Hungarian for beginners

a strong correspondence between writing and pronunciation • two kinds of vowel harmony • agglutination, resulting in practically infinite vocabulary and blending different parts of speec

Hungarian for Beginners

About the course and the language

Szia, kedves olvasó! - Hi, dear reader!

This course doesn’t follow any book or other external resource It was prepared by a native speaker, who has no formal knowledge of linguistics at all, therefore the lessons are based on solely his

observations and are strongly affected by his logic That guy is me, and I’m switching to first person at this point

I’m not trying to cover the origins of the language, many have

already prepared much better summaries than I ever could Also, I’m not trying to go too technical concerning grammar because of

my lack of education in that area I don’t know the terminology and I’m not even convinced if it’s a good idea to apply western

grammar categories to such an obscure language Summing up, I intend to follow a descriptive approach and target those who are interested in learning the language instead of some abstract

theory

As I see it, Hungarian is a language which is hard to describe in a simple way when it comes to specific aspects, but its intuitiveness becomes obvious for those who use it regularly First of all, it is deeply orthogonal; moving between different parts of speech is trivial (thanks to the language being agglutinative), and you’ll often find that learning a rule here might help understanding something over there For the proper description being often cumbersome I

advise you to look for patterns instead of trying to learn

conjugation tables by heart

Just for a teaser, some features of Hungarian:

• nearly phonemic orthography, i.e a strong correspondence between writing and pronunciation

• two kinds of vowel harmony

• agglutination, resulting in practically infinite vocabulary and blending different parts of speech

• an extensive case system with dozens of cases

• practically free, 'component-based' word order

• no grammatical gender, not even separate words for 'he' and 'she'

• two kinds of verb conjugation depending on the object of the sentence, which makes 'I love you' a single word

• subordinate clauses in IE languages often correspond to

structures in adjective position

• you name it, we have it

I hope this mouthwatering list convinces you that mastering this language gives meaning to your life

Contents

Lesson 1: Hungarian Alphabet, Vowel Harmony, Pronunciation Rules

Alphabet • Vowel Harmony • Pronunciation

Lesson 2: Short Dialogue, Picking It Apart, Overview, Some Expressions, Grammar Items

The Beginning • A Short Dialogue • Picking It

Apart • Overview • Vocabulary • Vocabulary • Vocabulary • Some Expressions • Grammar Items Lesson 3: Plural & Accusative Case, Vocabulary, Morphology, Subject-Verb-Complement, Using the Substantive, Using Demonstrative Pronouns

Plural & Accusative Case • Vocabulary • Morphology • Subject- Verb-

Complement • Substantive • Demonstrative Pronouns • Exercises

Lesson 4: Introduction, Riding through it

Introduction • Riding Through It • Exercises

Part One - The Basics

Lesson 1: Hungarian Alphabet, Vowel Harmony,

Pronunciation Rules

This lesson on spelling and pronunciation might look

overwhelming, but don’t let that discourage you You could as well skip its gory depths and train yourself with sound recordings

instead However, I always found it useful to learn similar

pronunciation rules for other languages, because my ears can easily deceive me if my brain doesn’t tell them what to look out for Being aware of such rules helped me overcome the bias of my own

mother tongue My advice is to use this knowledge to polish your listening skills, and try to internalise it through practice Learning the tables by heart would be completely pointless

The first important skill to learn is reading Since Hungarian is

nearly phonemic, mastering its mile long alphabet is essential

The Hungarian language is written with Latin letters The complete alphabet consists of 44 letters, but four of these (the ones in bold face) only appear in foreign words or names They are often simply omitted from the list

Letter Name IPA

Consonants and vowels are traditionally grouped by certain

qualities, which are relevant to pronunciation on a practical level.Classification of Consonants (pairs and pairless 'loners')

Unrounded e, é, i-í a, á

Some consonants are represented with digraphs, and there is one trigraph Long consonants are denoted by doubling the letter, or

trigraphs: ggy, ssz, ddzsetc

Words are classified according to their vowels as front

the endings attached during conjugation have a front and a back form (some are even more specialised according to roundedness) Vowel harmony ensures that front words get the front endings and back words the back endings In the case of mixed words the last vowel has strong impact on the ending, but there are ambiguous

adding it to the previous words

gives életben, álomban and hotelban or hotelben.

