"These are not shoes, but boots."
Translation:Ez nem cipő, hanem bakancs.
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When you are llooking for your "cipő" in Hungarian, you are actually looking for the pair. In English, looking for a "shoe" means you're looking for a single shoe, not a pair. So translating the plural shoes to singular cipő is ok.
If I remember correctly, to say that I am looking for one shoe, I would say fél cipő, right?
I'm not exactly sure as I can't find any source for this :D But "félcipő" written together is a type of shoe and yes I think I would say "fél cipő" written separately when looking for one half of a pair of shoes.
This is slightly ambiguous, but in Hungarian "cipő" stands for a pair of shoes most of the time, while in English the shoes as plural usually just stand for a pair of shoes . Eg. I'm looking for my shoes (to wear right now), would be translated to "Keresem a cipőmet"). See plural vs singular in the English and Hungarian. Also, the plural of bakancs would be bakancsok.
So we still use "Ez" and not "Ezek" even though we know it's a pair of shoes?
Hungarians think of a "pair of boots" as a single entity. Same with shoes. You don't normally wear one shoe, you wear both of them, so to us "cipő" and "csizma" in the singular always refers to a pair. If we want to refer to just a single shoe, i.e. one element of a pair, we would say "fél pár cipő", fél pár means half pair. So yes, "ez" instead "ezek". Actually, same with gloves, "kesztyű" means a pair of gloves. Plurals will usually refer to many pairs, although you can always say use "pár" (== pair) to clarify, e.g. "két pár kesztyűt szeretnénk venni" = I want to buy two pairs of gloves.
In a shoe shop, in front of a shelf that contains only boots: „I am looking for shoes. These are not shoes, but boots!“. Is the correct Hungarian translation in this case plural or singular?