"There are not fifty-two trees standing by the river, but seventy-two."
Translation:Nem ötvenkét fa áll a folyó mellett, hanem hetvenkettő.
29 CommentsThis discussion is locked.
2013
Is the following sentence correct? (with repositioned "áll" verb)
Nem ötvenkét fa a folyó mellett áll , hanem hetvenkettő.
It's not accepted as proper.
1402
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.
122
From the sentence in english it is not apparent that you should negate both...it seems like you are to negate just the numbers but the place holds
This word order does not work. See my nem-hanem post here: https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/29387891
843
Have just read your post, and it's helpful. I'll need to refer to it repeatedly! Could a link to the post be put into 'tips', or would that make 'tips' too complicated?
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".
In certain cases "két" and "kettő" are interchangeable, but not in every case. If you want to go for certain, just use kettő (that also has the benefit that people would not mistake it with "hét" [seven]
Going with a google search, "két" can be used when it's a numerical adjective (két alma - two apples), but one must use "kettő" when it is used as a subject, direct object, adverb.
(that said there are some compound words which uses "két" like "kétbalkezes" [two left handed])
1402
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.