Van egy kutya és egy macska; az utóbbi fiatal.

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Breakdown of Van egy kutya és egy macska; az utóbbi fiatal.

• kutya: the dog
• macska: the cat
• és: and

Questions & Answers about Van egy kutya és egy macska; az utóbbi fiatal.

Why does the sentence begin with van?

Because van is being used in an existential sense: there is / there are.

So:

• Van egy kutya. = There is a dog.
• Van egy kutya és egy macska. = There is a dog and a cat.

This is different from sentences like A kutya fiatal (The dog is young), where Hungarian usually does not say the present-tense is in the 3rd person.

Why is it van, not vannak, if there are two animals?

In this kind of existential sentence, Hungarian very often uses singular van when introducing a whole situation or list as new information, even if more than one item follows.

So Van egy kutya és egy macska is natural Hungarian.

A simple way to think about it is:

• van here introduces the existence of the whole setup
• the sentence is not built exactly the same way as English there are

You will still see vannak with clearly plural subjects, for example:

• Vannak kutyák a kertben. = There are dogs in the garden.

But in this sentence, van is the normal choice.

Why is egy used before both kutya and macska?