"Ide esik miközénk, vagy oda tiközétek?"
Translation:Does it fall here between us, or there between you?
13 Comments
You never know when the simple present is 'correct', and when it should be the present continuous. That's one of the most frustrating things about the course. I think they should both be accepted in most cases, unless one of them is obviously wrong.
I've been reporting these like crazy. "I walk, I am walking, I do walk"
336
Yes. For most purposes Hungarian uses the present tense to talk about things happening in the future. Sometimes there are indicators of the timeframe, like: "Én főzök holnap" - "I will cook tomorrow"; or the hard-to-translate majd: "Majd sikerül" - "It'll work out."
But other than instances where there's a timeframe hinted at, you can put any present-tense sentence in the future, with proper context. "Is it going to fall here..?" and "Will it fall here..?" are valid translations.
Is it the case that most of these "you stand to beside me" constructions are more commonly used as a sort of future tense marker - "you will come and stand beside me" - in actual Hungarian speech?
A lot of them are very hard to comprehend in the present tense.
- 336
Direct translations of those sentences are pretty hard. If we're going for "Mellém állsz" - "You stand (to) beside me", I can imagine two applications right now.
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Indicative, i.e. you're walking right now towards me to stand at my side. In English I'd say "You're coming to my side."
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Imperative, i.e. I order you to stand by my side, for instance if we're about to take a picture. I think this would be the more common application. In English I'd say "Come stand by my side." Note, though, that this sentence doesn't use the actual imperative mood (which would be "Mellém állj" instead), so it's more of a.. firm suggestion.
That sentence doesn't really have a future feeling to me, but interpretations may vary. Also note that those English equivalents I gave are not actual (read: Duo-worthy) translations, but rather what an English-speaker would more naturally say in those situations. :)
I did not come anywhere close to getting any of these sentences correct. The correct response would fail as english translations. This module needs to be completely revised. 'The cabinet goes to behind me...' indeed it does not.
It is definitely a tangible thing and not rain that drops/falls between us/you.
If it was rain then it would be something like "Does it rain here at us or there at you?' - 'Itt nálunk esik vagy ott nálatok?' [Or much more awkwardly: 'Itt esik miközöttünk, vagy ott (ti)közöttetek?']
Does anything clarify that we are talking about an "it" and not a "he/she"? Could these be stage directions, or a crime scene investigation?
- 336
Nothing clarifies this. The subject in this sentence is just "whatever we were talking about before". Well, it's singular. So much we know.
