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- "Zsuzsa magyarokat és angolok…
"Zsuzsa magyarokat és angolokat ismer."
Translation:Zsuzsa knows Hungarians and English people.
28 Comments
English people sounds really forced it's like trying to avoid the word Englishmen.
It may sound "forced" to you but it's better terminology than Englishmen, because assuming that "Englishmen" is a generic term to describe the people who live in England excludes 50% of the population- hence why most people have relegated the use of that word to the dustbin of history
Englishmen is similar to Spaniard and Frenchman. The man in Englishmen is a different sense of the word. Man in this sense refers to the human race in general. It doesn't exclude females but talks about all of humankind. "Man uses technology more and more to make life easier on them."
Okay, I was just giving you another sense of the English word. Language did not evolve to be politically correct. It will never be totally politically correct. By the way, we have female equivalents to firemen (firewomen) and mailman (mailwoman). Language has evolved this way. We are understood. I am man am sorry for excluding women when I use the secondary sense of the word man (as van be seen in almost any English dictionary). I'm sorry, but Englishmen doesn't appear to be going anywhere, and is still very popular where I am from. As I said, English nor any language is politically correct. Everyone can find some insult in etymology.
My only response is this portal of Duolingo is for speakers of English learning another language. I am not saying Engish people should be made incorrect, but that Englishmen is used and should also be accepted. I have no problem not teaching the word Englishmen because, in most cases, people can survive without its use. In my dialect, however, Englishmen are what we use to refer to the English, and in an app designed to teach speakers of English the Hungarian language, Angolok and Englishmen are almost as close as you can get to 1 to 1 correspondence. I am not saying that we need to go into the Hungarian to English and say the translation of Angolok is Englishmen.
whizza - why couldn't man(kind) be a cognate of German Mensch which clearly refers to humans in general? Why is a word coming from a masculine noun in Latin (homo) more acceptable?
Would it be correct to say that Zsuzsa knows Hungarian ones and English ones? Or is this sentence somehow specific to people?
159
If you don't want to refer to people it would translate better in English if you say "Zsuzsa knows Hungarian and English ones" and omit the first "ones"
- 889
No, not necessarily. She could also know Hungarian and English TV shows. Or violin players.
- 159
Right! There is no context here for what Zsuzsa knows (or is familiar with).
I thought of some other categories. She may know types of porcelain products made by Herendi and Wedgewood. Or dog breeds: vizsla and English Bulldog. Or beer: Dreher and Porter, but I wouldn't compare wine! :). Just joking. I don't intend to offend UK winemakers.
So "she knows Hungarian and English ones" could be used to answer the question but not "she knows Hungarian ones and English ones." The second "ones" in the sentence is used to modify both of whatever she knows.
"Hungarian ones and English ones" has no meaning if it is intended to mean people.
- 889
Which object it is exactly is left in the open. It's probably about people, but can also refer to cars, stores, composers, behaviours, what you got. Depends on what was being talked about before.
I see some of you talk about different options. I get selections of words to choose, basically just arranging them in right order... seems like a waste of time.
- 699
Just to add to your debate about archaic expressions, earlier in Hungary they used the word "ember" meaning only 'man'. "Asszony" was a married woman, "lány" was an unmarried woman or girl and by "gyerek" they meant only a boy. ;-) So if a friend has a newborn child and I want to be funny I ask ."Gratulálok! Gyerek lett vagy lyány?" 'Congrats! Is it a boy or a girl?' :-D
I'd like to add the feminine counterpart of "ember" used to be "némber" - which is now a fairly pejorative word.
Marton, thanks for replying to old posts. I’ve read many discussions lately and your name came up quite often . I remember because you seem to defend the content of this course vehemently, namely when people point out that too many exercise discussions are about ambiguous English translations. And this sentence is a good example. Why not use another word instead of ‘angolok’? Wouldn’t you agree that a combination of Hungarians and Italians or Germans would serve the same purpose and would eliminate the confusion of the EN translation ?
I'm rephrasing this for the third time in order not to go too far... let me just say it was more than disappointing that you came here and disguised your nitpicking and "vehement" protection of that as praising.
And as I don't agree with your presumption - noone so far has shown any signs that this sentence would be ambiguous and I don't see how there would be a better opportunity to teach "angolokat" in other sentences - I'm really looking forward your why's. Why use another word instead of angolok and what to do with it? What confusion or ambiguity are you talking about (let alone in a completely unrelated comment thread)? One of us misses something that's for sure.
But "ember" means person now and "gyerek" means kid/child now, right?
- 159
I wrote Zsuzsa knows Hungarian and English people and was marked correct. Hungarians and Americans would be correct if we were talking about people in the US but the Brits don’t call themselves “Englishes” LOL
You need to be careful with British and English. It works for me, but the non-English Brits would get a little upset.
- 1701
Adding to the similar comments about the English version of this sentence: The English version is a literal and slightly unnatural-sounding translation.
The current version is:
Zsuzsa knows Hungarians and English people.
There is no problem with the Hungarian sentence because "magyarokat" and "angolokat" can be used in the same way. The symmetry is broken in English: the word "Englishes" does not exist. And an Oxford comma would not help here, either.
Slightly less jarring might be:
Zsuzsa knows Hungarian and English people.
Is that allowed?
This just shows how sometimes even the simplest sentence can be tricky to translate.
