- Forum >
- Topic: Hungarian >
- "Befutok a kertbe és beugrom …
"Befutok a kertbe és beugrom a vízbe."
Translation:I run into the garden and jump into the water.
18 Comments
457
Thank you. There used to be some explanation before hungarian moved to the app. It is a very complex language and needs explanation. Thanks again to people who help other students.
It was possibly a mistake opening Hungarian to the app, because the "tips and notes" for individual skills are not shown to app users -- making them miss out on important explanations and causing them to ask questions that have been answered already in the introductions to the skills.
Then rather than being collected in one place, those questions get answered in lots of little split-up sentence discussions, possibly differently in each place, depending on where the poor app user initially asked them.
And I'm sure that 99.8% of app users don't even know of the existence of the tips and notes - the others can at least open the skill in their mobile browser to rread the T+N before doing the skill in the app.
892
The verbal prefix is not necessary, but serves two roles.
- It moves the focus to the verb itself, putting emphasis on the action.
- It gives the verb a perfective aspect. We will actually end up in the garden. We're not only on our way.
But any of
- befutok a kertbe
- a kertbe futok
- a kertbe futok be
are okay and sound good.
These are called prefixes. They slightly change the meaning of the verb. Often they also make them perfective. There are so many prefixes with so many possible meanings, that I won't even try listing them all.
Be- and ki- belong to the more straightforward ones (usually). They literally mean in and out, respectively. Befut -- to run into; beugrik -- to jump into; kifut -- to run out of; kiugrik -- to jump out of
I put "I run into the garden and jump in the water." In English there is no distinction between jumping IN something like a lake or a pond and jumping INTO it. It is far more common to say "jump in" than "jump into". I'm going to go jump in the lake. I jumped in the pool earlier and now I'm all wet. If you said "into" people would think you were being overly specific, because obviously if you jump in the water you jump into it as well.
892
Smoog, I'd use "into" in each of those examples. "Jumping in the water" sounds to me like I'm in the water while jumping. It's like the difference between "jumping on the bed" and "jumping onto the bed".
Apologies if this is very long, but I'm worried that what e're learning here, while technically correct, is not very close to how people actually speak (I am assuming Duo will help me learn to READ Hungarian but not actually speak it well at all). In the above example I am running into the garden (into being the word we would use in English) and jumping into the water, but contextually it is fairly obvious that I am entering the garden and then have to get in the water, and I am doing so by jumping. Into is implied and unnecessary, and if someone said "I am going to go jump in the pool" I would take that to mean they are going to enter the pool by jumping, not that they are going to crawl into the pool and then begin to jump. Again, contextually, if someone were already in the water and said "I am going to jump in the water" I would obviously take that to mean they were planning to do just that. Even in your examples context dictates the information. If you just said "I am jumping on the bed" I would picture you already on it and having fun, but if you said "I am going to run into the room and jump on the bed" I would take it to mean that you were going to jump ONTO the bed after running into the room, as part of a continuous action, which is what this sentence reads like to me. Why would you RUN into the garden just to stop, slowly enter the water, and then begin jumping?
892
Smoog, if you want to learn more natural Hungarian, I recommend reading the comments. The sentences that are used in this course can become pretty awkward.
I wasn't going to argue with you about whether "in" or "into" is better here. I just wanted to add that I'd (pretty much) never use "in" in this situation. It might just be my dialect (mostly southwest UK), but your sentence, without further context, makes me imagine a child hopping around in a shallow pond. I can agree with "I'm going to go jump in the pool" since that sounds much more like an action.
For the last example, "I am going to run into the room and jump on the bed", I don't think they'd be done after just the jump onto the bed either. It sounds like they'll keep jumping.
If you think your sentence is natural, and it's not accepted, you're free to report it. I think there shouldn't be much of an issue with misinterpreting it. I'm just not familiar with that grammar.