"The girls play violin, whereas the boys dance."
Translation:A lányok hegedülnek, a fiúk pedig táncolnak.
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I wish Hungarians would stop saying the their word order is flexible, it's clearly not, as demonstrated here.
Hungarian word order is flexible in the sense that you can make grammatically correct sentences using several different arrangements of the same words. However, different arrangements of words will have different meanings. Usually they have different emphases.
Absolutely agree, I hate this phrasing. There indeed are options but they aren't "costless":
I'm curious about word order. I entered A lányok hegedülnek, pedig a fiúk táncolnak. This is not currently regarded as "correct". Is it acceptable to put the pedig before the a fiúk? If not, can someone please explain why?
That makes a completely different meaning, so it should not be accepted.
In this situation, "pedig" needs to be in the second position, following the contrasting element ("a fiúk"). Imagine "the boys, on the other hand".
If you place "pedig" first, the sentence changes dramatically:
"The girls play the violin, even though the boys dance."
Your response doesn't make sense to me. We are asked to translate "Whereas" not "on the other hand". I don't get that pedig means "even though" in this context. I must have responded to 100s of questions and "even though" was never part of the question or answer.
That's why that position is wrong here. "Even though" isn't what we were looking for. And I suppose the implication was that "on the other hand" and "whereas" are more or less interchangable.
Ok, changed.
Changed the English version to "The girls are playing the violin, and the boys are dancing."
I saw an interesting discussion about play the violin / play violin.
Some British contributors said that in Br.E. the version without "the" is plainly wrong.
But in America, both work:
A Canadian living in the US said:
"Common expressions from my perspective. I play violin in an orchestra. I play lead guitar in a rock and roll band. I learned (notice not learnt) to play guitar when I was a child. I can play guitar or bass. When using an article, I am referring to the action, when I don't use an article I am referring to the ability."