"A Parlament a folyó mellett fekszik."
Translation:The Parliament lies next to the river.
20 Comments
We don't really use "lies" very often in colloquial American English. "Is" would be better in this sentence.
In English, "the" for parliament wouldn't be used here. We would use either "Parliament" or "the Parliament building." "The Parliament" would refer to the body of people that make up the governmental organization.
The word 'Parlament' is one of the official name of the Hungarian parliament (the building). Shouldn't one use 'the' in this case, either?
This is a tricky one, I admit, in English, in that we can use the same base noun for both a structure and an organization. Adding the article "the" is the only way we use to differentiate the two. Capitalizing "Parliament" won't help in spoken English, so we have historically used "the" to allow us to differentiate. While Hungarian might use "A", to refer to the building, in English we would.
I don't perfectly understand. So 'the parliament' means the system/organization or the building?
Anyway, we use Parliament in Hungarian only in the case of the building. The organization is 'országgyűlés' (' country assembly' literally) or in a more complex way: 'parlamentáris rendszer' -'parliamentary system'.
Yep, I understand the difference in Hungarian. The problem is the lesson doesn't accept the proper English version.
So the 'Parliament' is the organization (it was a bit ambigious first from what you wrote).
Definitly report it next time. I think it could be fair to approve both because who is not a native Enlish speaker would write rather the Parliament in this case.
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What you are saying is that the given translation says: politicians don't tell the truth (or have a nap) and they are next to the river.
No, not only in American English!
For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Theatre,_Sydney
"A capitol is a building in which the legislative body of government meets." - in all English dialects - see: https://www.grammarly.com/blog/capital-vs-capitol/
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Actually the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) which is a far better judge of UK English marks it as "American usage". Bryson's similarly marks it as US usage. What people call theatres or restaurants often plays on the exotic rather than language usage.
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Except when people say they are "going to parliament" they mean the building where parliament sits. So the translation is perfectly fine for UK English - possibly not for US English.
Exactly. In English, removal of the article "the" implies the building, not the body.
