Hungarian language
Hungarian is a Uralic language spoken in Hungary and parts of several neighbouring countries. It is the official language of Hungary and one of the 24 official languages of the European Union. Outside Hungary it is also spoken by communities of Hungarians in the countries that today make up Slovakia, western Ukraine, central and western Romania, northern Serbia, northern Croatia and northeastern Slovenia.
It is also spoken by Hungarian diaspora communities worldwide, especially in North America and Israel. With 13 million speakers, it is the Uralic family's largest member by number of speakers.
Classification
Hungarian is a member of the Uralic language family. Linguistic connections between Hungarian and other Uralic languages were noticed in the 1670s, and the family itself was established in 1717. Hungarian has traditionally been assigned to the Ugric branch within the Finno-Ugric group, along with the Mansi and Khanty languages of western Siberia, but it is no longer clear that it is a valid group. When the Samoyed languages were determined to be part of the family, it was thought at first that Finnic and Ugric were closer to each other than to the Samoyed branch of the family, but that is now frequently questioned.The name of Hungary could be a result of regular sound changes of Ungrian/Ugrian, and the fact that the Eastern Slavs referred to Hungarians as Ǫgry/Ǫgrove seemed to confirm that. Current literature favors the hypothesis that it comes from the name of the Turkic tribe Onoğur.
There are numerous regular sound correspondences between Hungarian and the other Ugric languages. For example, Hungarian corresponds to Khanty in certain positions, and Hungarian corresponds to Khanty, while Hungarian final corresponds to Khanty final. For example, Hungarian ház "house" vs. Khanty xot "house", and Hungarian száz "hundred" vs. Khanty sot "hundred". The distance between the Ugric and Finnic languages is greater, but the correspondences are also regular.
History
Prehistory
Scholarly consensus
The traditional view holds that the Hungarian language diverged from its Ugric relatives in the first half of the 1st millennium BC, in western Siberia east of the southern Urals. The Hungarians gradually changed their lifestyle from being settled hunters to being nomadic pastoralists, probably as a result of early contacts with Iranian or Turkic nomads. In Hungarian, Iranian loanwords date back to the time immediately following the breakup of Ugric and probably span well over a millennium. Among these include tehén ‘cow’ ; tíz ‘ten’ ; tej ‘milk’ ; and nád ‘reed’.Archaeological evidence from present day southern Bashkortostan confirms the existence of Hungarian settlements between the Volga River and the Ural Mountains. The Onoğurs later had a great influence on the language, especially between the 5th and 9th centuries. This layer of Turkic loans is large and varied, and includes words borrowed from Oghur Turkic; e.g. borjú "calf" ; dél ‘noon; south’. Many words related to agriculture, state administration and even family relationships show evidence of such backgrounds. Hungarian syntax and grammar were not influenced in a similarly dramatic way over these three centuries.
, 12th century
After the arrival of the Hungarians in the Carpathian Basin, the language came into contact with a variety of speech communities, among them Slavic, Turkic, and German. Turkic loans from this period come mainly from the Pechenegs and Cumanians, who settled in Hungary during the 12th and 13th centuries: e.g. koboz "cobza" ; komondor "mop dog". These languages in turn borrowed words from Hungarian: e.g. Serbo-Croatian ašov from Hungarian ásó ‘spade’. About 1.6 percent of the Romanian lexicon is of Hungarian origin.
Recent studies support an origin of the Uralic languages, including early Hungarian, in eastern or central Siberia, somewhere between the Ob and Yenisei river or near the Sayan mountains in the Russia
Alternative views
Hungarian historian and archaeologist Gyula László claims that geological data from pollen analysis seems to contradict the placing of the ancient Hungarian homeland near the Urals.There have been attempts to show that Hungarian is related to other languages, such as Hebrew, Hunnic, Sumerian, Egyptian, Etruscan, Basque, Persian, Pelasgian, Greek, Chinese, Sanskrit, English, Tibetan, Magar, Quechua, Armenian, Japanese, and at least 40 other languages. Mainstream linguists dismiss these attempts as pseudoscientific comparisons with no merit.
Historical controversy over origins
Today the consensus among linguists is that Hungarian is a member of the Uralic family of languages.The classification of Hungarian as a Uralic/Finno-Ugric rather than a Turkic language continued to be a matter of impassioned political controversy throughout the 18th and into the 19th centuries. During the latter half of the 19th century, a competing hypothesis proposed a Turkic affinity of Hungarian, or, alternatively, that both the Uralic and the Turkic families formed part of a superfamily of Ural–Altaic languages. Following an academic debate known as Az ugor-török háború, the Finno-Ugric hypothesis was concluded the sounder of the two, mainly based on work by the German linguist.
