Hungarian (Magyar)
Spoken in:	Hungary and 10 other countries
Region:
Total speakers:	14.5 million
Ranking:	66
Genetic classification:	Ural-Altaic (disputed)  Uralic   Finno-Ugric    Ugric     Hungarian
Official status
Official language of:	Hungary, Slovenia, Vojvodina
Regulated by:	--
Language codes
ISO 639-1	hu
ISO 639-2	hun
SIL	HNG

The Hungarian language is a Finno-Ugric language spoken in Hungary and in adjacent areas of Romania, Slovakia, Ukraine, Serbia, Croatia, Austria, Slovenia (all territories lost after World War I). The Hungarian name for the language is Magyar.

There are about 14.5 million speakers, of whom 10 million live in Hungary.

Contents

1 Classification 2 Geographic distribution 2.1 Official status 2.2 Dialects 3 Phonology 4 Grammar 4.1 Vowel Harmony 4.2 Nouns 4.3 Verbs 4.3.1 General information 4.3.2 A regular sample verb 4.3.3 The substantive verb (to be) 4.3.4 Further information on verbs 5 Lexicon 6 Writing system 7 Examples 8 Quotes 9 External links 9.1 Dictionaries 9.2 Online Language Courses 9.3 More links for learners

Classification

Hungarian is generally believed to be a member of the Ugric languages, a sub-group of the Finno-Ugric language family, which in turn is a branch of the Uralic languages.

There are various alternative theories about the origins of Hungarian language, but these are dismissed by most linguists owing to a lack of evidence:

• Hungarian has often been claimed to be closely related to Hunnish, since Hungarian legends and histories show close ties between the two peoples. Some people believe that the Sz�kely, a minority people in Hungary, are descended from the Huns. However, the link with Hunnish is uncertain, as are other theories (such as Hungarian being derived from the Sumerian language, which is also agglutining).
• For many years (from 1869), it was matter of dispute whether Hungarian was a Finno-Ugric language, or was more closely related to some Turkic languages, a controversy known as the "Ugric-Turkish war". It is only in the discipline of linguistics that the "victory" of the Finno-Ugrists can be described as more or less complete, due to a lot of evidence from the languages themselves. However, significant evidence in some other sciences, including genetics and mainly archeology, still clashes with this theory. Finno-Ugrist scientists explain this phenomenon by stating that the origin of the language is not necessarily equal with the origin of the people, genetically. Thus the language is Finno-Ugric, some scientists say, but according to genetics and anthropology, the Hungarian people are rather similar to others than the Finnish (who are like the Swedes according to these points): to Germans and Slavs (as some finno-ugrists, e.g. I. M. Szabo says), or to Turkish or other people (as other scientists, e.g. I. Kiszely says). The lack of serious direct (e.g. archeological) evidence also leads to the questioning of Finno-Ugric theory time and time again.
• However, the regular sound changes that can be shown in Hungarian and other Uralic languages provide enough evidence for the languages to be related. For this purpose no extra-linguistic evidence is needed. The Finno-Ugrian theory is supported by what linguistics knows about related languages in general and could only be refuted if all other established language relationships were refuted at the same time.

Geographic distribution

Hungarian is spoken in the following countries:

Country	Speakers
Hungary	10,298,820
Romania (mainly Transylvania)	1,700,000 - 3,000,000 (*)
Slovakia	597,400
Serbia and Montenegro	293,000
Ukraine	187,000
Israel	70,000
Sweden	35,000
Austria	22,000
Croatia	16,500
Slovenia	9,240

(*) of whom, according to the 2002 census, 1,450,000 speak it as mother tongue.

Source: Ethnologue

Hungarian speakers are also found in Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, The Netherlands, Italy, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States, and at other parts of the world, in number altogether about a million people.

Official status

Hungarian is the official language of Hungary, and thus an official language of the EU.

Besides, Hungarian is one of official languages of Vojvodina and an official language of three municipalities in Slovenia (Hodos, Dobranak and Lendva), along with Slovene.

Hungarian is officially recognized as a minority or regional language in Austria, Croatia and Slovakia.

Dialects

The dialects of Hungarian identified by Ethnologue are: Alf�ld, West Danube, Danube-Tisza, King's Pass Hungarian, Northeast Hungarian, Northwest Hungarian, Sz�kely and West Hungarian. They are all mutually understandable to native Hungarians.

Phonology

main article: Hungarian phonology

There are some sounds which do not exist in English, such as /ɟ/. For example the pronunciation of "Magyarorsz�g" (Hungary) is /mɑɟɑrorsaːg/, with the stress on the first syllable.

Grammar

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 compound (as in German) and derived (with suffixes).

