"Ebben az erdőben nem laknak emberek."

Translation: People do not live in this forest.

[MargaritaL241967]

People do not live in this forest

[PaulSuich]

It really does seem that "nem" modifies "laknak" and not "emberek" because of proximity and word order. So I expected "do not live" instead of "no people."

[RyagonIV]

You are right. This would be a more accurate translation.
And yes, nem always modifies the word (or phrase) coming right after.

I would translate the given English sentence with "Ebben az erdőben sehány ember nem lakik." (more literally "No number of people live in this forest.")

[Zsuzsi97194]

Perfect but the person who wrote the translation at DUO is forcing us to copy and paste an incorrect answer AND there is no choice to say that the ENGLISH translation is wrong or awkward, only that the Hungarian sentence may have errors or be awkward.

[omer332252]

why can't I write: "People are not living in this forest"?

[BoVeKa]

Because you need to write what you hear (in Hungarian) and not to translate it.

[RyagonIV]

Boveka, please note that different people have different tasks for the same sentence. This is the comment section for the Hungarian source sentence, so you get here through Hu-En translations, listening tasks, speaking tasks, and any tasks that have you find a missing word.

[JoshuaMoor9]

wouldn't 'there are no' translate to nincsenek?

[RyagonIV]

Only if there were no other verb. Note that "There are no people living" is a continuous tense, which doesn't exist in Hungarian.

[InaraCouto]

This sentence is not an example of the illative case (-ba, -be) which indicates movement towards a space, and which is the object of this exercise. Ebben in an example of the Inessive case (-ban, -ben), which indicates position in a space.

[BoVeKa]

The translation here is different than on the lesson. There it says "No people are living in this forest" = "Egyetlen ember sem lakik ebben az erdőben" Also, the continuous form of the verb in English is wrong in both cases.

[RyagonIV]

Boveka, there's no problem with saying "Someone is living somewhere." The progressive form is often used if you're talking about a temporary living situation.

Quote from the book "Aspect" by Bernard Comrie, p. 37:

Thus if I say I live at 6 Railway Cuttings, I imply that this is my normal residence, whereas if I say I'm living at 6 Railway Cuttings, I imply that this is only a temporary residence (for instance, while my Mayfair flat is being redecorated).

[FarkasJozs5]

I would certainly prefer the simple tense here.