Hungarians did in fact absorb some Turkic influences during several centuries of cohabitation. For example, the Hungarians appear to have learned animal husbandry techniques from the Turkic Chuvash people, as a high proportion of words specific to agriculture and livestock are of Chuvash origin. A strong Chuvash influence was also apparent in Hungarian burial customs.
Old Hungarian
The first written accounts of Hungarian date to the 10th century, such as mostly Hungarian personal names and place names in De Administrando Imperio, written in Greek by Eastern Roman Emperor Constantine VII. No significant texts written in Old Hungarian script have survived, as wood, the medium of writing in use at the time, was perishable.The Kingdom of Hungary was founded in 1000 by Stephen I. The country became a Western-styled Christian state, with Latin script replacing Hungarian runes. The earliest remaining fragments of the language are found in the establishing charter of the abbey of Tihany from 1055, intermingled with Latin text. The first extant text fully written in Hungarian is the Funeral Sermon and Prayer, which dates to the 1190s. Although the orthography of these early texts differed considerably from that used today, contemporary Hungarians can still understand a great deal of the reconstructed spoken language, despite changes in grammar and vocabulary.
Modern Hungarian
In 1533, Kraków printer Benedek Komjáti published the first Hungarian-language book set in movable type, a translation of the letters of Saint Paul entitled Az zenth Paal leueley magyar nyeluen.By the 17th century, the language already closely resembled its present-day form, although two of the past tenses remained in use. German, Italian and French loans also began to appear. Further Turkish words were borrowed during the period of Ottoman rule.
In the 19th century a group of writers, most notably Ferenc Kazinczy, spearheaded a process of nyelvújítás. Some words were shortened ; a number of dialectal words spread nationally ; extinct words were reintroduced ; a wide range of expressions were coined using the various derivative suffixes; and some other, less frequently used methods of expanding the language were utilized. This movement produced more than ten thousand words, most of which are used actively today.
The 19th and 20th centuries saw further standardization of the language, and differences between mutually comprehensible dialects gradually diminished.
In 1920, Hungary signed the Treaty of Trianon, losing 71 percent of its territory and one-third of the ethnic Hungarian population along with it.
Today the language holds official status nationally in Hungary and regionally in Romania, Slovakia, Serbia, Austria and Slovenia.
Geographic distribution
| Country | Speakers | Notes |
| Hungary | 9,896,333 | 2011 |
| Romania | 1,268,444 | 2011 |
| Slovakia | 458,467 | 2011 |
| Serbia | 241,164 | 2011 |
| Ukraine | 149,400 | 2001 |
| United States | 117,973 | 2000 |
| Canada | 75,555 | 2001 |
| Israel | 70,000 | |
| Austria | 22,000 | |
| Australia | 20,883 | 2011 |
| Croatia | 16,500 | |
| Slovenia | 9,240 | |
| Total | 12–13 million |
Hungarian has about 13 million native speakers, of whom more than 9.8 million live in Hungary. According to the 2011 Hungarian census, 9,896,333 people speak Hungarian, of whom 9,827,875 people speak it as a first language, while 68,458 people speak it as a second language. About 2.2 million speakers live in other areas that were part of the Kingdom of Hungary before the Treaty of Trianon. Of these, the largest group lives in Transylvania, the western half of present-day Romania, where there are approximately 1.25 million Hungarians. There are large Hungarian communities also in Slovakia, Serbia and Ukraine, and Hungarians can also be found in Austria, Croatia, and Slovenia, as well as about a million additional people scattered in other parts of the world. For example, there are more than one hundred thousand Hungarian speakers in the Hungarian American community and 1.5 million with Hungarian ancestry in the United States.
Official status
Hungarian is the official language of Hungary, and thus an official language of the European Union. Hungarian is also one of the official languages of Vojvodina and an official language of three municipalities in Slovenia: Hodoš, Dobrovnik and Lendava, along with Slovene. Hungarian is officially recognized as a minority or regional language in Austria, Croatia, Romania, Zakarpattia in Ukraine, and Slovakia. In Romania it is a recognized minority language used at local level in communes, towns and municipalities with an ethnic Hungarian population of over 20%.Dialects
The dialects of Hungarian identified by Ethnologue are: Alföld, West Danube, Danube-Tisza, King's Pass Hungarian, Northeast Hungarian, Northwest Hungarian, Székely and West Hungarian. These dialects are, for the most part, mutually intelligible. The Hungarian Csángó dialect, which is mentioned but not listed separately by Ethnologue, is spoken primarily in Bacău County in eastern Romania. The Csángó Hungarian group has been largely isolated from other Hungarian people, and they therefore preserved features that closely resemble earlier forms of Hungarian.Phonology
Hungarian has 14 vowel phonemes and 25 consonant phonemes. The vowel phonemes can be grouped as pairs of short and long vowels such as o and ó. Most of the pairs have a similar pronunciation and vary significantly only in their duration. However, pairs a/á and e/é differ both in closedness and length.Consonant length is also distinctive in Hungarian. Most consonant phonemes can occur as geminates.
