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- "The tall man is outside."
"The tall man is outside."
Translation:A magas férfi kint van.
12 Comments
Giving a location with "to be" is pretty much a core argument which means the most neutral word order is to add it right before the verb. "Van kint", in the meantime opens the focus position to whatever preceding van. So, "A magas férfi van kint" answers the question "Who is outside?" rather than "Where is the tall man?" which is, by Hungarian logic, the most logical question you think of when encountering a sentence like "The tall man is outside."
I believe it's the difference between "The tall man" and "The man is tall"
Nope, adjectives referring to a noun must precede the noun, like in English. "The man tall is outside" :\
"Van" can be left out when someone is performing an action in the 3rd person singular: "He is speaking Hungarian" = "Ő magyarul beszél" In this case, you don't have to say "van" (is), like you would have to in English (in fact saying "van" in this sentence would be incorrect)
But in the sentence "A magas férfi kint van.", "van" has a different meaning. It means "there is". Another example would be: "Van két almám" = "I have 2 apples" (a more literal translation would be "There exists 2 apples which are mine"... where "van" means "there is / exists" and "almám" means my apple")
So you see, "van" can also be used as "there is". And in this case, the sentence wouldn't make sense without it.
"He is speaking Hungarian" is simply nonexistent grammar in Hungarian. This has nothing to do with van.
As far as i know van can be left out when it refers to adjectives. In this case it refers not to how is the noun, but where is the noun, thus van is needed.
As far as i know van can be left out when it refers to adjectives that describe the noun. In this case van refers to the position of the nound, thus needed.
