't know those in english):
normally if you conjugate a verb in the first person singular, it will either end in "m" (if the verb has an object), or in "k" (if it doesn't have an object or the object is not specified). however, for verbs, that end in "ik" in the third person singular (eszik - eat, iszik - drink, alszik - sleep, fekszik - lie, etc) lot's of people will use only the "m" ending, even if it does not have or cannot have an object. (it only concerns the first person singular, the rest of the conjugation is the same as others.)
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"fekszem" is grammatically correct as fekszik is an -ik verb and both definite and indefinite conjugations use -em for first person singular. However you will hear people use "fekszek". Personally I think DL should stick with the formal grammar. Plenty of time to learn slang and dialects when you have it well bedded down.
The hungarian should be "Fekszem" and the english should be "I am lying down". Ertem hogy regen jo volt a fekszek verzio is, de ma mar senki nem hasznalja, nem kellene ezt a verziot tanitani szvsz.
Not really. In fact this sentence isn't used in general because nobody says "én", only in specific situations, when you emphasize that you are the one who is lying down.
"I'm taking a rest" = "Pihenek."
"I go to sleep." = "Lefekszem." -- Or in some parts of the country "Lefekszek." Both are used and fine.
