# az 1, 2, 3. és a 4, 5, 6



## harald

Hi friends on this forum.
I am fighting with an old book (1894) in Hungarian. 
I have the text which has been fed trough OCR and I am editing it into a new book.
As I don't speak any Hungarian I have some questions.

The paragraph is as follows:
Azt a darabot, melyről az M részt vágtad le, vagyis a mely hosszúkás maradt, hajtsd ismét három egyenlő részre, de most széltiben s ollóval vágd szét az LK, KJ és 31 megtört vonalak mentén. Igy két darabot kapsz, az 1, 2, 3. és a 4, 5, 6 derékszögű darabokat. Most nem kell egyéb, mint az, hogy a két derékszögű darabot egymáshoz illeszd, amint ezt a rajz mutatja; a 4, 1, 2. és az 5, 6, 3 derékszögeket égy sorba ejtvén. Az igy nyert alakzat teljesen fedni fogja a másik darabból megmaradt kétharmadot.

What I am wondering about is the '.' after the third number in the list. Then a bit further on there are three numbers without the period after the third item.
A little bit down in the text there is a very similar construction.
In my scan of the original book the commas and the periods are almost indistinguishable.
Does this make sense in Hungarian? In all the languages I know there would never be a period in such a list, but here there does seem to be a structure to this and in other places in the same book I see the construction more often.

All help is greatly appreciated!
Thanks / Harald


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## Olivier0

The period makes an ordinal: "4." in Hungarian = 4th in English. In modern typography it would be strictly "az 1., 2., 3. és" = "the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and", but I can imagine an old book using a different logic like "4, 5, 6." = "4, 5, 6th" with the ordinal mark only after the last one - or would ".," and "," be indistinguishable in the book?
Edit: I realize these are not ordinals since lines are given as LK, KJ and 31 from points called L K J 1 and 3, and then triangles are given as "4, 5, 6" - I suppose it would be "4-5-6" in a more modern typography, and I do not know if the final period "4, 5, 6." would be right in the old typography.
-- Olivier


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## Zsanna

harald,
Apart from what Olivier has already explained, I have some further doubts. 
As those numbers probably indicate the three sides of the two triangles (even if the text mentions them as darabok=pieces) they - as such - are strange already (without the problem of commas or full stops). 
Little letters written in one ("*abc* and *def* triangles or pieces") would be more precise but I don't know whether it is possible/allowed to make such changes. If you can't rename those pieces, drop the full stop from the end of the third number in each group because it is useless.

P.S. Can you change some of the wording, too? (There are mistakes in the spelling, old forms,etc.)


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## harald

Zsanna,
Yes I could change the wording. But first i am trying to understand what is going on. How good/bad is my OCR? And to get a bit of feeling of Hungarian for myself. I am comparing the OCR-ed text to the scans to, at least, take out all the mistakes I myself can spot.
The next question then is: should I change the text to modern Hungarian or not?
In some languages people can read the old language just fine. It sounds nice and old fashioned but the meaning is clear to everyone (Dutch and Danish for example). 
In some languages nothing much has changed (French and English).
But in Spanish I get comment that the book is nice but that there are a lot of typing mistakes. There are no typing mistakes but the spelling has changed. People feel the old spelling as 'lots of mistakes'. That is not good and then I have to (find someone to) change the spelling into something modern.
For Dutch/French/English I am keeping the old spelling. For Spanish and German I am changing it. 
The open question is should I change it for Hungarian?
thanks / Harald


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## Zsanna

Hello again,
Harald, I'll be more detailed in my PM (= private message) because the forum wouldn't allow a discussion in detail here but I think it would be better to brush up the Hungarian in it because it is really too outdated at places (apart from the possible problems with OCR).


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