It is important to remember that for historical reasons i (and

consequently í as well) can behave as if it was a back vowel Hence, the classification of words containing i must be memorised

individually Examples: szív(heart) becomes szívben,

groups

Pronunciation Rules

Hungarian is a phonemic language, so the basic rule is to read out all the letters as the corresponding sound Every syllable should be audible, the first being stressed all the time In the case of

composite words the other components are also slightly stressed

on their first syllable The vowels never change, although their length does not always match what’s written

On the other hand, the consonants do succumb to some rules, most of which are due to the physiology of speech Since different languages treat the same consonant combinations in different ways, it is useful to be aware of these rules

The most important rule is that consonants inherit the voicedness

of the following consonant unless it is pairlessand voiced Some

examples (the changed consonants are in bold face):

• unvoiced

pairs: ezt [ɛst], dobszó [dopsoː], tölgyfa [tølcfɒ], tévhit [teːfhit], va

dkan [vɒtkɒn], fogódzhat[fogoːʦhɒt], egykor [ɛckor]

• voiced

pairs: képzel [keːbzɛl], csontgomb [ʧondgomb], cukrászda [ʦukraː

zdɒ], babusgat [bɒbuʒgɒt], ércből[eːrʣbøːl], lökdös [løgdøʃ]

• no change: hatna [hɒtnɒ], képmás [keːpmaːʃ]

Next, n becomes m before b, p, f and

v: különböző [kylømbøzøː], színpad [siːmpɒd], rohanva [rohɒmvɒ],

csalánféle [ʧɒlaːmfeːlɛ].

When an sz or a z is followed by an s or a zs, the result is the long

version of the latter sound: igazság [igɒʃːaːg] (this is not a zs, but a

z followed by an s), egészség [ɛgeːʃːeːg], húsz zsák [huːʒːaːk] etc

In faster speech sz and z can also assimilate the preceding s and zs

in a similar way

An even more important rule is the assimilation of j to the

preceding palatal (soft) consonant, making it

longer:anyja [ɒɲːɒ], hagyja [hɒɟːɒ], bátyja [baːcːɒ].

In some cases two consonants melt together to form a third one These rules must be strictly followed, pronouncing the written consonants separately is outright erroneous:

Written Spoken Examples

d/t+s ccs, cs fűtsük [fyːʧːyk], gyújtsa [ɟuːjʧɒ], vadság [vɒʧːaːg], szilárdság [silaːrʧaːg]

d/t+sz cc metsző [mɛʦːøː], maradsz [mɒrɒʦː]

gy/ty+s ccs egység [ɛʧːeːg]

gy/ty+sz cc egyszer [ɛʦːɛr]

t+j tty, ty botja [bocːɒ], mártja [maːrcɒ]

d+j ggy, gy aludjunk [ɒluɟːunk], kardja [kɒrɟɒ]

n+j nny menjen [mɛɲːɛn]

Important: the assimilations listed in the table above never happen

on word boundaries, including compound words Examples: átjár [aːtjaːr], hadjárat [hɒdjaːrɒt], hadsereg [hɒtʃɛrɛg] (note the tʃ instead of the ʧ) etc

Finally, certain words have a mute h at the

end: céh [tseː], düh [dy], juh [ju], méh [meː] and some others

When an ending is attached, the h appears in

pronunciation: dühös [dyhøʃ], méhek [meːhɛk] and so on.

Lesson 2: Short Dialogue, Picking It Apart, Overview, Some Expressions, Grammar Items

The Beginning

A Short Dialogue

Let’s start with a short conversation that touches many aspects of the language, so it will be a relatively long and hopefully rewarding lesson—brace yourself and be strong I’ll always provide a real and

a literal translation for longer texts with many unknown

expressions, so you can see how the sentences are built up

Hungarian:

- Szia!

