Talk:Hungarian/Lesson 2

swap proposal
I think its boring to learn numbers before you can say basic sentences. And there should be more practices with simple statements and questions. --Sourcerror 09:33, 26 April 2007 (UTC)


 * As a teacher I would like to disagree with you. This method is well adapted to Hungarian: you get used to reading and pronouncing words before you step into basic morphology. Moreover, you always have to learn numerals, the earlier the better! Some may find it boring... In fact, you should consider it a funny game :)

--R Camus 11:58, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

Decimals
How do decimals work in Hungarian? How would you say 5,1 (I have heard that "," is used as the decimal separator)? How about a long series of decimals, like 6,54321? I appreciate any help anyone can offer. TomTheHand 20:50, 15 May 2006 (UTC)


 * The shorter decimals are treated as vulgar fractions.
 * 5,1 -> "öt egész egy tized" literaly: five "whole" (-> integer) and one tenths ("1/10")
 * In theory, the same applies to longer rational numbers (so 15,14 = tizenöt egész tizennégy század / lit. fifteen whole and fourteen hundredths ("14/100"); 500,123 = ötszáz egész százhuszonhárom ezred) but if the decimal is very long like 9,087654321 (or an irrational number) one would simply say "kilenc egész nulla-nyolc-hét-hat-öt-négy-három-kettő-egy")
 * --194.152.154.2 01:24, 4 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Thank you! Would "öt egész egy" be understood, or would someone think it's very odd to leave off the tized/tenths?  I'm trying to write a program that will translate numbers into other languages and I'm trying to keep things simple, but I don't want to do anything so simple it sounds dumb. TomTheHand 14:47, 6 June 2006 (UTC)


 * It would be understood, but you probably won't hear something like this in formal speeches.
 * I don't know if this program is intended to "say" or "display" the numbers, but if the latter, you might want to know that the Hungarian orthogr. rules for numbers are quite complicated, even for a native speaker. Eg. the numbers are written without a hyphen if they are lower than 2000 (1763 = ezerhétszázhatvanhárom), or if they are higher, but lower than 10^6 & divisible by 10^3 (53 000 = ötvenháromezer), but with a hyphen if these requirements are not satisfied* (2734 = kétezer-hétszázharmincnégy). This is just an example, there are other odd rules, too. (These can be found @ A Guide to Hungarian Orthography by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (Wikisource), unfortunately only in Hungarian.)
 * * It would still be written without a hyphen, if x > 10^6, but x mod 10^6 == 0. --194.152.154.2 19:29, 6 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Goodness. Well, the program is actually intended to "say" the numbers, so hopefully I'll manage to avoid hyphenation issues.  What I'll do is use tized, század, and ezred for up to three decimal places, and simply read out the digits for larger decimals, as you suggested.  Thank you! TomTheHand 20:09, 6 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Leaving out "tized", "század", "ezred", etc. from the end of the number is completely normal. Only in very formal speech or professional speech (maths, statistics, etc.) do they use these termini, best, a native 88.66.41.90 (talk) 22:53, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

'Hány' is rarely countable
While it is true that mennyi is used with countable objects too, hány is not used with uncountable things. Like 'Hány víz van nálad?' would sound quite strange (I guess 'How many water do you have?' is problematic in English the same way, but I'm not a native English speaker). Someone correct me if I'm wrong. Hungarian is my mother tounge, but I haven't really thought about that countable/non countable thing until now.


 * On the other hand, when the nouns are countable, you can use both "hány" and "mennyi". E.g. "Hány hal van a kosárban?" vs. "Mennyi hal van a kosárban." Although stilistically I feel, that "Mennyi" is "nicer" than "Hány" 88.66.41.90 (talk) 22:55, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Sound bites
The sound bites on this page cause my Firefox to crash. Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-US; rv:1.9.0.6) Gecko/2009011913 Firefox/3.0.6 —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 74.210.15.9 (talk • contribs) 01:29, 16 February 2009 (UTC)