The sound voiced palatal plosive, written, sounds similar to 'd' in British English 'duty'. It occurs in the name of the country, "Magyarország", pronounced. It is one of three palatalised consonants, the others being and. Historically a fourth palatalized consonant existed, still written.
A single 'r' is pronounced as an alveolar tap, but a double 'r' is pronounced as an alveolar trill, like in Spanish.
Prosody
Primary stress is always on the first syllable of a word, as in Finnish and the neighbouring Slovak and Czech. There is a secondary stress on other syllables in compounds: viszontlátásra is pronounced. Elongated vowels in non-initial syllables may seem to be stressed to an English-speaker, as length and stress correlate in English.Grammar
Hungarian is an agglutinative language. It uses various affixes, mainly suffixes but also some prefixes and a circumfix, to change a word's meaning and its grammatical function.Vowel harmony
Hungarian uses vowel harmony to attach suffixes to words. That means that most suffixes have two or three different forms, and the choice between them depends on the vowels of the head word. There are some minor and unpredictable exceptions to the rule.Nouns
Nouns have 18 cases, which are formed regularly with suffixes. The nominative case is unmarked and, for example, the accusative is marked with the suffix –t. Half of the cases express a combination of the source-location-target and surface-inside-proximity ternary distinctions ; there is a separate case ending –ból/–ből meaning a combination of source and insideness: 'from inside of'.Possession is expressed by a possessive suffix on the possessed object, rather than the possessor as in English. Noun plurals are formed with–k, but after a numeral, the singular is used.
Unlike English, Hungarian uses case suffixes and nearly always postpositions instead of prepositions.
There are two types of articles in Hungarian, definite and indefinite, which roughly correspond to the equivalents in English.
Adjectives
Adjectives precede nouns and have three degrees: positive, comparative and superlative.If the noun takes the plural or a case, an attributive adjective is invariable: a piros almák 'the red apples'. However, a predicative adjective agrees with the noun: az almák pirosak 'the apples are red'. Adjectives by themselves can behave as nouns : Melyik almát kéred? – A pirosat. 'Which apple would you like? – The red one'.
Verbs
Word order
The neutral word order is subject–verb–object. However, Hungarian is a topic-prominent language, and so has a word order that depends not only on syntax but also on the topic–comment structure of the sentence.A Hungarian sentence generally has the following order: topic, comment, verb and the rest.
The topic shows that the proposition is only for that particular thing or aspect, and it implies that the proposition is not true for some others. For example, in "Az almát János látja"., the apple is in the topic, implying that other objects may be seen by not him but other people. The topic part may be empty.
The focus shows the new information for the listeners that may not have been known or that their knowledge must be corrected. For example, "Én vagyok az apád"., from the movie The Empire Strikes Back, the pronoun I is in the focus and implies that it is new information, and the listener thought that someone else is his father.
Although Hungarian is sometimes described as having free word order, different word orders are generally not interchangeable, and the neutral order is not always correct to use. Also, the intonation is also different with different topic-comment structures. The topic usually has a rising intonation, the focus having a falling intonation. In the following examples, the topic is marked with italics, and the focus is marked with boldface.
- János látja az almát. - 'John sees the apple'. Neutral sentence.
- János látja az almát. - 'John sees the apple'.
- János látja az almát. - 'It is John who sees the apple'.
- János az almát látja. - 'What John sees is the apple'.
- Az almát látja János. - 'It is the apple that is seen by John'.
- Az almát János látja. - 'It is by John that the apple is seen'.
Politeness
- Ön : Use of this form in speech shows respect towards the person addressed, but it is also the common way of speaking in official texts and business communications. Here "you", the second person, is grammatically addressed in the third person.
- Maga : Use of this form serves to show that the speakers wish to distance themselves from the person they address. A boss could also address a subordinate as maga. Aside from the different pronoun it is grammatically the same as "önözés".
