"A helyi politikusok a folyóról beszélnek."

Translation: The local politicians speak about the river.

[GerSzej]

How do you know it is "about" the river and not "from" the river. I can imagine the politician on a boat speaking about a new bridge (we just had this here, where the mayor gave a speech shown on TV from the river). I would suggest to chose non ambiguous examples (e.g. the politicians speak about global change).

[Tamara207217]

Fair point :D though you can usually guess from the verb, which one.
With the verb is "beszél", you can assume that the object is the topic of the speech, not the place of it. If it is the place, you should say somethig like "A folyó jegén állva beszélnek" (they talk standing on the frozen river) or something like that. In the case of most other verbs, like "nézelődni" (looking around), it would be obvious, that "folyóról" refers to the place, where the action takes place.

[96314081311257]

Good point.

[vvsey]

Totally true, you can't tell.

[DoktorVirag]

...and I was just praising the Hungarian language and its lack of ambiguity compared to English!

[vvsey]

Oh, but every language must have some ambiguity, to make life more fun. The best jokes are made using ambiguity, and there are some good ones in Hungarian, as well. :)

[Ishana92]

until you came across the shortes sentence "Ő jon" and you couldnt tell who is coming XD

[Tamara207217]

well, he or she is coming :) where is the inambiguity in that?

[BigWayne19]

------- well, the gender of the person coming is certainly ambiguous . . .

Big 14 apr 19

[BigWayne19]

------- is, " o" e'g " even shorter ? . . .

Big 14 apr 19

[Iva52893]

Why is "The local politicians talk about the river" not accepted?

[BigWayne19]

------- tamara thinks you should be able to figure it out. Tamara207217

Fair point :D though you can usually guess from the verb, which one. With the verb is "beszél", you can assume that the object is the topic of the speech, not the place of it. If it is the place, you should say somethig like "A folyó jegén állva beszélnek" (they talk standing on the frozen river) or something like that. In the case of most other verbs, like "nézelődni" (looking around), it would be obvious, that "folyóról" refers to the place, where the action takes place.

1•1 year ago