"A folyók a tenger mellett sekélyek?"

Translation: Are the rivers by the sea shallow?

[kenguruhu]

I would have thought this would have sounded more like "seké yek".

[MrtonPolgr]

And? How did it really sound?

[Tarmil]

I could've sworn she said something like "sekíek", is it common for a final "ély" to sound like "í"?

[vvsey]

I think it just naturally gets morphed that way, because of the surrounding sounds. Try saying it yourself and listen back to how you said it.

[MrtonPolgr]

Look, vowel clusters with i are often realized with j glides. j (and hence ly which is the same sound) could be interpreted as an i semivowel, like in Romanian. Now the speaker "underarticulated" é a little bit so that glide that ly is shifted the whole sound towards í. And there we are - as I said, something like íek and íjek would sound (near) identical in Hungarian. If it were a bit better articulated, it would sound almost like sekéek (obviously a bit softer around é and e) and that would be about fine.

[Jeremy906930]

When it says: shallow, it's not as an adjective but as a noun ?

[ain15412]

Can you really imagine a river "beside" the sea. IMHO, in this case "mellet" shall be translated as "near" or "close to"