- Néni/bácsi : This is a somewhat affectionate way of expressing politeness and is grammatically the same as "önözés" or "magázódás", but adds a certain verb in auxiliary role "tetszik" to support the main verb of the sentence. For example, children are supposed to address adults who are not parents, close friends or close relatives by using "tetszik" : "Hogy vagy?" here becomes "Hogy tetszik lenni?". The elderly, especially women, are generally addressed this way, even by adults.
- Te : Used generally, i.e. with persons with whom none of the above forms of politeness is required, and, in religious contexts, to address God. The highest rank, the king, was traditionally addressed "per tu" by all, peasants and noblemen alike, though with Hungary not having had any crowned king since 1918, this practice survives only in folk tales and children's stories. Use of "tegezés" in the media and advertisements has become more frequent since the early 1990s. It is informal and is normally used in families, among friends, colleagues, among young people, and by adults speaking to children; it can be compared to addressing somebody by their first name in English. Perhaps prompted by the widespread use of English on the Internet, "tegezés" is also becoming the standard way to address people over the Internet, regardless of politeness.
Some anomalies emerged with the arrival of multinational companies who have addressed their customers in the te form right from the beginning of their presence in Hungary. A typical example is the Swedish furniture shop IKEA, whose web site and other publications address the customers in te form. When a news site asked IKEA—using the te form—why they address their customers this way, IKEA's PR Manager explained in his answer—using the ön form—that their way of communication reflects IKEA's open-mindedness and the Swedish culture. However IKEA in France uses the polite form. Another example is the communication of Telenor towards its customers. Telenor chose to communicate towards business customers in the polite ön form while all other customers are addressed in the less polite te form.
Vocabulary
During the first early phase of Hungarian language reforms more than ten thousand words were coined, several thousand of which are still actively used today Kazinczy's chief goal was to replace existing words of German and Latin origins with newly-created Hungarian words. As a result, Kazinczy and his later followers significantly reduced the formerly high ratio of words of Latin and German origins in the Hungarian language, which were related to social sciences, natural sciences, politics and economics, institutional names, fashion etc.Giving an accurate estimate for the total word count is difficult, since it is hard to define "a word" in agglutinating languages, due to the existence of affixed words and compound words. To obtain a meaningful definition of compound words, we have to exclude such compounds whose meaning is the mere sum of its elements. The largest dictionaries giving translations from Hungarian to another language contain 120,000 words and phrases. The new desk lexicon of the Hungarian language contains 75,000 words and the Comprehensive Dictionary of Hungarian Language is planned to contain 110,000 words. The default Hungarian lexicon is usually estimated to comprise 60,000 to 100,000 words. However, all the Hungarian lexemes collected from technical texts, dialects etc. would total up to 1,000,000 words.
Parts of the lexicon can be organized using word-bushes. The words in these bushes share a common root, are related through inflection, derivation and compounding, and are usually broadly related in meaning.
The basic vocabulary shares several hundred word roots with other Uralic languages like Finnish, Estonian, Mansi and Khanty. Examples are the verb él "live", the numbers kettő, három, négy , as well as víz 'water', kéz 'hand', vér 'blood', fej 'head'.
Words for elementary kinship and nature are more Ugric, less r-Turkic and less Slavic. Agricultural words are about 50% r-Turkic and 50% Slavic; pastoral terms are more r-Turkic, less Ugric and less Slavic. Finally, Christian and state terminology is more Slavic and less r-Turkic. The Slavic is most probably proto-Slovakian and/or -Slovenian. This is easily understood in the Uralic paradigm, proto-Magyars were first similar to Ob-Ugors who were mainly hunters, fishers and gatherers, but with some horses, too. Then they accultured to Bulgarian r-Turks, so the older layer of agriculture words are purely r-Turkic, and many terms of statesmanship and religion were, too.
Except for a few Latin and Greek loan-words, these differences are unnoticed even by native speakers; the words have been entirely adopted into the Hungarian lexicon. There are an increasing number of English loan-words, especially in technical fields.
Another source differs in that loanwords in Hungarian are held to constitute about 45% of bases in the language. Although the lexical percentage of native words in Hungarian is 55%, their use accounts for 88.4% of all words used. Therefore, the history of Hungarian has come, especially since the 19th century, to favor neologisms from original bases, whilst still having developed as many terms from neighboring languages in the lexicon.
