14 Comments
Would "the secretary is calling" also be appropriate? Or is there another word for that?
Well, there are some contexts where it is appropriate to translate to call as telefonál. For example: "Peti called; he can't come with us tonight." = "Peti telefonált (or hívott), nem tud eljönni velünk ma este."
But if you call somebody, "telefonál" doesn't work. "I'll call you tomorrow." = "Holnap felhívlak."
And you can't use hív when you want to express that the subject is talking on the phone. In a sentence like the one above, telefonál will be understood as "talking on the phone", while hív will mean "being in the process of calling someone".
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I reported my suggestion that they then accepted: "The secretary telephones." I'm glad, for that is very common English.
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Today I also noticed a curious approach in this Hungarian course: The suggestions include no offer to see the verbs conjugated. I wonder if that is because Hungarian conjugation is rather challenging. Or maybe it is because this course is just in beta.
I believe the automatic conjugation is only present for a handful of courses (German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese or so) that were developed first -- all the dozens of languages that came later use a different technological basis and are missing some things that this first group has.
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Very helpful--thank you! And I just now checked the Hungarian word list (which one has to get to sneakily, anyway), and none of the verbs there that I checked are conjugated as they are in Italian and French.
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I believe "telefonál" is the third-person form of the verb "to telephone" or "to speak on the telephone"--or even, probably, "To make a telephone call"--or, I would agree with you, "to call on the telephone." I hope that might help!
thank you for help - if I am right, they do not say telephone but only phone in English - but in the spoken language I can hear people say "I was phonecalling the whole day ..."
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Actually, here in the U.S., you are right, we do mostly say "phoning" as a verb. But we also use "telephoning" and--you are right about this too--even "phonecalling." I hear all three, though mostly the first. I find Duolingo teaches not only the language I am learning but also the English I already know, especially through these nice comment conversations. You're very welcome!
