"Are those old tourists?"

Translation: Azok idős turisták?

[Ishana92]

Regi vs idos? is one just for living or more polite or something else?

[vvsey]

"Régi" is not to be used for age. It is used mainly with objects, but you can also say "a régi barátnőm" - "my old girlfriend", meaning long-running or previous. From previous times.

"Idős" is mainly used for the age of people. It is polite. Think "elderly".

The less polite word for age is "öreg". "Old".

[DonFry]

What about öreg? Doesn't that mean old, as in age?

[JiriBarton]

Why not, "azok az idős turisták"?

[ErikAnderson3]

That az, as the definite article, makes the statement specific: "are those the old tourists?" For the non-specific case, leave out the az.

[DavidPragm]

Can someone expain why "Azok turisták idős?" is wrong?

[ErikAnderson3]

I'm no native speaker of Hungarian, but my understanding is that the change in word order changes the sense in a way similar to the following:

• Azok idős turisták? → Are those old tourists?
• *Azok turisták idős? → Are those tourists old?

Note that the second sentence has bad grammar in a couple ways.

• Attributive adjectives (adjectives directly modifying a noun) should come before the noun, not after.
• Adjectives that come after the noun they modify are predicative (they include the "to be" sense), and must be inflected to match the plurality of the noun.
  • → idős turisták = "old tourists"
  • → turisták idősek "tourists are old"
• Also, the initial azok ("those") can be a pronoun, referring to "those [people or things]" all on its own. Alternatively it can be a determiner, a kind of modifier or adjective of its own, which modifies another noun.
  As a pronoun, like in the Hungarian sentence on the top, we have the Hungarian sentence structure of [NOUN 1] + [NOUN 2], where we're saying that #1 = #2, your basic "this is that" kind of sentence.
  As a determiner, like in the malformed Hungarian sentence on the bottom, the word azok must modify another noun, and since "those" is a definite modifier, we know that we need to add the definite article a or az.
  • → azok a turisták

Putting the above together, we would have the following as the correct Hungarian sentences, with their English translations:

• Azok idős turisták? → Are those old tourists?
• Azok a turisták idősek? → Are those tourists old?

Hope this helps!
(And if I've botched the Hungarian, someone please let me know and I'll edit to fix!)