"The railway stations are where the hotels are."
Translation:A pályaudvarok ott vannak, ahol a szállodák.
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I've seen this construction a few times, with the "ott" that disappears from the English translation, and I still don't understand how it works. Can I translate the Hungarian as "the railway stations are there, where the hotels are"? There's no problem with this as an English sentence.
Conversely, how would i translate my English sentence into Hungarian? It does have a different flavour to duo's sentence; theirs is a general statement that wherever the hotels are, the stations are there too, whereas mine specifies that I know the location and I'm pointing it out. But it seems I can't do that in Hungarian as "ott" is already in the sentence that apparently DOESN'T indicate the "there"...
Am I over thinking this? :-)
Your English sentence has two interpretations.
The one I had at first means pretty much exactly the same as Duo's.
But from your description I think you mean what I would punctuate as "The railway stations are there -- where the hotels are."
That is, "where the hotels are" could be a restrictive relative clause that identifies the "there" (my interpretation) or a non-restrictive relative clause which merely provides additional information but plays no part in identifying "there" (what I understand to be your interpretation).
I wonder whether Hungarian can make a distinction.
German, for example, also doesn't make a distinction between "The students who are smart will succeed" (restrictive) and "The students, who are smart, will succeed" (non-restrictive), always requiring the commas.
Wouldn't Hungarian make a distinction between A diákok, akik okosak, sikeresek lesznek (non-restrictive, just additional information) and Azok a diákok, akik okosak, sikeresek lesznek (restrictive, identifying which students you mean)?
Because Duo always uses azok a ..., akik/amelyek ... for its (restrictive) relative sentences.
Is that merely common but not really necessary?
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I take it that the "ott" needs to come before the verb? What is the word order rule here?