"Three teachers are walking next to those students."
Translation:Azok mellett a diákok mellett három tanár sétál.
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I made the teachers plural ... "Azok mellett a diákok mellett három tanárok sétálnak." ... This was not accepted. Is it an acceptable translation, or is the singular version the only correct version? If so, anyone care to try explaining why the plural is incorrect here? thx.
It is not correct, because you can't use plural after a number. The number already shows that there are more than one things.
You can read my comment here: https://www.duolingo.com/comment/16693373
What exactly do you mean? Can you give an example?
The verb must agree with the subject:
a tanárok sétálnak (both in plural) = the teachers are walking
három tanár sétál (both in singular) = three teachers are walking
Your two examples just satisfied my question.
What I meant was, if you have the sentence "three teachers are walking", since teachers is written as "teacher", my question was if the verb would be in singular or plural form.
Thank you.
Soemtimes I see that there is an "a" before the preposition like "a mellett" vs. "között" why is this?
It's a form of the word az meaning "that".
Just like the definite article has the forms a or az depending on whether the next word starts with a vowel (a fa, az alma), so do the words az and ez meaning "that" and "this" when they are followed by a postposition.
And they are followed by a postposition or a case ending if the noun they are modifying is:
- a fa "the tree"
- az a fa "that tree"
- a fa előtt "in front of the tree"
- az előtt a fa előtt "in front of that tree"
- a fa mögött "behind the tree"
- a mögött a fa mögött "behind that tree"
- a fanál "by the tree"
- annál a fanál "by that tree"
But azok and ezek do not lose their final sounds so you would have azok előtt a fák elött, azok mögött a fák mögött, azoknál a fáknál "in front of/behind/by those trees".