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- "The soldiers and tourists hu…
"The soldiers and tourists hurry off the high grass."
Translation:A katonák és a turisták lesietnek a magas fűről.
18 Comments
767
It follows the direction given with the suffix -ről. The soldiers go "down from" the grass, so you can complement that with using the le- prefix. I think using el- here might sound a bit odd. (Not a native!) El- is mostly used when going "away from" something (so typically with -tól/től) or when given a target in the meaning of "go over to".
Correct. "El-" is also used when you are not in or on something but, for example, next to something. You cannot some OFF being next to something, rather, you come AWAY from that position.
Btw, all this usage of "lesietnek", and "sietnek" in general, is highly unusual, weird. The verb "siet" is used much less than it is suggested in this course.
Wouldn't just sietnek without a preverb be ok though? It wasn't accepted.
- 415
Still waiting to hear about that myself (after 2 months), having pictured the high grass as being around my ankles rather than on a knoll. Getting off does not imply getting down.
Sorry, busy days over here.
"Sietnek a fűről" - sounds totally weird. Maybe a bit more weird than saying "they are hurrying from the grass".
"Le" is a good match for "off" when talking about sg coming off sg, or taking off sg, etc.
So, take "lesietnek" as a translation for "(they) hurry off", and "a fűről" as a translation for "off the grass". (A good enough reason for some to say "they hurry off of the high grass".)
Now, the fact that this sentence is weird to begin with is another issue.
Why is a second "a" necessary? The question says "The soldiers and tourists....." Why is "A katonák és turisták......" wrong? The computer wouldn't accept it. Is it really essential to say "a" twice?
- 767
Doesn't have to be. Remember that the focus of the sentence is on whatever is in front of the verb stem. So in the sentence "A katonák sietnek le", the focus is on the person; it answers the question "Who is hurrying off?" On the other hand in "A katonák lesietnek", the focus is on the verb/action itself, so it answers the question "What are the soldiers doing?"
- 415
I had imagined the the high grass was up around their ankles, and they were worried that it may be harbouring snakes, rather than it being up upon a knoll. In such a scenario, I'd have thought that "sietnek" would have sufficed, without a preverb.
It seams the second A is required in the Hungarian translation. I omited it to be consise, and was maked wrong. Duolingo - Why not just put a THE before tourists to get the A from students.
- 415
I'm sure that I've seen instances where the official Duolingo Hungarian omitted the second "a", but not when we do it :(
Just found it: https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/18584495?from_email=comment&comment_id=41445008
Most of the time, in a Hungarian sentence something like "A katonák és a turisták", so using "a" twice, is preferred.
The sentence you linked is an exception for it: "A kisfiúk és kislányok a köré az óvónő köré ülnek le, amelyik magas és szép."
I have a feeling that in Hungarian we are more likely to keep the second "a" too, and in English we are more likely to make it simpler, and drop the second "the".
But yes, this should be made more consistent.
To add to this, I have the feeling that we would tend to lose the second "a" or "the" if those two things/people can somehow be thought of as belonging together. Like the boys and girls. With soldiers and tourists, we do not feel this belonging together. But let's imagine, hmmm, maybe a big movie production with a lot of extras ("statiszták"), where the crowd is made up of various groups. Maybe there are soldiers, students, tourists, nuns, factory workers, etc. And the soldiers and the tourists are asked to mingle and always move together in the scene. So we think of them as one group: the group of soldiers and tourists.
That is one thought.
The other one is ergonomy. It is much more difficult and time consuming to say a "the" than it is to say an "a". Try it, say three times fast:
"The soldier and the tourist"
"A soldier and a tourist"
So, we don't mind losing the second "the" if possible.
But there is not much difficulty in saying that "a" in Hungarian, so we might as well say it:
"A katonák és a turisták".
Finally, we will have to drop the second article, quite logically, if the two nouns share a common adjective. Like we already have in the English sentence
"The little boys and girls".
If I want to add a second "the", I have to repeat the adjective:
"The little boys and the little girls".
That works the same way in Hungarian, of course:
"A magyar fiúk és a magyar lányok".
