Hungarian language
Hungarian (Magyar) is a Ugric language spoken in Hungary and in certain areas of Romania, Serbia, eastern parts of Austria and in northeastern parts of Slovenia.
Hungarian vocabulary contains many words borrowed from various Turkic languages, as well as a few words borrowed from the Turkish language, and several hundred loans from German and Slavic languages but is quite original and colorful. The basic vocabulary shares many words with Finnish (e.g. the numbers egy~yksi, kettö~kaksi, három~kolme, négy~neljä), so linguists classify both as Finno-Ugric languages. It has also been claimed to be closely related to Hunnish, but this is not a reliable view.
Hungarian has many different Cases (esetek), most common are Nominative case, Accusative case, Dative case, Instrumental case, Final case, Supressive case, Inessive case, Elative case, Terminative case, Delative case. There is also a Formal case and a few other ones. For examples of some of these cases, refer to the article on the Finnish language.
The order of words in a sentence is determined not by syntactic roles but rather by pragmatic, i.e. discourse-driven, factors. Words can be combined (as in German) and derived (with suffixes and affixes).
The Passive Voice is almost extinct (one can find it in old literary texts).
Many grammatical and syntaxical functions, elements or constructions are based on suffixes. The mark for Plural is a suffixed -k, eventually preceded by a Vowel when the Word ends by a Consonant
The Infinitive of Verbs is the Radical suffixed by -ni
As an appetizer for a more complete vocabulary (szókincs), an extract for the verb "to be" in hungarian, lenni.
Forms are presented in this order:
I, You, He/She/It, We, You, They
én, te, ő, mi, ti, ők
The polite form of Thou is either ön or maga. (as you probably noticed, Hungarian does not have gender-specific pronouns)
- Indicative Mode
PresentTense: vagyok, vagy, van, vagyunk, vagytok, vannak
PastTense: voltam, voltál, volt, voltunk, voltatok, voltak
FutureTense: leszek, leszel, lesz, leszünk, lesztek, lesznek
- Conditional Mode
PresentTense: lennék, lennél, lenne, lennénk, lennétek, lennének
ImperativeTense: legyek, légy, legyen, legyünk, legyetek, legyenek
Hungarian orthography
Hungarian has a phonemic writing system. In addition to the standard letters of the Latin alphabet, Hungarian uses several additional letters. These include letters with acute accents (á,é,í,ó,ú) which represent long vowels, the umlaut letters ö and ü and their long counterparts ő (unicode Ő and ő) and ű (unicode Ű and ű). Sometimes <õ> is used for <ő> and <û> for <ű>; these are ISO-8859-2 bytes being interpreted as ISO-8859-1.
Additionally, the letter pairs <ny>, <ky>, and <gy> represent the palatal consonants /ñ/, /kj/, and /gj/ (like the "dy" sound in British "duke" or American "would you"). Hungarian uses <s> for /S/ and <sz> for /s/, which is the reverse of Polish. <zs> is /Z/ and <cs> is /tS/. All these digraphs are considered single letters. <ly> is also a "single letter digraph", but is pronounced like <j> (English <y>), and mostly appears in old words.
All R's are trilled, like Spanish "perro".
Hungarian distinguishes between long vowels and short vowels, where the long vowels are written with accents, and between long consonants and short consonants, where the long consonants are written double. The digraphs, when doubled, become trigraphs: <sz>+<sz>=<ssz>. Usually a trigraph is a double digraph, but there are a few exceptions: tizennyolc "eighteen" is tizen + nyolc. There are doubling minimal pairs: tizenegyedik "eleventh" vs. tizennegyedik "fourteenth".
Primary stress is always -- always! -- on the first syllable of any word. There is sometimes secondary stress on other syllables, especially when two words have been combined (like "viszontlátásra" (see you later) pronounced "VEES-ohnt-LAH-tahsh-raw").
It seems very different at first, but once you learn the new sounds and how to pronounce everything, Hungarian is almost totally phonetic!
Some common phrases
If you speak Hungarian/Magyar, you can edit this page right now!
- Hungarian (person): magyar ['mAdyAr]
- hello: ""szia"" ['sia] (sounds almost exactly like American "see ya")
- good-bye: ""a viszontlátásra"" (see above)
- please: ""kérem szépen" [karrem sapen]
- sorry: ""bocsanat"" [BOchAnAt]
- thank you: köszönöm [kYs-Yn-Ym] (pout your lips for a kiss and say "uh")
- that/this: az [Az] ez [ez]
- how much?: ""mennyi?"" ['mennyee]
- yes: igen ['igen]
- no: nem [nem]
- I don't understand: nem értem ['nEm 'ertem]
- where's the bathroom?: ""Hol van a budi (wc, toilet....)?"" ['hol vAn A 'vay-tsay]
- generic toast: egészségedre! [] [this is tough. Say it like this: EGG-ayss-shay-ged-rreh]
- Do you speak English?: ""Beszélsz Angolul?"" ['bes-ayls 'An-gol-ul]
Off-site links
Dictionaries:
Hungarian-English-Hungarian
Hungarian-English False cognates (False Cognates)
Hungarian idioms (Idioms)
Hungarian slang
Online Language Courses:
Online course harvard.edu/~arubin/
Online course hungarotips.com