Word formation
Words can be compounds or derived. Most derivation is with suffixes, but there is a small set of derivational prefixes as well.Compounds
Compounds have been present in the language since the Proto-Uralic era. Numerous ancient compounds transformed to base words during the centuries. Today, compounds play an important role in vocabulary.A good example is the word arc:
Compounds are made up of two base words: the first is the prefix, the latter is the suffix. A compound can be subordinative: the prefix is in logical connection with the suffix. If the prefix is the subject of the suffix, the compound is generally classified as a subjective one. There are objective, determinative, and adjunctive compounds as well. Some examples are given below:
According to current orthographic rules, a subordinative compound word has to be written as a single word, without spaces; however, if the length of a compound of three or more words is seven or more syllables long , a hyphen must be inserted at the appropriate boundary to ease the determination of word boundaries for the reader.
Other compound words are coordinatives: there is no concrete relation between the prefix and the suffix. Subcategories include reduplication, twin words, and such compounds which have meanings, but neither their prefixes, nor their suffixes make sense.
A compound also can be made up by multiple base words: in this case, at least one word element, or even both the prefix and the suffix is a compound. Some examples:
Noteworthy lexical items
Points of the compass
Hungarian words for the points of the compass are directly derived from the position of the Sun during the day in the Northern Hemisphere.- North = észak, as the Sun never shines from the North
- South = dél, as the Sun shines from the South at noon
- East = kelet, as the Sun rises in the East
- West = nyugat, as the Sun sets in the West
Two words for "red"
However, the two words are also used independently of the above in collocations. "Piros" is learned by children first, as it is generally used to describe inanimate, artificial things, or things seen as cheerful or neutral, while "vörös" typically refers to animate or natural things, as well as serious or emotionally charged subjects.
When the rules outlined above are in contradiction, typical collocations usually prevail. In some cases where a typical collocation does not exist, the use of either of the two words may be equally adequate.
Examples:
- Expressions where "red" typically translates to "piros": a red road sign, red traffic lights, the red line of Budapest Metro, red bus lines in Budapest, a holiday shown in red in the calendar, ruddy complexion, the red nose of a clown, some red flowers, red peppers and paprika, red card suits, red stripes on a flag, etc.
- Expressions where "red" typically translates to "vörös": Red Sea, Red Square, Red Army, Red Baron, Erik the Red, red wine, red carpet, red hair or beard, red lion, the Red Cross, the novel The Red and the Black, redshift, red giant, red blood cells, red oak, some red flowers, red fox, names of ferric and other red minerals, red copper, rust, red phosphorus, the colour of blushing with anger or shame, the red nose of an alcoholic, the red posterior of a baboon, red meat, regular onion, litmus paper, cities, countries, or other political entities associated with leftist movements, etc.
Kinship terms
| younger | elder | unspecifiedrelative age | |
| brother | öcs | báty | fivér orfiútestvér |
| sister | húg | nővér | nővér orlánytestvér |
| sibling | kistestvér | ' | testvér |
In addition, there are separate prefixes for several ancestors and descendants:
| parent | grandparent | great-grandparent | great-great-grandparent | great-great-great-grandparent | great-great-great-great- grandparent |
| szülő | nagyszülő | dédszülő | ükszülő | szépszülő | ószülő |
| child | grandchild | great-grandchild | great-great-grandchild | great-great-great-grandchild | great-great-great-great-grandchild |
| gyerek | unoka | dédunoka | ükunoka | szépunoka | óunoka |
The words for "boy" and "girl" are applied with possessive suffixes. Nevertheless, the terms are differentiated with different declension or lexemes:
| boy/girl | son/daughter | lover, partner | |
| male | fiú | fia | fiúja/barátja |
| female | lány | lánya | barátnője |
Fia is only used in this, irregular possessive form; it has no nominative on its own. However, the word fiú can also take the regular suffix, in which case the resulting word ' will refer to a lover or partner, rather than a male offspring.
The word fiú is also often noted as an extreme example of the ability of the language to add suffixes to a word, by forming fiaiéi'', adding vowel-form suffixes only, where the result is quite a frequently used word:
| fiú | boy |
| fia | his/her son |
| fiai | his/her sons |
| fiáé | his/her son's |
| fiáéi | his/her son's |
| fiaié | his/her sons' |
| fiaiéi | his/her sons' |
Extremely long words
- megszentségteleníthetetlenségeskedéseitekért
| meg- | verb prefix; in this case, it means "completed" |
| szent | holy |
| -ség | like English "-ness", as in "holiness" |
| -tlen | variant of "-tlen", noun suffix expressing the lack of something; like English "-less", as in "useless" |
| -ít | constitutes a transitive verb from an adjective |
| -het | expresses possibility; somewhat similar to the English modal verbs "may" or "can" |
| -tlen | another variant of "-tlen" |
| -ség | |
| -es | constitutes an adjective from a noun; like English "-y" as in "witty" |
| -ked | attached to an adjective, produces the verb "to pretend to be " |
| -és | constitutes a noun from a verb; there are various ways this is done in English, e.g. "-ance" in "acceptance" |
| -eitek | plural possessive suffix, second-person plural |
| -ért | approximately translates to "because of", or in this case simply "for" |
The above word is often considered to be the longest word in Hungarian, although there are longer words like:
- legeslegmegszentségteleníttethetetlenebbjeitekként
There is virtually no limit for the length of words, but when too many suffixes are added, the meaning of the word becomes less clear, and the word becomes hard to understand, and will work like a riddle even for native speakers.
