# What does the lonely "s" mean?



## Frederic_Bastiat

Sziasztok! =)

What's the lonely "s" in this sentence means?

"s hittük nem véletlen volt, s egy életre szól."

Köszönöm. =D


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## Olivier0

This _s_ is an old or local form of _és_ "and".
-- Olivier


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## Zsanna

Remark: the "s" is not so much "old and local"... it is rather either used (orally) more frequently in the Eastern part of Hungarian usage (especially by the Székely, in Transylvania) or everywhere, in literature (specially in poetry), in a written form.


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## franknagy

It is used by poets, in order to match the count of syllables in the subsequent lines.


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## Encolpius

"s vannak" does not sound poetic what's more it sounds vulgar. What do you think? 
pl.:"Sok ingyenesen hirdető oldal van, _s vannak_ speciálisan mezőgazdasági oldalak..."


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## Zsanna

It doesn't _have to be_ always poetic, Encolpius. (By the way, my source is the usual Nyelvművelő Kézikönyv.)


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## franknagy

I have never seen the single s in place of és in present-time texts, except in crosswords. *It causes jamming of consonants.*
S is not a recommended substitute of és, like e of y in Spanish before words beginning with i.


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## Zsanna

franknagy said:


> I have never seen the single s in place of és in present-time texts, except in crosswords. *It causes jamming of consonants. -*It is not recommended* when *it would cause that.
> S is not a recommended substitute of és, like e of y in Spanish before words beginning with i.- My Nyelvművelő Kézikönyv does *not* mention this.


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## Encolpius

franknagy said:


> I have never seen the single s in place of és in present-time texts, except in crosswords. *It causes jamming of consonants.*..



I hope you do not find Nepszabadság an archaic text, here are some examples from the headlines: 

"Együtt-PM: a kormány alszik, *s* nyakunkon a cián?"
"Hadakozik, *s* nem fizet a kormány a kirúgott közszolgáknak"
"Az MSZP vizsgálatot indít, *s* ha kell, feljelentést tesz"

and many many other examples.


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## franknagy

Encolpius said:


> I hope you do not find Nepszabadság an archaic text, here are some examples from the headlines:
> 
> "Együtt-PM: a kormány alszik, *s* nyakunkon a cián?"
> "Hadakozik, *s* nem fizet a kormány a kirúgott közszolgáknak"
> "Az MSZP vizsgálatot indít, *s* ha kell, feljelentést tesz"
> 
> and many many other examples.



Hát ez tényleg nem archaikus forrás, de _modoros_. Hány másodpercet nyert a cikkíró lapzárta előtt az é kihagyásával?
Ráadásul rosszak a kötőszavak:
A helyesek:
... amikor
... de [csakazértsem]
... mivel


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## Zsanna

I am not saying that the "s"-s are used in a clear way (in the examples above) but I have difficulty in accepting frank's suggestions because I don't really know what the real intentions were. 
My hunch is this:1) miközben 2) és 3) és because it is true that the "s" does not fit well. For it me it wants to sound "elevated" meanwhile the topic is not of that nature at all.


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## franknagy

*I have remembered that S is not the short counterpart of ÉS *in the modern - not poetic - usage.
_ÉS_ means simple logical AND. In the abstract sentence A _ÉS_ B the A and B words or subordinate clauses have equal value. Their order is not important. It is arbitrary, only.
_S_ has some meaning of logical IMPLICATION. The the abstract sentence A _S_ B is a kind of A |-> B. The second clause B is an enhancement or an inference of first clause A.
All of Encolpius's 3 examples demonstrate it.


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## Zsanna

It is not quite like that, frank, according to Nyelvművelő Kézikönyv (Vol.1, p.569). (I didn't want to go into details to this extent because it is not needed really and even native speakers are not aware of it. Apart from the fact that even in NyK they managed to fill 2 full pages about _és/s_ which we cannot reproduce here fully anyaway.)

1. "Az _s_ az _és_-nek rövidebb változata: szerepkörük nagyjából azonos." (= The _s_ is the short version of _és_: their role is more or less identical.)

2. (I think you are referring to this, at least this is the only thing I've found that is special for the _s _:  )
"Az _s _... az utólagos hozzátoldás árnyalatát is kifejezi, bár ez nem általános (S mindjárt ki is fizette!). (= The _s _also expresses the shade of an addition that was thought up afterwards*, although it is not usual (And/So he paid it immediately!).)

3. The only time the book mentions _s_ as obligatory is in various expressions like: ide*s*tova (nearly, almost), egyről *s* másról (about one or another), ez *s* az (this and that)

For the above examples, I would add (still quoting NyK) that they (both _és_ and _s_) can be used between oppositions, so replacing s by de (in 2.) just underlines this but the use of és/s is not a mistake (in itself) in that meaning. 
In 1. and 3. the _s_ was probably meant to be used in the above mentioned "utólagos hozzáadás" ("adding an afterthought"*) function, which (I maintain) is not easy to spot even for a native speaker. 

But I agree with you in lots of other aspects:
- that journalists are not known for knowing grammar (sometimes even spelling is a challenge...) and they "play with"/"use" the public's lack of interest/demand/knowledge about that matter to hide it 
- as the _s_ is used more frequently between subsentences and the _és_ between words having the same role in the sentence (NyK) in the context of literature, a newspaper article could not really claim that. (This is why I suggested the _és_-s in Encolpius's other examples.)
- also that in the case of using _és/s_ even the NyK suggests to replace it with other convenient words when possible (e.g. hát, meg, sőt stb.) to avoid their repetition.

*Difficult to translate properly (and off hand).


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## franknagy

> But I agree with you in lots of other aspects:
> - as the _s_ is used more frequently between subsentences and the _és_  between words having the same role in the sentence (NyK) in the context  of literature, a newspaper article could not really claim that. (This  is why I suggested the _és_-s in Encolpius's other examples.)
> - also that in the case of using _és/s_ even the NyK suggests to  replace it with other convenient words when possible (e.g. hát, meg, sőt  stb.) to avoid their repetition.


I think that S does not come from ÉS but rather from SŐT [moreover].


> - that journalists are not known for knowing grammar (sometimes even spelling is a challenge...) and they "play with"/"use" the public's lack of interest/demand/knowledge about that matter to hide it



The worse the Hungarian soccer became the more flowers used the Hungarian reporters in their articles.


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