"The composer is a tall English man."
Translation:A zeneszerző egy magas angol férfi.
15 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
Is the indefinite article "egy" required here? (It certainly clarifies in writing.)
Without egy it doesn't feel incorrect to me, but a bit less natural. I think it's better if it's there.
In a word, yes. It can be omitted directly before a noun, especially an occupation, but not if the noun is qualified by an adjective.
I don't think you could take "not if the noun is qualified by an adjective" as a rule. "A bátyám híres videós" sounds pretty legit to me.
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The "egy" is still being insisted upon here. Elsewhere, MrtonPolgr, you suggested that the "egy" would be omitted if the noun in question was not going to be referred to later in the conversation. Here, it is likely that we might speak more about the composer, but unlikely to refer again to the tall English man, explicitly. Here, too, "a tall English man" is used to describe the composer and is not introduced into the conversation as an independent noun. Unless we pay some credence to the suggestion that the presence of adjectives ("tall English") creates a need for an "egy", then I don't know what else we have to go by other than what feels right to a native Hungarian, which isn't much help to most of us here.
Look, I probably wasn't a contributor when I last saw this sentence and it won't magically change unless the handful of people maintaining the course does something about it. I added it now.
For the "feels right" part: there are parts of the language (I think it stands for all languages) where different people would tell different things about the same sentence because there are no universal rules. Neither explicit/apparent, nor implicit/obscure. Each person would have a somewhat similar scale but you wouldn't necessarily get a solid consistent picture from them. Sometimes it's better not to force someone say a "rule" because that "rule" is likely to be too personal, rather just ask multiple people what they would say and decide for yourself. :)
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Thanks. I just got the notification that "A zeneszerző magas angol férfi." is accepted.
Is "férfi" strictly needed here? I believe in the past adjectives like "fiatal" and "piros" have been used as nouns; does that work with "angol" too?
Yes, angol could be used as a noun here. (But of course the English sentence would be "The composer is a tall Englishman" in that case.)
You are right, as angol doesn't indicate the gender. I wanted to emphasise that in the alternative sentence it's a noun and not an adjective, but on second thought, it's not necessary for the translation to be equivalent in that sense.
There is no verb in this sentence. It's just understood without any. If there was, it would be the last word here (So, in the past, it would be "A zeneszerző egy magas angol férfi volt.") How do we know? Mostly by information structure - the definite noun fits well as the topic of the sentence that we add a comment to. Also, the indefinite phrase of "egy magas angol férfi" wouldn't really fit as an obvious detail so it has a good reason to be the focus - which the verb would follow. :)