- Szia! Hogy hívnak?

- Péternek És téged?

- Én Márta vagyok Hogy vagy?

- Köszi, ma egész jól Honnan jöttél?

- Debrecenből És te hol laksz?

- Budapesti vagyok, az I kerületben lakom

- Hi!

- Hi! What’s your name?

- Péter And yours?

- I’m Márta How are you?

- Thanks, I’m fine today Where are you from?

- From Debrecen And you, where do you live?

- I’m from Budapest, I live in the 1st district

- Hi! How they-call-you?

- Péter(DAT) And you(ACC)?

- I Márta I-am How you-are?

- Thanks, today fairly well From-where you-came?

- From-Debrecen And you where you-dwell?

- Budapest(ADJ) I-am, the 1st in-district I-dwell

This is an informal greeting along the lines of ‘hello’ or ‘hi’, but it can only be said to one person When you are addressing a group,

you have to use its plural form, sziasztok In Hungarian there are

three levels of formality, which affects only verb forms and

greetings As long as I don’t go explicitly into these issues, only informal language will be discussed Another informal greeting

is helló and hellósztok, although helló is not strictly singular as szia.

2 Szia! Hogy hívnak?

The simplest way to ask for someone’s name is the question Hogy

hívnak?, literally ‘How do they call you?’ The word hogy is the

interrogative ‘how’ and also the connective ‘that’ The verb ‘to call’

is hívni in both of its primary meanings ("call by name" and "call to

come") Infinitive forms in Hungarian always end in -ni However, dictionaries usually list the 3rd person singular form instead,

probably because it gives more hints on conjugation For each verb that can take an object (i.e transitive verbs) you need to know 13 forms to be able to use it in present tense indicative There are 6 indefinite forms (1st, 2nd and 3rd person singular and plural) and 6+1 definite forms (the same six plus the I-you form) Whether you need to use the definite or the indefinite depends on the object of the sentence, which will be explained later Let’s see them with the personal pronouns! On each row the first one is the indefinite

form, and the third element of the first row is the I-you form

hívni - to call

én hívok, hívom, hívlak I call, call it * , call you (singular or plural informal)

te hívsz, hívod you (singular informal) call, call it

ő hív, hívja he/she/it calls, calls it

mi hívunk, hívjuk we call, call it

ti hívtok, hívjátok you (plural informal) call, call it

ők hívnak, hívják they call, call it

You might notice that even though there is a definite object (you), the indefinite form is used in the question This is because the

definite forms are only used with 3rd person objects 1st and 2nd person objects are almost always accompanied by an indefinite verb I’ll tell about the exception later

3 Péternek És téged?

When answering the above question, you have to put the name in dative case I won’t be throwing around names of various cases except for accusative and dative, don’t worry So, the dative case is formed by adding the ending -nak or -nek following the rules of vowel harmony

As was mentioned in lesson 1, vowels are divided in four groups depending on the place of the tongue (front or back) and the shape

of the lips (rounded or unrounded) at the time they are formed There are 14 vowels, 10 of which are short-long pairs, which gives 9 unique sounds altogether:

front rounded: ö-ő, ü-ű

front unrounded: e, é, i-í

back rounded: o-ó, u-ú

back unrounded: a, á

I indicated the short-long pairs with dashes The basic idea of vowel harmony is that words having many vowels from one group take endings with vowels from the same or a close group Mostly this means front-back correspondence, roundedness comes up much less frequently

The forms an ending can take are fixed As I said, the dative case (and also the 3rd plural indefinite form of a verb, as you can see above) is formed by adding -nak or -nek, but never -nák or -nök or anything else Just keep that in mind every time you learn a new ending

All in all, Péter contains two front vowels, therefore it takes the front version of the dative case ending, -nek Hence Péternek

