"Where do your grandfather and grandmother live?"

Translation: A nagypapád és a nagymamád hol lakik?

[joemagyarul]

Why use lakik and not laknak in this sentence?

[jsiehler]

A compound subject with és joining several singular things can take a singular verb.

[baldgymnastnurse]

It can, but does it have to? If I use laknak would that be wrong? Or do you have a choice between the singular and plural?

[joemagyarul]

I can understand that, it is true (a little bit) in English as well. But in English, the rule is very simple: compound subjects are singular if they refer to one person or thing. For example, Green eggs and ham is my favorite lunch!

So, at least in English, grandfather and grandmother is plural and never singular. But in Hungarian, clearly the rule is very different, and seems to be more like you describe.

It's possible I missed it, but I don't remember the course ever telling us this fact.

[Mikey460051]

I wrote "Hol lakik a te nagypapád és a nagymamád?" which was marked wrong. If I use "te" on one noun, do I have to include it on the other too?
Or should it be reported?

[Andrei551534]

Why does it not accept instead of 'nagypapa', 'nagytata'?

[BigWayne19]

------- hol laknak a nagyszuleid ? .. .

Big 22 oct 20

[jzsuzsi]

close, but not the original sentence.

Then the English sentence would have been "Where do your grandparents live?"

[BigWayne19]

..."Where do your grandfather and grandmother live?"...

------- so the english should have been more informal, like "grandpa " and "grandma " ? . . .

Big 23 oct 20