"Szép városokat akarok látni."
Translation:I want to see pretty towns.
12 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
I translated this as "I want to see pretty cities" and was marked wrong because it should have been "beautiful cities." I thought that szép could mean either one. Is it unusual for someone to say that a city is "pretty?"
Just "pretty city" sounds funny to me. And unusual. "This city is pretty" sounds more normal.
If one is correct, so is the other. But I guess "beautiful city" is more usual in English.
Oh, it is correct, no question about it. It just sounds funny to me. And I have never heard anyone say it until now.
I also translated it as pretty cities. In English we might be more likely to say beautiful city but it wouldn't seem unusual to hear pretty city.
I went with "pretty" too, despite its awkwardness--it's just faster to type!!!
I went with "nice" (even shorter to type :-p), which is accepted for "szép" in other sentences, and got the dreaded red X...
Why is "I want to see beautiful towns." wrong? And how do I distinct "city" and "town"?
1946
Is there another word to differentiate between a town and a city? Usually the difference is based on size, eg status, population and facilities. Village for instance has its word, falu, so what is a town?
This is a very culture-dependent topic that even changes with time. I had to look up what the difference between a town and a city is even supposed to be. If a settlement with 100k people is a "small-city" then we quickly end up with the conclusion that Hungary hardly has any cities apart from Budapest as there are like 5 other places with 100k+ population - so this kind of differentiation feels useless. It's all just "város". Officially, many 1-2k places are "város"es, although that's a bit ridiculous in my opinion. But I feel it would be the same kind of ridiculous to call Pécs or Székesfehérvár a "kisváros", which I think is the closest to an equivalent of "town". A place I would call a "kisváros" has like 20k-60k population, preferably some basic hospital, a hypermarket but probably no university.
- 1946
Thank you for your perspective, MrtonPolgr. I suspect the definition of cities and towns varies from country to country, and from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. However, it seems population size and facilities are the key elements that differentiate one from the other.