"I am a tourist and you are a policeman."
Translation:Én turista vagyok, ön pedig egy rendőr.
54 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
1570
why is this wrong: en turista vagyok es te rendőr
why "A tourist" = "turista" but "A policeman" = "EGY rendor??
930
- Én turista vagyok és te (ön/maga) rendőr vagy.
- Én turista vagyok, te (ön/maga) pedig rendőr.
- Én turista vagyok, te (ön/maga) pedig egy rendőr. 4.Én egy turista vagyok és te (ön/maga) egy rendőr vagy.
- Én egy turista vagyok, te (ön/maga) pedig egy rendőr. (All are good.)
In most instances you would not address a police officer with the familiar form 'te', but with the formal 'ön'. However, if using 'te' then you'd need the 'vagy' as 2nd person singular; if 'ön' then you would not need 'van' because this is not used in the 3rd person singular for saying what someone is.
118
Ampus_Questor: If you have a familymember who you are visiting and he is a policeman and you say to him: I don't have to know that, because 'I am a tourist (here), but you are a policeman!' That is not far fetched.
Not really because you are saying, in effect, 'I am this instead you are that', which doesn't make too much sense. I think of 'pedig' as being on the other hand', or, better still, 'on the other foot': the Latin for foot is pes, pedis, and you can see the fortuitous (fortunately coincidental) resemblance of 'pedis' to 'pedig'. Hope that helps.
It gave me this: "Én turista vagyok, és ön meg rendőr."
What are és and meg doing there together? don't they mean the same thing?
Any fluent Hungarian speakers here able to confirm that this sentence is correct?
EDIT:
Why is "Én turista vagyok, te pedig rendőr" incorrect?
Duo showed me "Én turista vagyok, ön meg egy rendőr." as the correct answer, but there is no "egy" in front of "turista", why is there in front of "rendőr"?
And is "pedig" wrong here? what's the difference between this sentence, and the previous lessons where "pedig" was taught?
EDIT 2
I wrote "Én vagyok egy turista, te pedig egy rendőr"
Duo coughed back at me: "Én egy turista vagyok, te pedig egy rendőr"
I thought the Hungarian language had a free word order, unlike English?
930
The answer for 'Edit': "Én turista vagyok, te pedig rendőr " is correct, but 'Én turista vagyok, te pedig rendőr vagy' is more correct. The 'egy' in front of 'rendőr' is not necessary (but possible). The 'pedig' is good here.
For Edit 2: If you translated this sentence from Hungarian into English, I would write: it is Hunglish. :)
491
I agree totally. At my age, it is not easy to see the difference sometimes, and I don't want to be holding up a magnifying glass every time I look at the computer screen.
1962
There are many questions, could a native speaker please answer? I also used te instead of on (sorry no dots) and don't understand why not. Es (no accent sorry) is used and acceptable in other similar sentences that list two things and not meg. The sentence makes little sense at the best of times, I cannot see in what circumstance one might need to say the above.
inconsistent use of focus makes it sound meh. You should keep the structure when contrasting. Also, "te vagy egy rendőr" sounds quite meh on it's own, you are introducing a brand new policeman and you already imply someone mentionable is that policeman. It sounds around as off as "I want to say something about a policeman... he is you actually."
491
Sorry to be thick here, but what is "meh" in your answer above ? I do not understand this expression.
930
lazp! Or "Én turista vagyok, te pedig rendőr vagy", or "Én vagyok egy turista és te vagy egy rendőr". The second sentence is conceivable in the role assignment. But the best: Turista vagyok, te pedig rendőr vagy. OR Turista vagyok, ön (or 'maga') pedig rendőr.
I wish DuoLingo would explain when the copula and indefinite article can and can't be omitted! "László turista" seems to be accepted, but "Én turista" isn't.
https://www.duolingo.com/skill/hu/Basic-1/tips-and-notes it seems to explain.
This is not Russian but still not terribly complex. "van" and "vannak" is omitted in copula sentences and nothing else.
Well, rather wrong.
So, still the basic rules of emphasis. Whatever you put in front of the verb, becomes the crucial new piece of new information that you could use for 1. contrasting 2. answering a wh-question. "Who is a tourist" can't even show how odd your sentence would sound. "It's me who is a tourist and not someone else is that (still unknown) tourist".
Or my former effort. "Wanna hear something about a tourist? He is me actually. Noone else but exactly me..." as opposed to "Wanna hear something about me? I'm a tourist actually. Not a journalist, not a judge..." I suppose you would go for the second.
It seems to me all accepted translations that allow "egy" before tourist, allow "egy" before policeman too. Reminder just in case - the solution that shows up in the forum (and also during the exercises if you typed something else) is only an advised, (supposedly) pedagogically useful solution out of many. Of course there are several good solutions, if something is accepted, that's for a reason. So-called "best translations" are still worth a check usually but please don't think they are superior or they invalidate other solutions some way.
42 comments and is it any wonder! Turista vagyok, és rendőr vagy. I realize it's using familiar language but we aren't told that the police officer isn't familiar to us. Maybe they are and maybe they aren't but to say it's wrong, i.e, unequivocally wrong, is also wrong. This police officer could be the tourist's new boyfriend or whatever. So please, don't say something's wrong unless it absolutely and definitely is unless it's a format that the computer has to learn. I don't think for a moment that this was the case here.
That wasn't the issue. "Turista vagyok, és rendőr vagy." sounds just bad enough, not because of formality but because of omitting the basis of the contrast. Without "Én ..., te ...", it sounds like two completely unrelated statements that happen to be true at once. The natural thing to do would be to list a couple of people (like "I" and "you") here and say who does what. In that case, you don't want to omit the pronouns.
And please, next time, think twice before getting into rants. Both the contributors and the learners can make mistakes, it's not a crime against anyone whatsoever.
My issue was purely about the use of formal language and I defer to your superior knowledge of Hungarian. In the case of the police officer and the tourist, formal language was compulsory, in the case of the lawyer, the person who didn't know that they were a lawyer could use informal language. The inconsistency is plain enough although I agree that there's no crime committed here and that much is obvious. Indeed, I have said many times that I think Duolingo is wonderful for teaching in the way that it does. If I seem somewhat discomfited on occasion please put it down to the fact that I experience what I call faltól falig magyar on a regular basis and anyone who isn't a native speaker will have a great deal of sympathy with its effect upon my demeanour from time to time.
Formal language isn't within the main scopes of Duolingo - a lot of courses don't even include it early on and this is de facto true for this course, too. There was no formal introduction to formal speech.
On Duolingo, it's hard to provide context. Without context, there is no reason to say a certain formality level were compulsory for a sentence. As long as your solution is accepted, I don't think you have much reason to complain.
Also, please consider the fact Duolingo isn't really a cultural guide. Just like it is no tourist guide either. The goal is to learn words, grammar and some phrases but it's no guide regarding how to behave in a real life situation. That's something one can learn much more effectively.
In my case, as an absolute beginner to Hungarian, I think it would be helpful if Duo would put (fam.) and (form.) both when introducing new phrases or asking for translation. When trying to learn word order, meaning, accents and spelling - it is more difficult to catch the "implied." Simply a suggestion as I am learning a lot, but often get the answer wrong due to nuances like this.