"Nem az iskolától indulunk, hanem Katitól."
Translation:We do not leave from the school, but from Kati.
13 Comments
I get they want use to use "from" because ablative case and all that, but I think it's more common to simply drop it in English - to leave can be either transitive or intransitive, after all.
So, how would that sentence look like in this case? Are we leaving school? And leaving Kati??
Or maybe use a better verb? Start? Depart?
"We do not leave [from] [the] school, but [from] Kati."
Words in brackets are optional.
Although "to leave" when used with a person is a little different than with a building; with a building, it simply means to not be on the premises anymore, whereas with a person, it means to break up with them, or in some other way sever an interpersonal relationship. (Which, in other words, would make this sentence a Type-2 zeugma)
If you want to use "to depart", however, the "from"s become mandatory, as the verb is strictly intransitive:
"We do not leave from [the] school, but from Kati."
In both cases the "the" is optional, although the meaning is of course slightly but not drastically different. Without the "the", the school in question would be assumed to be wherever it is that you usually go to school. With the "the", the school in question would be assumed to be a previously mentioned school and is therefore determined by context.
"to start" so rarely means "to leave" that it would throw a lot of people off, and furthermore it requires context to establish where the person is going, which is absent here.
OK, thanks, that confirms what I was feeling.
The thing is here, with the Hungarian sentence, that it speaks about a departure. We are getting on our way somewhere. Maybe a road trip. So the point is not leaving (the) school, or Kati, but rather defining the point of departure for the trip. The meeting point.
Thanks for the Zeugma Wiki link. I've often come across these structures before in different languages, but never read about them. I think this is very interesting!
Doesn't "Katitól" also mean "from Kati's" / "from Kati's place" / "from chez Kati"? I don't remember addressing this with -hoz and -nál, but all of those include a "chez" sense, don't they? Katinál vagyunk: we're at Kati's place. Katihoz megyek: I'm going to Kati's (place). Or am I completely wrong about this?
223
Why "leave" and not "start"? More natural English would be "We are not starting from the school but from Kati's".
---------- leaving focuses on what's behind you; starting looks ahead to where you're going . . .
Big 29 mar 18
But you can still say "Let's start from the beginning", "from scratch", "from here", etc. Bottom line, we are defining the point of departure or start. That is what this sentence is about.