Hungarian words in English
The English word best known as being of Hungarian origin is probably paprika, from Serbo-Croatian papar "pepper" and the Hungarian diminutive -ka. The most common however is coach, from kocsi, originally kocsi szekér "car from/in the style of Kocs". Others are:- shako, from csákó, from csákósüveg "peaked cap"
- sabre, from szablya
- , from hajdúk, plural of hajdú "brigand"
- tolpatch, from talpas "foot-soldier", apparently derived from talp "sole".
Writing system
Modern Hungarian is written using an expanded Latin alphabet, and has a phonemic orthography, i.e. pronunciation can generally be predicted from the written language. In addition to the standard letters of the Latin alphabet, Hungarian uses several modified Latin characters to represent the additional vowel sounds of the language. These include letters with acute accents to represent long vowels, and umlauts and their long counterparts ő and ű to represent front vowels. Sometimes or is used for, and for. This is often due to the limitations of the Latin-1 / ISO-8859-1 code page. These letters are not part of the Hungarian language, and are considered misprints. Hungarian can be properly represented with the Latin-2 / ISO-8859-2 code page, but this code page is not always available. Unicode includes them, and so they can be used on the Internet.
Additionally, the letter pairs Hungarian ny|, Hungarian ty|, and Hungarian gy| represent the palatal consonants,, and —produced using a similar mechanism as the letter "d" when pronounced with the tongue pointing to the palate.
Hungarian uses for and Hungarian sz| for, which is the reverse of Polish usage. The letter Hungarian zs| is and Hungarian cs| is. These digraphs are considered single letters in the alphabet. The letter Hungarian ly| is also a "single letter digraph", but is pronounced like , and appears mostly in old words. The letters Hungarian dz| and Hungarian dzs| are exotic remnants and are hard to find even in longer texts. Some examples still in common use are madzag, edzeni and dzsungel.
Sometimes additional information is required for partitioning words with digraphs: házszám = ház + szám, not an unintelligible házs + zám.
Hungarian distinguishes between long and short vowels, with long vowels written with acutes. It also distinguishes between long and short consonants, with long consonants being doubled. For example, lenni, hozzászólás. The digraphs, when doubled, become trigraphs: + =, e.g. művésszel. But when the digraph occurs at the end of a line, all of the letters are written out. For example, :
When the first lexeme of a compound ends in a digraph and the second lexeme starts with the same digraph, both digraphs are written out: jegy + gyűrű = jegygyűrű.
Usually a trigraph is a double digraph, but there are a few exceptions: tizennyolc is a concatenation of tizen + nyolc. There are doubling minimal pairs: tol vs. toll.
While to English speakers they may seem unusual at first, once the new orthography and pronunciation are learned, written Hungarian is almost completely phonemic.
Word order
The word order is basically from general to specific. This is a typical analytical approach and is used generally in Hungarian.Name order
The Hungarian language uses the so-called eastern name order, in which the surname comes first and the given name comes last. If a second given name is used, this follows the first given name.Hungarian names in foreign languages
For clarity, in foreign languages Hungarian names are usually represented in the western name order. Sometimes, however, especially in the neighbouring countries of Hungary – where there is a significant Hungarian population – the Hungarian name order is retained, as it causes less confusion there.For an example of foreign use, the birth name of the Hungarian-born physicist called the "father of the hydrogen bomb" was Teller Ede, but he immigrated to the United States in the 1930s and thus became known as Edward Teller. Prior to the mid-20th century, given names were usually translated along with the name order; this is no longer as common. For example, the pianist uses András Schiff when abroad, not Andrew Schiff. If a second given name is present, it becomes a middle name and is usually written out in full, rather than truncated to an initial.
Foreign names in Hungarian
In modern usage, foreign names retain their order when used in Hungarian. Therefore:- Amikor Kiss János Los Angelesben volt, látta John Travoltát.
