"There are not fifty-two trees standing by the river, but seventy-two."

Translation: Nem ötvenkét fa áll a folyó mellett, hanem hetvenkettő.

[IrekJakobi1]

Is the following sentence correct? (with repositioned "áll" verb)

Nem ötvenkét fa a folyó mellett áll , hanem hetvenkettő.

It's not accepted as proper.

[RyagonIV]

No, that won't work. The focus is on the object right in front of the verb, so it's on the place in your sentence. Naturally the listener would expect then that you said not only how many trees are there, but also where they are instead. You're basically negating both pieces of information.

[jzsuzsi]

This word order does not work. See my nem-hanem post here: https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/29387891

[LackaHun]

áj dzsást konfújzd báj tisz szentönsz , áj héjt tet lengvidzs. Szóri fór dö bád end wőrszt ínglís . Tenksz fór jór öttensőn! Szí jú léjtőr

[Sir-Nicolas]

Why is it that ötvenkettö doesnt get accepted and hetvenkettö is must while ötvenkét is a must and hetvenkét gets rejected ..... just ridiculous and very annoying....like where exactly is the diffrence. Két is just another word for Kettö...so why is that so important in this sentence??

[vvsey]

For one thing, this is still the beta phase, many possible sentences have yet to be added. Please keep reporting them via "Report a problem".

The other thing is, "két" needs a noun behind it. You can't just say "két". Even if it is "hetvenkét". It does require a noun. "Kettő", on the other hand, can stand without a noun after it. The usual way is to say "két" with a following noun, and "kettő" without a noun. But "kettő" can also have a noun.
So, the sentence could end in one of three ways:

• "... hanem "hetvenkettő."
• "... hanem ketvenkettő fa."
• "... hanem hetvenkét fa."

Now, in this sentence, 52 could be either "ötvenkét" or "ötvenkettő". If one of them is not accepted, please report it.

And if we moved the subject to the second clause, then the rules would change accordingly. It would be a mandatory "ötvenkettő" and a selectable "hetvenkettő"/"hetvenkét".

[Marvin502271]

Thank you for this very helpful explanation!

[Bonifac.Kener]

nem ötvenkettő, hanem hetvenkettő fa áll a folyónál

[Igor617865]

please correct this, otvenketto and otvenket are both correct...

[Matt_legrek]

"a folyonal" is not correct ?

[sherm0]

why not nincs?

[RyagonIV]

Nincs means "there is no". It talks about the nonexistence of something. But in this case there is something, a whole bunch of trees.

Or differently expressed, nincs has the focus on itself, but since you're contrasting numbers here, those numbers need to be in the focus: "nem [number] van" is the essential part here.