"Are you French or Spanish?"
Translation:Te francia vagy, vagy spanyol?
17 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
Why can't you translate this as a plural form of you? Like you are asking a group of people if they are French or Spanish? Ti franciák vagytok vagy spanyolok? I think that is a valid translation as well, but it did not accept it. Anyone knows why?
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It's a good translation, probably just not in the database yet. Feel free to report it. :)
If an American is an "amerikai", which is just short for American person, shouldn't this be "vagy franciai vagy spanyoli"?
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Francia and spanyol are already adjectives (which can be used as nouns as well), but amerika isn't. Amerika is the name of the continent (or the country), so you'll have to make it into an adjective first with the -i suffix to use it like that.
The name of the countries of France and Spain are Fraciaország and Spanyolország, respectively, with ország meaning 'country'.
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It's true that "francia" is the odd-one-out by being an adjective. Normally, for country names that end with '-ia' in Hungarian, the adjective has been formed by removing '-ia:' Anglia-angol, Hollandia-holland, Dánia-dán... as well as for most of Hungary's neighboring nations. Regarding the shift of "francia" from noun to adjective, it may have something to do with the fact that "Mi a franc?" means "What the heck?"
At one point is history, mentioning the French put Hungarians in a really bad mood.
That meaning of "franc" is derived from the old name of syphilis ("franc nyavalya" ie "French disease") if I'm not mistaken. It's not impossible that lead to the word "franc" losing its non-derogatory adjectival meaning.
Oh by the way, there is another interesting one - Japán the country and japán the nationality. Not Japánia, neither japáni or something like that.
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Parsa, you'll also get a proper load of estadounidense, México and chino somewhere. In total it's just some ten country names that you learn here.
Granted I made an error in word order, still your database ought to include a correct answer using the formal polite Ön.
I wrote: Ön francia vagy spanyol van? It was marked wrong and the correct response was with Te vagy... What was the mistake in my sentence?
The mistake is "van". Drop the van. It is simply Ön francia vagy spanyol?
Because even though ön is the formal you, it grammatically works like third person singular.
long post here: https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/16545319