Some native speakers disapprove of this usage; the names of certain historical religious personalities, however, are always Hungarianised by practically all speakers, such as Luther Márton, Husz János, Kálvin János ; just like the names of monarchs, for example the king of Spain, Juan Carlos I is referred to as I. János Károly or the queen of the UK, Elizabeth II is referred to as II. Erzsébet.
Japanese names, which are usually written in western order in the rest of Europe, retain their original order in Hungarian, e. g. Kuroszava Akira instead of Akira Kurosawa.
Date and time
The Hungarian convention for date and time is to go from the generic to the specific: 1. year, 2. month, 3. day, 4. hour, 5. minute,The year and day are always written in Arabic numerals, followed by a full stop. The month can be written by its full name or can be abbreviated, or even denoted by Roman or Arabic numerals. Except for the first case, the month is followed by a full stop. Usually, when the month is written in letters, there is no leading zero before the day. On the other hand, when the month is written in Arabic numerals, a leading zero is common, but not obligatory. Except at the beginning of a sentence, the name of the month always begins with a lower-case letter.
Hours, minutes, and seconds are separated by a colon. Fractions of a second are separated by a full stop from the rest of the time. Hungary generally uses the 24-hour clock format, but in verbal communication 12-hour clock format can also be used. See below for usage examples.
Date and time may be separated by a comma or simply written one after the other.
- 2008. február 9. 16:23:42 or 2008. február 9., 16:23:42
- 2008. febr. 9.
- 2008. 02. 09. or 2008. 2. 9.
- 2008. II. 9.
- 2008-02-09
Also, in verbal and written communication it is common to use "délelőtt" and "délután" abbreviated as "de." and "du." respectively. Délelőtt and délután is said or written before the time, e.g. "Délután 4 óra van." – "It's 4 p.m.". However e.g. "délelőtt 5 óra" or "délután 10 óra" are never used, because at these times the sun is not up, instead "hajnal", "reggel", "este" and "éjjel" is used, however there are no exact rules for the use of these, as everybody uses them according to their habits. Roughly, these expressions mean these times:
| Expression | Approximate time |
| Hajnal | 4–6 a.m. |
| Reggel | 6–9 a.m. |
| Délelőtt | 9 a.m. – 12 p.m. |
| Dél* | =12 p.m. |
| Délután | 12–6 p.m. |
| Este | 6–11 p.m. |
| Éjjel | 11 p.m. – 4 a.m. |
| Éjfél* | =12 a.m. |
- * "Dél" and "éjfél" mean these exact times, so using time after them is incorrect. So there is no "Éjfél 0-kor még buliztunk" or "Dél 12-kor süt a nap.". Instead "Éjfélkor még buliztunk." and "Délben süt a nap." is correct. "Délen süt a nap" on the other hand means "The sun shines in the south", as Dél means both noon and south.
Addresses
Budapest, Deák Ferenc tér 1. 1052
So the order is: 1) settlement street/square/etc. house number postcode. The house number may be followed by the storey and door numbers. The HU- part before the postcode is only for incoming postal traffic from foreign countries. Addresses on envelopes and postal parcels should be formatted and placed on the right side as follows:
Name of the recipient
Settlement
Street address
postcode
Vocabulary examples
Note: The stress is always placed on the first syllable of each word. The remaining syllables all receive an equal, lesser stress. All syllables are pronounced clearly and evenly, even at the end of a sentence, unlike in English.Numbers
Source: Wiktionary| English | Hungarian | IPA |
| zero | nulla | |
| one | egy | |
| two | kettő | |
| three | három | |
| four | négy | |
| five | öt | |
| six | hat | |
| seven | hét | |
| eight | nyolc | |
| nine | kilenc | |
| ten | tíz |
| English | Hungarian | IPA |
| eleven | tizenegy | |
| twelve | tizenkettő | |
| thirteen | tizenhárom | |
| fourteen | tizennégy | |
| fifteen | tizenöt | |
| sixteen | tizenhat | |
| seventeen | tizenhét | |
| eighteen | tizennyolc | |
| nineteen | tizenkilenc | |
| twenty | húsz |
| English | Hungarian | IPA |
| twenty-one | huszonegy | |
| twenty-two | huszonkettő | |
| twenty-three | huszonhárom | |
| twenty-four | huszonnégy | |
| twenty-five | huszonöt | |
| twenty-six | huszonhat | |
| twenty-seven | huszonhét | |
| twenty-eight | huszonnyolc | |
| twenty-nine | huszonkilenc | |
| thirty | harminc | |
| forty | negyven | |
| fifty | ötven | |
| sixty | hatvan | |
| seventy | hetven | |
| eighty | nyolcvan | |
| ninety | kilencven |
| English | Hungarian | IPA |
| one hundred | száz | |
| one thousand | ezer | |
| two thousand | kétezer | |
| two thousand nineteen | kétezer-tizenkilenc | |
| one million | egymillió | /ˈɛɟmilːiʲoː/ |
| one billion | egymilliárd | /ˈɛɟmilːiʲaːrd/ |
Time
Source: Wiktionary| English | Hungarian | IPA |
| January | január | |
| February | február | |
| March | március | |
| April | április | |
| May | május | |
| June | június | |
| July | július | |
| August | augusztus | |
| September | szeptember | |
| October | október | |
| November | november | |
| December | december |
Source:Wiktionary
Conversation
- Hungarian : magyar
- Hello!:
- *Formal, when addressing a stranger: "Good day!": Jó napot !