However, if you were attentive, you could notice that something

wrong is going on with hívni: it doesn’t get the front ending it

deserves I have very bad news for you if you have skipped the

details in the first lesson The vowel i-í is a black sheep in this

vocal system, because it can behave as a back vowel when it comes

to conjugation The reason is historical, I won’t go into it The only solution is to learn the stance of every word containing i or í by heart There are no clear rules to separate them There’s a nice rule

of thumb though: most unisyllabic verbs with an i-í vowel get back (!) endings

Okay, let’s go on És means ‘and’, there’s no catch here Téged is the accusative case of te, i.e informal singular ‘you’ The object of

the sentence is always in accusative, except for parts of speech that can’t take cases (e.g the infinitive) Nominals (nouns, adjectives, numerals, pronouns) ‘can’ and ‘do’ And while we’re at it, let’s see the accusative of the six personal pronouns in one line:

engem, téged, őt, minket, titeket, őket

Just to illustrate how special personal pronouns are, I present them

in dative case as well:

nekem, neked, neki, nekünk, nektek, nekik

This is the general way to conjugate them: take the case ending as

a stem (how absurd!) and add an ending that looks quite familiar after checking back on verb conjugation, mostly the definite

column This is not just a coincidence It doesn’t always work

though and it’s full of exceptions, so you’ll end up memorising end forms anyway, but it’s still good to be aware of the basic idea

4 Én Márta vagyok Hogy vagy?

Let’s introduce the substantive, ‘to be’ This is a very special verb,

so it is sometimes considered to form a different part of speech by itself It can’t take objects, which means only 6 forms instead of 13

to learn That’s a nice thing, because otherwise it’s highly irregular We’ll have two other verbs like that in this text, so by the end of the lesson you’ll know the three worst Hungarian verbs

lenni - to be

én vagyok I am

te vagy you (singular informal) are

ti vagytok You (plural informal) are

Since the verbs clearly indicate the subject, you normally don’t need to include the subjects explicitly They can be added for

emphasis though Here I felt it appropriate, because Márta sort of stresses that Péter has already introduced himself, so it’s her turn.

You should note that the verb is at the end Actually, the

expression Márta vagyok is indivisible Any time you use the

substantive as ‘X is Y’, Y will come before the verb in Hungarian, and they can only move together as far as the word order allows

The subject of the sentence is én, and the predicate is Márta

vagyok as a whole Switching the order in this case isn’t a good

idea, unless you want to sound funny But it’s definitely not

ungrammatical to do so

I think the question Hogy vagy? is quite clear in the light of the

above, literally ‘how are you?’

5 Köszi, ma egész jól Honnan jöttél?

Köszi is a very informal way to say thanks You can also use the less

nonchalant köszönöm instead, it doesn’t make you sound formal at

all In fact, it is appropriate in both formal and informal context

Ma means today, both as an adverb and as a noun, so it can also

take cases Just for practice, the dative case ismának This is

completely regular: words ending in -a or -e have their last vowels changed to -á- and -é- when an ending is attached—at least there are only a few endings that don’t cause such a change as opposed

to the countless ones that do

Egész primarily means ‘whole’ as an adjective, but as an adverb it’s

something like ‘fairly’ The proper adverbial form

of egész is egészen (-n is the affix to turn most adjectives into the

corresponding adverb, and an-a- or an -e- is added as a link vowel for words that don’t end in a vowel), but in the case of this specific word it can be dropped when it is used with the meaning ‘fairly’ Of course it can mean ‘wholly’ or ‘completely’ as well

Jól is ‘well’, i.e the adverbial form of jó, ‘good’ Its -l ending isn’t

typical at all, so learn it as an exception The same applies to ‘bad’

and ‘badly’: rossz, rosszul.

