18 Comments
Ok I haven't been brave enough to confront this one because it exposes my weaknesses in my native language... but is it "What kind of athletes" or "What kinds of athletes"? Initially I thought there was no difference but reading the sentences again, my feeling is that in English "What kinds" of athletes, is asking, "tell me the different categories of athletes you know", whereas "What kind" is asking, "What are the qualities of the athletes you know i.e. are they good, bad, resilient, lazy etc"? I know "Milyen" is often asking "what is something like i..e what attributes does it have" but does it also mean "what different sub-categories exist" e..g if I were asked, "Milyen virágokat szeretsz?" could I answer "Pirosokat és fehéreket" i.e. I like red one and white ones, or "Százszorszépeket, tulipánokat és ibolyákot" i.e. Daisies, tulips and violets? Apologies if I badly pluralised the nouns here!
"Milyen" can be used for both. If somebody was asked "Milyen kutyát szeretnél?", they could answer it both with "egy nagyot, ami barátságos, és nem ugat sokat" (a big one that is friendly and doesn't bark a lot) or with "egy border collie-t vagy egy vizslát" (a border collie or a vizsla). Your example with the flowers is good as well, both answers would be relevant. And there were only two mistakes: "pirosakat" and "ibolyákat".
Thanks so much! In that case I will now report instances where "Kinds of" and "kind of" are not accepted by Duo.
I have a real problem with this course. As a beginner, I am here to learn the basic grammar and vocabulary to be able to communicate in Hungarian. I am not here to perform stylistic analysis, or to try and figure out what the person who wrote the sentence really meant. There are so many examples of ambiguous sentences that I have stopped reporting them. I do not have this problem with other languages that I am learning here.
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A fair point and Hungarian can be quite a picky language that's true, but this particular DUO course is still in 'Beta mode', i.e. many of the kinks have not yet been ironed out. The only way for the team to sort these kinks out is for people on the course to report these problems. The other languages that you are learning are maybe in 'Stable mode'
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One problem is the grammar is quite different from most other European languages that you have to get into the nitty gritty to get beyond the simplest sentences (simple noun subject one verb and a simple noun object) - and even then there is teh word order to consider!
In other exercises we saw a plural version if milyen. Why doesn't apply here? Why not "milyeneket ... "?
Because it's right before a noun, modifying the noun. Milyen sportolókat is one noun phrase, the object of ismersz.
Adjectives before nouns don't take plural or case suffixes.
With this in mind, how would you translate "what kind_ of atheleS ?" (i.e. multiple athletes of one single kind)
Definitely. :) If you see this missing translation in other similar sentences, you can report them as well.
I wanted to ask the same - if 'What athletes do you know' is correct, why not 'which athletes'?
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Hogy vannak a sportolók, amelyeket ismersz?
Translates almost word-for-word. You really need the "that" in the Hungarian sentence.
Edit: Ah, I guess you wanted something with the "How/what like" construction that is expressed with milyen, right? That would be
Milyenek a sportolók, amelyeket ismersz?
- milyen sportoló - what kind of athlete; milyen works as an adjective/interrogative here
- Milyen a sportoló? - What is the athlete like?; This is a complete sentence, where milyen works as the subject, an independent entity.
