"A város mellett kilencven ember ül és pihen."
Translation:Ninety people are sitting and resting beside the city.
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Can someone explain to me why "Ninety persons are sitting and resting next to the city" is wrong?
Probably because “persons” is a bit weird in English. It’s not incorrect but it is a strange way to say it unless you’re a cop reporting on a sit-in or something.
Why does Duolingo reject "town" and insist on "city" when it itself gives "town" as an alternative translation of "város". Hopeless!
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City is big ; town is small (the town can be translated into Hungarian "kisváros" :) ) . (Towns are generally larger than villages but smaller than cities - wikipedia) But both are "város". :) Report it!
How about: "Next to the city there are ninety people sitting and resting." ?
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Just imagine sitting "next to or beside the city" :) of course it't impossible in life, logic and the English language. But you can be sitting NEAR the city - and that should be accepted
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same thing. Yet I had learned that "people" is a collective and cannot be counted !Thirty persons / many people
"There are 90 people" and "there are 90 persons" strike me (as a native American-English speaker) as being subtly different in meaning. When you use "people" you are not really talking about individuals at all, you kind of just talking about "entities that are human beings", while if you use "persons" you are referring more to individuals doing something and are giving them a bit more importance. Perhaps this is why there is such a thing as "a missing persons bureau" but not a "missing people bureau", since the former is more about individuals, and the latter is more about a group? In a sentence like this one in Duo, you are not talking about the individuals but about the size of the group, hence "persons" would be incorrect.