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- "A szakácsok nem olaszok, han…
"A szakácsok nem olaszok, hanem spanyolok."
Translation:The cooks are not Italian, but Spanish.
18 Comments
Please use the "Report a Problem / My translation should be accepted" function.
Posting about these "xyz is not accepted" in the sentence discussions serves little useful purpose; it just clutters them up.
It is just my opinion, not trying to offend, but I think the "Please report it" comments are causing much more clutter. Some courses are full of them. I only hope it will not be the case here in this course. They don't offer any useful knowledge about the language. It is purely a technical thing, it has no place in the discussions. Maybe the Duolingo interface needs updating so it is much more obvious that such a reporting option exists. (I will report it.)
On the other hand, discussing what's accepted and what is not is highly informational and provides a great learning opportunity that would just pass us by otherwise. This is an excellent way of learning about all the accepted, and not accepted, translations of a sentence. Talk about learning from our mistakes, and from the mistakes of others, including errors in the system.
Speaking of "Italians". So, in that case, the full sentence could be something like this: "The cooks are not Italians but Spaniards". Meaning "Italian people" and "Spanish people". Compare it with "The cooks are not Italian but Spanish". Using nouns vs adjectives. The Hungarian translation is the same. So, both versions should be accepted.
You can't really conjugate an adjective in English. "Italians" is like "Spaniards". It means "Italian people". Right? Hungarian, however, regularly puts adjectives in the plural and uses the same word to describe a member of a nation and the nationality/origin of a person or a thing. The same word can function as a noun and as an adjective. (I am sure there are exceptions).
Spanish - spanyol
Spaniard - spanyol
These cars are Spanish - Ezek az autók spanyolok
These people are Spaniards - Ezek az emberek spanyolok
These people are Spanish - Ezek az emberek spanyolok
These are Spanish people - Ezek spanyol emberek
Adjectives in general can be used in the role of a noun in Hungarian. They can be conjugated just like a noun. They will stand alone, without a noun, with an implied "one", or "ones", for English speakers.
I want the red one - A pirosat akarom
I do not like the long ones - Nem szeretem a hosszúakat
Let's go with the Spanish one - Menjünk a spanyollal
Let's talk about the easy one - Beszéljünk a könnyűről
Bring the salty ones - Hozd a sósakat
etc.
Reading about what is accepted and what is not is useful learning material if sentences are legitimately accepted and rejected.
If they are temporarily rejected because a translation has not been added yet, then the information that "xyz is rejected" becomes obsolete as soon as the translation does get added.
Also, surprisingly many people do not seem to know about the reporting feature or when and why it should be used. You are right that it would be a lot better if this were made clearer.
A question such as "Why is 'abc' not accepted? Is it not correct?" is good for learning; a native speaker can answer, "No, 'abc' is also correct".
So, it is only about the wording? :) "Why is xyz rejected?" would be OK to ask?:)
OK, so, here is what I learn from such a comment. First of all, I note that somebody made up such a sentence and probably thought it good. That is already very exciting because most of the time people think according to the logic of their own mother tongue. So it tells me a lot about the logic of that language. Talk about typical mistakes that members of certain nations make when talking, for example, in English. Some do not use articles, others end questions with ",no?", etc., etc. I know I am weird but it is really exciting to me. And looking into various courses here that teach English, you can really see these differences. Fascinating indeed.
And it also teaches me a lot about my own mother tongue, about the logic behind my own language, which I may have just taken for granted up till now.
On top of that, what if the sentence is absolutely wrong? Well, there will be enough people to point it out. An excellent learning opportunity. I won't even elaborate on why.
And if the sentence happens to be correct? Well, again, more than enough people will point it out. And I will learn that for some reason the makers of the course did not think of this sentence. Why is that? Probably because that's not the most common option. Or they just missed it. Whatever. But I will have learned an alternative translation, which I may not have been given the opportunity to do, had it been only reported and not commented here. Even if it gets accepted later, it is still very, very relevant and useful to me.
And I can learn that sentence and analyze it, study it, and maybe next time I will try it myself. And if it is still not accepted, I will report it, too.
Unfortunately, a big teaching opportunity is easily being missed here. If you do not make mistakes, you may hardly learn any alternatives. Only the very few that are shown sometimes. It would be really nice to see all the accepted variations. And all the ones that people tried and were not accepted. We can learn from all.
I could go on...
The one thing I only need to see once is "Report it". :) I did write a feedback about possibly making that option more obvious. Here's hoping somebody listens...
I think I see where you're coming from.
Though it makes a difference -- at least to me -- in how those "learning opportunities" are worded: "You can also say this as 'abc', which isn't accepted yet. (I've reported it.)" sounds less grating to me then "Stupid maintainers, why are you restricting us to your approved vocabulary? 'abc' is perfectly fine! Add it immediately!"
Or even "Please add 'abc'." -- the wording implies that posting about that alternative in the sentence discussion will do much, which I'm not sure is true on this course.
Yes, style does matter. No argument there. :)
But my bottom line is, this is a systemic problem, we could use a better solution.
A better solution would be nice, yes :)
Until then? Suffer in silence? :)
OK, I think we need to get a room. The Italian cooks got bored with us and left. :)
Think outside the box. Use your reporting power to change the system. This is just a program. It can always be improved. Good luck to all sufferers.
Okay, so at the end of the day, half of the comments are about the "report" issue - thank you guys, now THIS is useless. :D
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No - that is a different word in Hungarian - and quite different in English. A chef is much more than a cook. Completely differnt pay scale :-)
What is the etymology behind the Hungarian word for Italy/Italian etc? :-)
Wiktionary says ( https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/olasz ) that it's a borrowing from a Slavic word similar to the Serbo-Croatian "Vlah, plural Vlasi" which means/meant something like "Vlach; Romanian; Italian; Latin" depending on the region and period.
This sounds a little misleading. I'd say "Itália" is the territory (the Italian peninsula basically) that mostly appears in historical context yes, and "Olaszország" is a country.