The passive voice is almost extinct, but can be found in old literary texts.

Vowel Harmony

Vowel harmony is typical for agglutinating languages like Sumerian, Hungarian or Turkish. Vowels can be high/front (e�i��ő�ű) or deep/back (a�o�u�). Set of hungarian words can be partitionated in the view of vowel harmony into three groups:

1. Words of deep sound order (M�ly hangrendű szavak): These words contain only deep vowels - ablak, ajt�, hord�r, b�sul.
2. Words of high sound order (Magas hangrendű szavak): These words contain only high vowels - kef�l, zizzen, k�zfej;
3. Words of composite sound order (Vegyes hangrendű szavak): These words contain also deep and high vowels - �s�t, pap�r, birtok, kazetta.
4. The sound order of compound words (words divisible into two or more meaningful subwords) is the sound order of their last component (kalap�cs|vető is high-ordered, because vető is high-ordered, hang|kazetta is composit-ordered etc.).

Old Hungarian words typically contain either only front or only back vowels (malac: deep, eg�r: high).

(The law of vowel harmony): An ending must be the same type as the sound order of the word, so a word of high order gets high suffixes (szekr�ny - szekr�nyek), and a word of deep order gets deep suffixes (h�z - h�zak, ablak - ablakok ), but a word of composite order generally gets deep-ordered suffixes, except some unused archaisms and some loanwords from foreign languages (szirt-ok, farmer-ben = farmer-ban), or old but frequently used words containing neutral vowels (e,�) (h�d-on, h�d-ra; egy-kor, egy-ben). See vowel harmony for a more detailed explanation.

Suffixes (containing vowels) generally have two or three variants, one with a high vowel and one with a deep vowel (in: -ban, or -ben; into: -ba, or -be).

So, for example, the word kartonpap�r, because it is a compound word (karton-pap�r) with a composite ordered last component (pap�r), gets deep suffixes (kartonpap�rral, kartonpap�rhoz, etc.), even though its last vowel is high.

Nouns

Many grammatical and syntactic functions, elements and constructions are based on suffixes. The mark for the plural of a noun is a suffix -k, preceded by a vowel if the word ends in a consonant. Usually, vowels are inserted between the word and its suffix to prevent a buildup of consonants (and hence to prevent unpronounceable words). The inserted vowels must follow the rules of vowel harmony.

Hungarian grammar uses endings to express the relation of things, which are in other languages usually called cases. For example: at the table = az asztaln�l (space relation), at 5 o'clock = �t �rakor (time relation).

The concept of grammatical cases was first used in Latin grammar. During the centuries the terminology was also applied to describe non-Indo-European grammars, with very different grammatical structures from Latin. This couldn't be done without reinterpreting to a certain extent the notion of what a case is for agglutinating languages, such as those in the Finno-Ugric language group. Nowadays the term "case" is less widely used among Hungarian linguists to describe Hungarian grammar compared to centuries ago. Several Hungarian linguists believe that the concept doesn't fit agglutinating languages very well, and they prefer to use the term "(case) suffixes" and "endings" instead. For students, the case system for Hungarian is only taught in higher education.

Most common of the cases in Hungarian are the nominative case, accusative case and dative case; some express location and placement (see the chart below); and some express other relations (terminative case, essive-formal case, instrumental-comitative case, translative case, causal-final case). There are further cases of restricted use (locative case, essive-modal case, distributive case, distributive-temporal case, sociative case). For examples of these cases, refer to the article List of grammatical cases.

h�z - house

	interior	surface	adjacency
from	h�zb�l (Elative case)	h�zr�l (Delative case)	h�zt�l (Ablative case)
at	h�zban (Inessive case)	h�zon (Superessive case)	h�zn�l (Adessive case)
to	h�zba (Illative case)	h�zra (Sublative case)	h�zhoz (Allative case)

Hungarian uses plural sparsely, ie. only if no quantity is marked. Plural is not used with definite or indefinite numerals. Examples: �t fi� five boys; sok fi� many boys; fi�k boys.

Verbs

General information

Hungarian verbs have two conjugations: a definite and an indefinite. The definite conjugation is mostly used in case of a direct and definite object. For example: v�rom a buszt "I am waiting for the bus", v�rok "I am waiting". L�tok (valamit) "I can see (something)", but l�tom a k�nyvet "I can see the book".

Forms are presented in this order:

Singular			Plural
I	you (sg)	he/she/it	we	you (pl)	they
�n	te	ő	mi	ti	ők

These pronouns don't usually appear (since the suffix is enough in itself to mark the person), unless they are contrasted or emphasized.

