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Making adjectives of place or time from nouns: -i


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We can make simple adjectives of place or time from nouns by adding -i to the end. This has the role of "of, pertaining to".

Remember that in English, we very often use nouns as adjectives (of course without a change). When we say, "the London bridges are shorter than the Budapest Bridges" or "the Atlanta girls are slimmer than the Essex girls" , those place names are performing the role of adjectives.

"The London girls" is the same as saying: "the girls of/in/from London" .

This can apply to names of the week, for example:

Consider this sentence: The Sunday paper is always very good. Here "Sunday" is an adjective.


In Hungarian, we would say the following:

  • a londoni hidak the London bridges / the bridges of London
  • a budapesti hidak the bridges of Budapest
  • az atlantai lányok the Atlanta girls / the girls of Atlanta
  • az essexi lányok the girls of Essex
  • a vasárnapi újság mindig nagyon jó the Sunday paper is always very good.
  • a januári hideg. the January cold
  • a mai újság. the newspaper of today (i.e today's paper)
  • a földalatti ember. the people of the the underground (i.e. underground folk)

Lower case of proper nouns

You have probably noticed that we must use a small letter when we make an adjective from a noun. Don't forget!

Improper nouns

Of course, like the above, this applies to improper nouns as well as proper nouns. The same conceopts apply, but of course we have no capitalisation to start with.

  • A mai újság nagyon rossz. The today paper (i.e. today's paper) is bad.
  • családi ház. family house.
  • egyetemi barát. university friend (friend from university).
  • reggeli posta. morning post.
  • déli / keleti. southern / western.*

*

This is why I love Hungarian. Everything is logical.
Note how dél means South and noon. The sun is in the South at noon in Hungary.
Note how kel means East and rise. The sun rises in the East.


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