"Itt nincs étterem."
Translation:There is not a restaurant here.
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Since it's the restaurant, it would require az: "Itt nincs az étterem" or "Az étterem nincs itt", etc.
There's a difference in meaning:
"There's no restaurant here" = not a single restaurant is located in this place
"The restaurant is not here" = the restaurant you're looking for is not located in this place, but there could still be other restaurants here
"There is" is like a phrase in English. We are talking about a place, "here" to be more accurate.
Why can't learn little easier? This way i can go to school and learn Hungarian 3 years.
1037
Been learning for 6 years (off DL) - and only just getting to the point where can understand normal conversations and take part. DL is a start - but only the very beginning.
- 874
Even if you have a "personal Hungarian trainer" it will take you many years to see through the many difficulties of this beautiful language! And when you start talking to Hungarians, you will find out how difficult it really is...
Dunno, it doesn't seem compared and is quite logical. The idea of it being "hard" is a Indo-Eurocentric viewpoint, because it not being like English, Spanish, Polish. But I do wonder what a Finnish person would think.
- 1037
it doesn't seem compared and is quite logical.
It is logical - although you have to look at the world slightly differently. For me it is vocab and idioms that make it hard.
Are you only learning on DL? In which case you probably haven't struck some of the true joys of the language yet :-)
I do wonder what a Finnish person would think.
I've had a number of Finnish language majors in my class - not one thought Hungarian was easy. Although the bones make more sense to them they have the same issue with vocab as English speakers - that is every word needs to be learnt. (After all Finnish and Hungarian have been separated by 3000 years - 3x the time for English and German).
I am a Finn, and I find the logics of the Hungarian language in many respects familiar. Still, there are quite different things also, like the separate subject and object conjugations of verbs. There is nothing like that in Finnish. Finnish literary tongue does neither use articles.
"Itt nincs étterem" is in Finnish "täällä ei ole ravintolaa". As you can see, the words are not at all similar. Still, the way how this sentence is built makes sense for a Finn (nincs = ei ole).
Judit is right that even a Finn has to learn the Hungarian vocabulary word by word. However, the common roots help a little bit. The Proto-Finno-Ugric "p" has become "f" in Hungarian. Therefore, it is easier for a Finn to remember that felett is above (Finnish: päällä), fa is tree (puu), fecske is swallow (pääsky), fészek is nest (pesä), fej is head (pää), fő is main (pää-), félés is pelko (fear), fél is to fear (pelätä), fiú is boy (poika), fon is to braid (punoa), felhő is cloud (pilvi), fúj is to blow (puhaltaa), fázék is pot (pata), fél is half ("pieli"). A Finn could not guess the meaning of these Hungarian words beforehand, but once he has learnt the system, it is easier to remember them.