"The boss is a short English man."
Translation:A főnök egy alacsony angol férfi.
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In which cases can egy be omitted? According to my mother, in the sentence az angol férfi egy zenész, egy is necessary, but in this sentence it can be omitted?
Here - and in general - 'egy' means that somebody is member of a set, here set of short English men. The sentence is correct without 'egy' but in that case you 'simply' specify the height and the origin of the boss.
So does this mean that:
• "A főnök alacsony angol férfi." = The boss is short and originates from England.
• "A főnök egy alacsony angol férfi." = The boss is a man, who is short and originates from England.
Or, maybe, from jan-19's explanation, "A főnök egy alacsony angol férfi." = The boss is one of those short Englishmen.
Yes it would, but in the English, given that it says "English man" rather than "Englishman", it is definitely identifying his sex. Had it said "Englishman" then you might have gotten away with it, might have.
főnök: boss/ manager
rendező: director (of a movie of theater play)
igazgató: director (of a company) / headmaster in a school
Yes, but there is a need to restrict the range of synonyms for a course such as this.
Why can't I say: "A fönök egy angol alacsony férfi?" (The Boss is an English, small man.) This sounds a bit unusual, but would it be incorrect?
Firstly, "alacsony" is "short" rather than small.
Correcting for that, "The boss is an English short man" is certainly weird in English. There have been other occasions where the Hungarian adjective order sounds weird in English, and Duolingo has been asked to accept the more normal English word order. I can't say which is the more normal Hungarian order of adjectives.
In any case, just try to maintain the same order of adjectives. If they had to allow for all permutations of adjectives, they would need to add a lot of alternatives to many of the translations, for no real gain.
