[#DuolingoForumGems originally posted on 2019-02-17 on the Duolingo Hungarian for English speakers forum by peter.kristof.hu ] 

The use of articles in Hungarian

Recently, there was a question about the use of English articles on the Hungarian discussion. I've written a reply, and I thought it might be interesting for many people who learn Hungarian, and I would apply it to English. So I wrote a brief explanation of the use of the Hungarian articles.

Articles are used before nouns, and they are a kind of determinants. There are three articles in English and in Hungarian too: The definite article, the indefinite article and the zero article (the absence of the article, i.e. a bare noun). Some languages use articles differently. For example, Latin, Russian, Chinese has no articles. Esperanto has only the definite article.

In the first part, I point out some differences between English and Hungarian usage, however, I do not describe rules, but the most common cases. The list cannot be complete, as there are many exceptions that can be considered idioms. In the second part, I try to describe the general use of articles and I would note these are general principles.

[#DuolingoForumGems originally posted on 2020-02-15 on the Duolingo Hungarian for  English speakers forum by jzsuzsi ] 

Using egy

There have been questions about "egy", the indefinite article. When do we use it? When do we omit it? When is it optional?

Well, including or dropping "egy" creates a small difference in meaning. But since Duolingo is translation-based, as long as the English translation stays the same, these nuances in meaning are kind of invisible. 

Uncountable method

vvsey has a saying:  In Hungarian, treat all of the nouns as uncountable.  Let's look at some English uncountable nouns:

furniture - bútor
a piece of furniture - egy bútor
bread - kenyér
a loaf of bread - egy kenyér
beer - sör
a (bottle of) beer - egy sör

Ok, then apply this logic to nouns that are countable in English:
one apple - egy alma
apples, but the quantity in unknown/ not important - alma

a flower - egy virág
flowers, but the quantity in unknown/ not important - virág

You can point at one apple and say  "Ez egy alma."
You can point at a crate full of apples and ask "Ez alma?"