Beside te and ti, which are used informally, there are polite forms for the second person pronouns: �n or maga. �n is official and distancing, maga is personal and even intimate. (There are some older forms for you, like kend, which is still used in rural areas.) See also: T-V distinction.

Verbs with the polite 2nd person forms �n and maga take the suffixes of the 3rd person verb forms. For example te k�rsz (second person, informal), but �n k�r or maga k�r (second person, formal), just like ő k�r (third person).

As you can notice, Hungarian does not have gender-specific pronouns.

The basic verb form for derivation is always the third person singular.

The infinitive of verbs is the radical suffixed by -ni.

A regular sample verb

Here is a regular verb, k�r ("ask for something"). — The personal suffixes are marked in bold.

k�r (ask for)

Indefinite

Definite

INDICATIVE MOOD

Present

k�rek

k�rsz

k�r

k�r�nk

k�rtek

k�rnek

k�rem

k�red

k�ri

k�rj�k

k�ritek

k�rik

Past

k�rtem

k�rt�l

k�rt

k�rt�nk

k�rtetek

k�rtek

k�rtem

k�rted

k�rte

k�rt�k

k�rt�tek

k�rt�k

Future

k�rni fogok

k�rni fogsz

k�rni fog

k�rni fogunk

k�rni fogtok

k�rni fognak

k�rni fogom

k�rni fogod

k�rni fogja

k�rni fogjuk

k�rni fogj�tok

k�rni fogj�k

CONDITIONAL MOOD

Present

k�rn�k

k�rn�l

k�rne

k�rn�nk

k�rn�tek

k�rn�nek

k�rn�m

k�rn�d

k�rn�

k�rn�nk

k�rn�tek

k�rn�k

Past

k�rtem volna

k�rt�l volna

k�rt volna

k�rt�nk volna

k�rtetek volna

k�rtek volna

k�rtem volna

k�rted volna

k�rte volna

k�rt�k volna

k�rt�tek volna

k�rt�k volna

IMPERATIVE / SUBJUNCTIVE MOOD

Present

k�rjek

k�rj�l or k�rj

k�rjen

k�rj�nk

k�rjetek

k�rjenek

k�rjem

k�rjed or k�rd

k�rje

k�rj�k

k�rj�tek

k�rj�k

The substantive verb (to be)

The substantive verb "to be" in Hungarian is lenni. Like in most other languages of the world, this verb is irregular. In Hungarian it comes from three (or four) bases: vagy- (or van-), vol-, and len-. — As it cannot have an object, it doesn't have definite forms.

INDICATIVE MOOD
Present Tense	vagyok	vagy	van	vagyunk	vagytok	vannak
Past Tense	voltam	volt�l	volt	voltunk	voltatok	voltak
Future Tense	leszek	leszel	lesz	lesz�nk	lesztek	lesznek
CONDITIONAL MOOD
Present Tense	lenn�k	lenn�l	lenne	lenn�nk	lenn�tek	lenn�nek
Past Tense	lettem volna	lett�l volna	lett volna	lett�nk volna	lettetek volna	lettek volna
IMPERATIVE / SUBJUNCTIVE MOOD
Present Tense	legyek	legy�l or l�gy	legyen	legy�nk	legyetek	legyenek

Hungarian uses the verb "to be" much less frequently than English, because it is omitted in the present tense in the third person (singular/plural), if one speaks about what someone or something is (see copula). On the other hand, the substantive verb must be used in other tenses and other persons, and every time one speaks about where or how something is, or if one emphasizes the existence or availability of something. Examples:

• P�ter orvos � - Peter is a doctor. (present tense, third person, speaking about what someone is: no linking verb in Hungarian)
• P�ter j�l van - Peter is well.
• P�ter itt van - Peter is here.
• P�ter orvos volt - Peter was a doctor.
• Orvos vagyok - I am a doctor.
• Van orvos a szob�ban - There is a doctor in the room.

Further information on verbs

Hungarian uses verbal prefixes which modify the meaning of the verbs and form separate verbs out of them. These prefixed verbs usually have meanings which are consistently build up from the basic meaning of the elements, and many of them have figurative, idiomatic meanings as well. For example: �r he writes, le�r he writes down, ki�r he writes out, be�r he writes into etc. (basic meanings). On the other hand, le�r may also mean "declare as useless" (cf. "write off"), and be�r "give a written warning" (to a schoolchild).

There are also compund words using verbs which have their individual meanings, for example egyed�l�ll� single (eg. person), whereas egyed�l �ll� means something which stands alone.

