Relative word order

[#DuolingoForumGems originally posted on 2020-03-19 on the Duolingo Hungarian for English speakers forum by JanetHedle ] 

Basic word order hints.

Might it be a good idea to have some hints on word order earlier on in the course? I find I am getting a lot wrong due to word order. (I am at Basic level.) Today I read a helpful point made in answer to a post about word order, where the writer said 'the important thing is to think of 'a beautiful young woman' as "one unit" in the sentence- in other words, keep that all together, and the order of the other words- fent and van- can go anywhere. That was simply put, and I could do with more hints like that!

Comment by jzsuzsi:

A new attempt to explain word order:

All the important rules talk about the relative placement of the elements of the sentence, and not the absolute place.

So, we have rules like "X should be right before Y" or "X should be right after Y", but (afaik) no rule that says "X should be in the last position".

Examples:
The focus should be right before the verb.
Nem should be right before the part of the sentence it negates.
Is should be right after the part of the sentence it refers to.

I very often see comments like " Why is the verb not in the last position here? I thought, based on other sentences that the verb comes last"
Then I could say: We never said that. We never said the verb comes last. It just happens to be last in a lot of sentences, because of the "xy comes before the verb" rules.

Duolingo relies on implicit teaching: throw a lot of sentences at people, and they will deduct the rule themselves! Probably people are better at deducting "X comes last" rules than "X is before Y" rules, and this causes the trouble...

Well, vvsey said 3 years ago already " Ask not where to put the verb. Ask where to put everything else relative to the verb!" here.

You see these sentences:

Kati a parkban van.
Kati a házban van.
Hol van Kati?
Hol van Péter?

Then someone could say: See, statements and questions are different. In statements, the verb was in the last position and questions start with "hol van"

And someone else (for example vvsey) says: See, statements and questions work the same way. The place was right before the verb in both.

So, maybe to help the second explanation, we should give these example sentences instead:

Kati a parkban van.
Kati a házban van.
A kertben van Péter.
Hol van Kati?
Hol van Péter?
Kati hol van?