"Szegény emberek nem mennek éttermekbe."

Translation: Poor people do not go to restaurants.

[JanTatouse]

I bet that 'e' is by far the most frequent letter in the Hungarian language?

[jsiehler]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_alphabet#Letter_frequencies

[vvsey]

There is even a fun "language" called "Eszperente". You can guess what it is.

[jsiehler]

Yes! Karinthy Frigyes came up with the name as I recall. And he is the best.

[BetsyLowe]

Isn't there a game where you make up sentences where the only vowel is e?

[FredGeorgeWazlib]

Why is it "mennek ettermekbe" and not "bemennek"?

[Nab918927]

I have the same question.

[ElieElKhou1]

In a previous lesson we learned that general statements should always start with the definite article.
So shouldn't the sentence be: A Szegény emberek.... ?

[RyagonIV]

I'm just going to link you to the reverse exercise, where vvsey explained it pretty well. :)

Short form: it could, but it doesn't need to.

[clairelanc3]

Who wrote that it was great when they translate word for word? si why not accept INTO even if it does not sound natural?

[AlexRadu21]

These -be -ba sometime translate as either to, at or into; never interchangeably; what is this? Russian roulette?

[LelandSun]

Translation is not so mechanical a task as replacing a word/phrase in one language with its counterpart in another language. It is rather about getting the intended meaning across.

In English, “to go to a restaurant” means to go inside and dine, whereas “to go into a restaurant” would simply be about the action of entering the establishment. In talking about what poor people might not do, we are indeed talking about dining at restaurants. In reading the discussions here, it is interesting to learn that the same distinction is made in Hungarian between using “mennek” vs “bemennek “

[deactivated user]

So here ba/be means "to" !!! ( not into) - why the "sudden change" ?