Honnan means simply ‘from where’ generally Just memorize this

form as it is

Jöttél is ‘you came’ This is our second nasty verb, let’s see its

present indicative forms:

ti jöttök You (plural informal) come

6 Debrecenből És te hol laksz?

Debrecenből literally means ‘from the inside of Debrecen’ In

Hungarian you have to use different cases depending on whether you mean ‘from inside’, ‘from the vicinity’, ‘from the top’, ‘from above’ etc Now you probably start to see where the huge number

of cases comes from The ‘from inside’ case is denoted by -ból/-ből With place names you either associate ‘inside’ or ‘top’, mostly the former (again something to learn by heart) When you’re talking about an ‘inside’ place, you need to use cases that denote ‘to

inside’, ‘inside’ and ‘from inside’ For the sake of completeness,

‘inside’ is -ban/-ben and ‘to inside’ is -ba/-be Since Debrecentakes

‘inside’ endings, the expressions ‘to/in/from Debrecen’ translate

as Debrecenbe, Debrecenben, andDebrecenből, respectively.

The word for ‘where’ is hol And since we already know ‘from

where’, honnan, let’s also learn ‘to where’, hová(or hova, as you

please) while we’re at it As these have nothing to do with any case endings, they must be learnt as they are

The verb ‘to be resident at’ is lakni:

lakni - to be resident at

én lakom, lakom, laklak I reside

te laksz, lakod you (singular informal) reside

ő lakik, lakja he/she/it resides

mi lakunk, lakjuk We reside

ti laktok, lakjátok You (plural informal) reside

ők laknak, lakják They reside

Let’s not go into how it can take an object, rather look at the

endings This is a so-called -ik verb, which refers to its 3rd singular ending These verbs conjugate almost the same way as those

without the -ik ending (whose presence cannot be seen from the infinitive form by the way), except in 1st singular indefinite they mostly have-m instead of -k, and in the presence of a 1st or 2nd person object the -ik ending is dropped (which can be considered a distinct 14th, definite form); that’s the exception I was hinting at above The 1st singular -mending is often substituted with the

ordinary -k in spoken language, but in writing it is considered to be

an orthographical error, except for some -ik verbs that must be conjugated with -k in all situations

7 Budapesti vagyok, az I kerületben lakom

Budapesti is an adjective formed from Budapest In the middle of

the sentence it would be written with a lowercase b, since it’s not a proper name any more The -i affix is used to turn place names into adjectives in general, and it is an excellent way to torture pupils at school for reasons not to be discussed here

By the way, Budapest is a ‘top’ place, so use the top cases with it These are: ‘to the top’ - -ra/-re, ‘on the top’ - -on/-en/-ön/-n and

‘from the top’ -ról/-ről To, in and

from: Budapestre, Budapesten, Budapestről The ‘on the top’ case

is one where roundedness makes a difference, but only for front vowels This means that words whose last vowel is ö-ő or ü-ű get -

ön, while those with e, é or i-í get -en Budapest is a mixed word,

since it has both front and back vowels, but in this case we are

talking about a composite word: Buda+pest, and only the last

component counts when it comes to conjugation Mixed words in general tend to take the back ending, although the last vowel is usually more important than the others

Az is the definite article used before words starting with a vowel

Before a consonant it’s simply a There is an indefinite article as well, egy Incidentally, it’s also the name of the number ‘one’, and

it must be pronounced with a long gy

Budapest districts are denoted with Roman numerals The

important part is the dot following it: that’s how we indicate

ordinal numerals in general Instead of ‘1st’ we write 1 and so on

‘First’ is első when written with letters or read out loud.

Kerület means district, but you might have figured that out

already Első is in adjective position, which always precedes the

thing whose meaning it elaborates, or to put it in a not so contrived way: it comes first

