"The chimney falls off the roof."
Translation:A kémény leesik a tetőről.
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Only, if I were going to reverse translate this, I would come up with "The chimney falls down from the roof," which is perfectly good English and something I would actually say.
Is it possible to say "elesik"?
We use "elesik" in different context. If a human or an animal actually falls in the street.
Some fat man keeps squeezing himself through them. The material is bound to fail sooner or later.
It also happens occasionally during big storms.
Here in Christchurch, after a few 10 000s of earthquakes there are practically no chimneys left. Yes, they fall off/down and onto the ground, into bedrooms, kitchens and on people.
Why is this translated with leesik? The previous sentence had to do with snakes, lizards, etc. crawling off of the curtain and that one was esik le? English does not have an easy non-audible way of demonstrating emphasis, does it? I posted the same question before, aside from a negative sentence, except when comparisons are being made when is the prefix detached? When the verb is to be emphasized or a neutral sentence is expressed, the prefix stays in front, no? So, how do I determine from such an innocuous sentence as this, what is to be emphasized? Thank you to anyone for any clarification.
There are two parts of this "emphasis" thing. I'll try to explain as best I can.
First is that the new information is what should be emphasized (put in front of the verb). If we're saying, Snakes, frogs, lizards and insects crawl off the curtain then presumably we want to describe what things are crawling off the curtain, so we don't emphasize the curtain, or the crawling verb, but the animals, so we move the subjects in front of the verb (and move the preverb le to after the verb. It's much like when we use active vs. passive voice in English, we can put the emphasis on the subject or object that way.
Second is when the emphasis is on the verb itself. So this sentence, The chimney falls off the roof, presumably the chimney is not new information and the roof is not new information, but the falling part is new information. So the verb itself gets emphasized, by putting the preverb le in front of the verb. But not just emphasized, it gets a perfect aspect to the verb: so we know the chimney is not merely in the process of falling, but actually does fall off the roof, it has fallen off, and is probably lying on the ground.
Thank you for the explanation. It makes sense, but I will have to revisit this. I understand that paragraphs would be much too much, however, without more context it is difficult when we must presume things and construct a sentence from English to the richer Hungarian. Thank you again.