- *Informal, when addressing a close acquaintance: Szia!
- Good-bye!: Viszontlátásra! , Viszlát! , Szia!
- Excuse me: Elnézést!
- Please:
- *Kérem
- *Legyen szíves!
- I would like ____, please: Szeretnék ____
- Sorry!: Bocsánat!
- Thank you: Köszönöm
- that/this: az, ez
- How much?: Mennyi?
- How much does it cost?: Mennyibe kerül?
- Yes: Igen
- No: Nem
- I do not understand: Nem értem
- I do not know: Nem tudom
- Where's the toilet?:
- *Hol a vécé?
- *Hol a mosdó? – more polite version
- generic toast: Egészségünkre!
- juice: gyümölcslé
- water: víz
- wine: bor
- beer: sör
- tea: tea
- milk: tej
- Do you speak English?: Beszél angolul? Note that the fact of asking is only shown by the proper intonation: continually rising until the penultimate syllable, then falling for the last one.
- I love you: Szeretlek
- Help!: Segítség!
- It is needed: kell
- I need to go: Mennem kell
Recorded Examples
Courses
- MagyarOK – Text book and exercise book for beginners. Szita, Szilvia; Pelcz, Katalin. Pécs; Pécsi Tudományegyetem. .
- Colloquial Hungarian – The complete course for beginners. Rounds, Carol H.; Sólyom, Erika. London; New York: Routledge..
- Teach Yourself Hungarian – A complete course for beginners. Pontifex, Zsuzsa. London: Hodder & Stoughton. Chicago: NTC/Contemporary Publishing. .
- Hungarolingua 1 – Magyar nyelvkönyv. Hoffmann, István; et al.. .
- Hungarolingua 2 – Magyar nyelvkönyv. Hlavacska, Edit; et al.. .
- Hungarolingua 3 – Magyar nyelvkönyv. Hlavacska, Edit; et al.. .
- "NTC's Hungarian and English Dictionary" by Magay and Kiss.
Grammars
- Gyakorló magyar nyelvtan / A Practical Hungarian grammar. Szita Szilvia, Görbe Tamás. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó. 978 963 05 8703 7.
- A practical Hungarian grammar. Keresztes, László. Debrecen: Debreceni Nyári Egyetem..
- . Ignatius Singer. London: Trübner & Co.
- Practical Hungarian grammar: . Törkenczy, Miklós. Budapest: Corvina..
- Hungarian verbs and essentials of grammar: a practical guide to the mastery of Hungarian. Törkenczy, Miklós. Budapest: Corvina; Lincolnwood, : Passport Books..
- Hungarian: an essential grammar. Rounds, Carol. London; New York: Routledge..
- Hungarian: Descriptive grammar. Kenesei, István, Robert M. Vago, and Anna Fenyvesi. London; New York: Routledge..
- Noun Declension Tables – HUNGARIAN. Budapest: . .
- Verb Conjugation Tables – HUNGARIAN. Budapest: . .
Others
- Abondolo, Daniel Mario: Hungarian Inflectional Morphology. Akadémiai publishing. Budapest, 1988.
- Balázs, Géza: The Story of Hungarian. A Guide to the Language. Translated by Thomas J. DeKornfeld. Corvina publishing. Budapest, 1997.
- Stephanides, Éva H. : Contrasting English with Hungarian. Akadémiai publishing. Budapest, 1986.
''Encyclopaedia Humana Hungarica''
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Dictionaries
- created by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences – Computer and Automation Research Institute
- - Online Hungarian-English dictionary and language learning portal
- – three-language freely editable online dictionary