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- Topic: Hungarian >
- "Azok almák."
11 Comments
326
As azok is those instead of these maybe it should be those are apples rather than they are. Although if you were pointing out apples in english you could say they are applea pointing to them as well to distinguish them from pears for instance. Maybe it is like that with the emphasis on azok? As I am not a hungarian speaker I do not know. Nem tudom.
- 484
Why not "these" are apples? For me the sentence "they are apples" sounds, as if some persons were apples. Is it really used this way in English? Second is, that i learned, that azok is those and ezek these. Is that wrong?
As a native speaker of English, "they are apples" definitely doesn't make it sound like they're people. "They" is for both people and things (and so are the demonstratives "these" and "those").
What are those? They're apples.
I can't judge the appropriateness of the translation from Hungarian though.
- 943
OFF: I just wonder that we have apples and windows all over the lesson but there are no penguins, red pandas or small green robots...
Two reasons.
1. azok is an actual pronoun in this sentence, not a demonstrative adjective referring to almák. This sentence is about making "azok" (those, noun-like) equal to "almák" (apples, also noun-like). They couldn't be "equal" if they didn't match in number.
2. actually, even when used as a demonstrative adjective, "az" functions like a noun: the definite article is used after it and "az" the demonstrative adjective has to be inflected/declined the same way it would be as a pronoun (hence "those apples" = "azok az almák", "that apple" = "az az alma", "that apple" in the accusative = "azt az almát", "those apples" in the accusative = "azokat az almákat") and so on.
Bonus +1 while revisiting: "az" isn't a quantifier anyway - it doesn't mark plural semantically, in this aspect, it's similar to "red". "Red apples"="Piros almák", if there is no quantifier, the amount will be marked on the noun, not on the adjective.