8 A Várban?

Vár means ‘castle’ or ‘palace’ You should probably stop and try to

form its other cases we already know, just to have some work with

this sentence as well It is also the dictionary form of the verb várni,

‘to wait’ It receives the very same endings as hív, you could

probably write down its different forms if you feel diligent today

9 Igen Ha akarod, megmutatom

The words for ‘yes’ and ‘no’ are igen and nem, respectively ‘If’ and

‘then’ are ha and akkor They have all fixed forms, and undergo no

conjugation Actually, as a side note, it can be said that in

Hungarian any word can behave as a noun, so you can conjugate

them in reality You can say things like ‘in a yes’ with ease (egy

igenben) However, this is not exactly the same ‘yes’, all this

happens on some meta-level

Confusing philosophical babbling away, we have two new verbs:

akarni - to want

én akarok, akarom, akarlak I reside

te akarsz, akarod you (singular informal) want

ő akar, akarja he/she/it wants

mi akarunk, akarjuk We want

ti akartok, akarjátok You (plural informal) want

ők akarnak, akarják They want

In this case ‘want’ has a definite form, because it has an implied object: a hidden clause (no pun intended), which would sound like

‘that I show you’ when written out

megmutatni - to show someone something

én megmutatok, megmutatom, megmutatlak I show

te megmutatsz, megmutatod you (singular informal) show

ő megmutat, megmutatja he/she/it show

mi megmutatunk, megmutatjuk We show

ti megmutattok, megmutatjátok You (plural informal) show

ők megmutatnak, megmutatják They show

This is a so-called prefixed verb, the prefix being meg- The

verb mutatni translates ‘to point’ or ‘to show’, it’s sort of the

continous version of megmutatni Hungarian doesn’t make a

distinction between ongoing and completed actions in a way like e.g Slavic languages do, but these differences are explicitly

distributed into separate words, which are normally separate

dictionary entries Prefixes are usually directional, e.g le- means

‘down’ or fel- means ‘up’: lejönni - ‘come down’ (on the stairs, in general physically), feljönni - ‘come up’ (physically, or gaining a

better position in a competition etc.) The prefix meg- is a special one, because it doesn’t really have separate semantics, but as a rule of thumb you can assume that it makes an action described by

the base verb complete: megjönni - ‘to arrive (at last)’ Not all verbs

are turned into a completed action using meg-, unfortunately

So far you have only seen back endings in the verb conjugation

tables, except for the obscure jönni As you can see, the endings

are generally well-behaving, so even in spite of its bad reputation, Hungarian language can show some consistency at times

10 Sőt, követelem!

Sőt roughly translates as ‘in fact’, and it’s another fixed word It can

only appear this way: at the beginning and followed by a comma (or a little pause in speech)

And now, ladies and gentlemen, a front verb:

követelni - to demand, to require

én követelek, követelem, követellek I demand

te követelsz, követeled you (singular informal) demand

ő követel, követeli he/she/it demands

mi követelünk, követeljük We demand

ti követeltek, követelitek You (plural informal) demand

ők követelnek, követelik They demand

Most of the endings are quite predictable from the back ones The most exotic front-back pair is seen here: -i-vs -ja/-já- The special thing about it is that the front version has i as its vowel; i doesn’t usually participate in vowel harmony games

11 Akkor menjünk!

And finally, to keep my promise, the third nasty verb has arrived

menni - to go

te mész you (singular informal) go

ti mentek You (plural informal) go

The form menjünk is the first person plural imperative form, to

translate as ‘let us go’ In Hungarian all six (I mean 13) forms have their imperative counterparts (if that sounds a bit unusual to you, it would probably absolutelly thrill you to know that even infinitive can be conjugated) Imperative is indicated by a -j-, but you could

as well forget about this for now

Overview

Vocabulary

The words mentioned in this lesson in order of appearance:

hogy how, that (the connective, not the pronoun)

forms of verbs in vocabulary lists)

egész whole, fairly

egészen entirely, completely, fairly

lakik to live (somewhere), to reside (at an address)

budapesti related to Budapest

megmutat to show (sy sg.)

mutat to be showing (sy sg.) , to point at

Honnan jöttél? Where are you (did you come) from?

X-ben/X-en lakom I live in X.

‘from the top’: -ról/-ről

ordinals in writing are denoted by a dot

Lesson 3: Plural & Accusative Case, Vocabulary, Morphology, Subject-Verb-Complement, Using the Substantive, Using Demonstrative Pronouns