"A car drives up to the gate, and I walk up to the car."
Translation:Egy autó áll a kapuhoz, én pedig az autóhoz állok.
41 Comments
Állok means I stand. Or at least so I thought. With -hoz I would understand it like "position myself to the". So where is the walking?
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The walking happens while you're getting over to the car to stand next to it. You can also hop or swim or fly if you're a kindergarten teacher, but those are rather uncommon.
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"Egy autó áll a kapuhoz, és én meg az autóhoz állok." was marked as a correct answer at a multiple choice question.
Either "és" or "meg", but not both, that's what I think.
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Might have slipped in there; there's also a variant with "és én pedig" in the database.
But I don't think it's wrong-wrong to use both words, merely a bad style.
Just consider the subject. Could you describe it in its natural position as standing? Could a tree be standing? A building? A car? How about a road? Or a cloud?
That's one thing to consider.
And the other one is the movement that can be implied. Since we have the specific preverb "oda" that clearly indicates a targeted movement, you can use all kinds of even stationary verbs with it and they suddenly come alive. They move! "Oda"+"áll" becomes an action, a movement that culminates in the subject standing at the target location. You can't do this with "van". At least not in this sense. Don't even get me started on "oda"+"van". That is a new can of worms. :)
I didn't try to use van (I tried felvezet, if I remember correctly, since literal translation seems to be a thing in this course), I'm just saying that for all the fuss people make about how hard it is to figure out when to use it, I find it's still not as hard as áll.
áll is the Hungarian "get"
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Yes indeed, RyagonIV, the Hungarian kindergarten teachers seem to have a magic broom. :))
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Can it also be translated with: Egy auto vezet a kapuhoz és én sétálok az autóhoz. ? I can hardly understand the situation of the english sentence. Why is the car two times needed in the sentence?
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This is probably the hardest to translate sentence in the entire course. :´)
I think your translation would work, too, if you start from the English sentence. Maybe the actual German translation of the Hungarian sentence would help you a bit more: "Ein Auto stellt sich an das Tor, ich stelle mich jedoch zum Auto." As we've said already numerous times, English doesn't like using verbs of immobility (like "stand") together with directional adverbs, so we have to work around somehow.
The double mentioning of the car is because in the first clause it's the subject, doing the moving, and in the second clause it's the object, the target of my moving. You could also just say "and I walk up to it" / "ich stelle mich jedoch zu ihm" / "én pedig hozzá állok" (but the personal forms of the suffixes haven't been introduced yet in this lesson).
RyagonIV, you are doing a great job here!
Two notes.
I am not sure if a car can "drive" in English (can it?), but it definitely can NOT "vezet" in Hungarian. "Vezet" is something the driver does, not the car. Even with self-driving cars, the verb "vezet" is not really used like this, to indicate the movement of a car. I would simply use "(oda)megy", "(oda)áll", etc.
"Én pedig hozzá állok" does not sound right. I recommend "én pedig odaállok hozzá". Sounds much more perfect-ive. :)
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Whenever I'm going to refresh this course, my English is getting mushed down somewhat. :´)
Cars probably don't drive in English. It's called "cargo", after all, not "cardrive". Though there are more "drive-throughs" than "go-throughs". In any case, cars can definitely drive ("fahren") in German, so that's why I may be a bit off there. Vezet is best to keep in mind as "to lead". So if you make the car lead the driver, that's your problem. :)
Thank you for your notes once again.
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Thank you :-) Could it also work with two cars? That was my first impression. z.B. Ein Auto hält vor dem Tor, während ich zum Auto gehe. But then I saw many possibilities and got confused.
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It could, but you'd more likely express that differently, like you already did with "während". :D
- A(nother) car drives up to the gate as I go to the car.
- A car drives up to the gate and I walk up to my car.
- A car drives up to the gate and I walk up to another car.
Something that makes it more clear that those are different cars.
The translation must be wrong - "Egy autó ÁLL" cannot be translated "a car DRIVES"
So far, "áll" was always translated as "stands"... something that does not imply the motion. I do not understand why did they translate "A car drives" - "Egy autó áll" and "Az autóhoz állok" - "I walk up to the car". If it is not a mistake, I've learned something new :)
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But here it does imply a motion, that's the point with the sentence. :)
The use of the moving suffixes -hoz indicates that the car (and the person) is moving to a destination, and then coming to a halt there, at the gate (or at the car, respectively), ending up standing there.
Admittedly, this concept is very hard to translate into English since English really doesn't like verbs of no motion (to stand, sit, lie, etc.) in combination with indicators of movement (to, from, into, onto, etc.). But in Hungarian you can simply combine these. There are a lot of English translations that should be accepted here and most are going to sound pretty awkward.
English is a tough language to work with. :´)
My personal favourite is probably "A car pulls up to the gate, and I go to stand by the car", for good measure.
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What about them? "I lie down by the house" and "I sit down by the building". With "lie" and "sit", the translations are a bit easier than with "stand", since you can't just "stand down by" something.
But it can get funny with something like "Ülj fel az asztalra" - "Sit down/up(?) on the table." You have to get yourself seated, but on an elevated level, how do you express it? :´)
(By the way, fekszem would be the more proper conjugation in your sentence.)
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It could work, maybe. Jár has a meaning of regular or ongoing movement, though. Like a car is regularly visiting that gate. It doesn't really give that parking meaning of the original sentence.
With all that being true, it is interesting that some people use "jár" in a one-time sense. I don't know, maybe professional bus drivers use it (or used to use it) the most. They would say something like "bejárok a garázsba", meaning moving the vehicle into the garage to park.
Hmmm, it looks like this meaning could be a regional thing.
https://wikiszotar.hu/ertelmezo-szotar/Bej%C3%A1r
It is meaning #6
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Huh, interesting. It doesn't sound too far off, though. Driving a car into a garage is something you do rather frequently, so I can see that being used.
Yes, but the point is, it is not used in the frequent sense in this case. You could say something like:
"A vonat bejár az állomásra és az utasok felszálnak" - The train pulls into the station and the passengers board.
It may look silly to you but it is perfect Hungarian.
Again, this exercise was originally a Hungarian-to-English translation and, for lack of a better solution, they translated "a kapuhoz áll" as "drives up to the gate".
I am not sure. "Drive up", or "pull up to the gate" come to mind. The point is, the vehicle moves to a place and is stopped/parked there.
The fact is that I have already seen the very same construction 'áll-hoz' here on Duolingo with different translation. Something like...'positioning by the gate'. Unfortunately I'm not able to find it now.
Yes, the problem is, there is no exact translation because you can not "stand to" some place in English. So they struggled with finding an acceptable translation. And I am sure there is some inconsistency involved.
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Kocsi is a bit more a colloquial term, but it should be a valid answer as well. Feel free to report it.
