Talk:éves

Usage

Curious how the glosses and parts of speech work out with phrasing such as "hány éves?" This seems to treat éves as a noun, but the entry currently only defines the noun as "a person of a certain age", which doesn't fit this usage at all. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 17:28, 8 April 2020 (UTC)

éves in Hány éves? is an adjective, with the meaning of "of ... year(s)" or "... year(s) old", literally something like "How-many yeared are you?" Ön and maga are often omitted (like other personal pronouns in Hungarian) and "van" must be deleted in the third person. The same question can also mean "How old is he/she/it?", the formal conjugation taking the form of the third person. Honestly, I don't see why this éves should be a noun. But please do let me know if it's still not clear. Adam78 (talk) 23:42, 8 April 2020 (UTC)

Thank you, @Adam78. My impression of noun-ness is that this expression applies what appears to be a countable question term, hány, asking "how many", which would seem to logically require a noun to embody the "many-ness" of the question -- adjectives are qualities, not things that can be counted. Of the various languages I've studied, in several different language families (Hawaiian, Japanese, Spanish, German, Chinese, Navajo), I'm not aware of any other that uses a countable question word applied to an adjective in this way. English and German have age-related questions using adjectives, but there the question word is a matter of degree, not number -- English how old are you, German wie alt bist du. The English little-kid question for age is how many years old are you, which again uses a countable question term -- how many -- applied to a noun -- years. I find the Hungarian combination quite curious. ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 05:21, 9 April 2020 (UTC)

Now I see, thanks. Maybe it can solve the issue if you consider the phrase like [hány év]es. Adam78 (talk) 11:09, 9 April 2020 (UTC)

@Adam78: Belated reply, but yes, I like your suggestion for how to parse this. Thank you! ‑‑ Eiríkr Útlendi │^{Tala við mig} 17:31, 25 June 2020 (UTC)