"A busz nem ott van, hanem itt."

Translation: The bus is not there, but here.

[Arcaeca]

Wasn't part of the point of this lesson to teach us that "nem van" becomes "nincs"? So why isn't it "A busz nincs ott"?

[jsiehler]

It isn't the verb which is being negated (we aren't declaring the nonexistence of a bus), it's the location. The bus exists; where? not there, but here.

[Arcaeca]

Riiiight. I forgot that placement of "nem" matters. Okay, that makes sense.

[jsiehler]

Hungarian syntax is a lot like Perl syntax. There's more than one way to do it, but most of the ways you try to do it at first won't work.

[Arcaeca]

I wouldn't know; I've mostly done Python, Lua for mods, and a half-hearted attempt at Java. (I gave up because it's so strongly typed) Perl just looks like obfuscated anything and everything to me. And, I think most of the ways you try to do anything won't work at first in every language, not just Perl. ;)

[BarbaraTaylor2]

What about the earlier sentence "Nem, a radio nincs itt.; Are we talking about the nonexistence of the radio, or just the nonexistence of the radio here. This makes my head spin.

[Panchete1]

Yes, what about that sentence? It might be "Nem, a rádió nem itt van"? What would be the difference?

[Shamarth]

"A rádió nincs itt." -- I look at this place and see that the radio isn't here -> "rádió" is negated. ("the nonexistence of the radio here")

"A rádió nem itt van." -- This is not the place where the radio is -> "itt" is negated.

[ion1122]

Barbara, remember that 'nem' can mean 'no' as well as 'not'. In your sentence, it means 'no' and stands alone, so to speak -- it is not negating anything in the clause that follows.