Lexicon

Due to the existence of compound words, the lexicon of Hungarian could be considered to contain a virtually unlimited number of words. Giving an exact estimate for the total word count is difficult, since it is hard to define what to call "a word" in agglutinating languages . Hungarian words are built around so called word bushes, for example k�r-k�r�z-k�r�s-kering-kerge-kurta etc. Due to this feature words with similar meaning often arise from the same root. Compound words ("mesters�gesintelligencia-kutat�s" for "research on artificial intelligence"), which are quite unusual in Indo-European languages (except, for example, in German) make the situation even more complex and the definition of "word" even more difficult.

The lexicon of Hungarian contains words borrowed from various Turkic languages, including Turkish, as well as several loan words from German and Slavic.

The basic vocabulary shares about 1000 words from Uralic languages like Finnish and Estonian (e.g., the numbers egy ~ yksi ~ �ks (1), kettő ~ kaksi ~ kaks (2), h�rom ~ kolme ~ kolm (3), n�gy ~ nelj� ~ neli (4); v�z ~ vesi ~ vesi (water); k�z ~ k�si ~ k�si (hand); v�r ~ veri ~ veri (blood); fej ~ p�� ~ pea (head) which have systematic sound correspondences, so most linguists classify them as Finno-Ugric languages, a subgroup of the Uralic language family.

Writing system

Hungarian is written using a variant of the 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 additional letters. These include letters with acute accents (�,�,�,�,�) which represent long vowels, the diaereses � and � and their long counterparts ő (unicode Ő and ő) and ű (unicode Ű and ű). Sometimes � or � is used for ő and � for ű, due to the limitations of the Latin-1 / ISO-8859-1 codepage. Hungarian can be properly represented with the Latin-2 / ISO-8859-2 codepage, but this codepage is not always available. (Hungarian is the only language using ő and ű.) Of course, Unicode includes them, and they therefore can be used on the Internet.

For a complete table of the pronunciation of the Hungarian alphabet, see the X-SAMPA description in the Hungarian Wikipedia (in Hungarian, but the table is obvious), which transliterates Hungarian letters into IPA and X-SAMPA characters.

Additionally, the letter pairs <ny>, <ty>, and <gy> represent the palatal consonants /�/, /t^j/, and /d^j/ (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. More exotic letters are <dz> and <dzs> /dZ/. They are hard to find even in a longer text. Two examples are madzag; edzeni (rope; to train) and dzsungel (jungle).

Single R's are tapped, like the Spanish "pero"; Double R's and initial R's are trilled, like the Spanish "perro" or "romper".

Hungarian distinguishes between long and short vowels, where the long vowels are written with acutes, and between long consonants and short consonants, where the long consonants are written double. The digraphs, when doubled, become trigraphs: <sz>+<sz>=<ssz>, but changing line:

... busz-

szal...

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 on the first syllable of a word. There is sometimes secondary stress on other syllables, especially when two words have been combined (like "viszontl�t�sra" (see you later) pronounced "VEES-ohnt-LAH-tahsh-raw").

While it seems unusual to English speakers at first, once one learns the new orthography and pronunciations, written Hungarian is nearly totally phonemic.

Examples

• Hungarian (person, language): magyar ['mAdyAr]
• hello: szia ['sia] (informal) (sounds almost exactly like American "see ya") But you only say this to people that you know well. When you address a stranger you use the more formal "good day": j� napot (k�v�nok) (YOnahpot)
• good-bye: viszontl�t�sra (formal) (see above), viszl�t [vislAt] (semi informal)
• please: k�rem (sz�pen) [kayrrem saypen] (This literally means "I ask (it) well". See next for a more common form of the polite request)
• I would like ____, please: Szeretn�k ____ [seh-reht-neyk] (This example illustrates the use of the conditional tense, as a common form of a polite request)
• sorry: bocs�nat [BOchAnAt]
• thank you: k�sz�n�m [kYs-Yn-Ym] (pout your lips for a kiss and say "uh")
• that/this: az [Az] ez [ez]
• how much?: mennyi? ['mennyee]
• how much does it cost?: mennyibe ker�l? ['mennyee-be keh-rool]
• yes: igen ['igen]
• no: nem [nem]
• I don't understand: nem �rtem ['nEm 'ayrtem]
• I don't know: nem tudom [nem 'too-dohm]
• where's the bathroom?: Hol van a v�c�? ['hole vAn A 'vay-tsay], more polite (and word-to-word) version Hol van a mosd�? ['hole vAn A 'mosh-daw];
• generic toast: eg�szs�gedre! [this is tough. Say it like this: EGG-ayss-shay-ged-rreh]
• juice: gy�m�lcsl� [dyu-mulch-lay]
• water: v�z [veez]
• wine: bor [bohr]
• beer: s�r [shuhr]
• tea: tea [teh-ah]
• milk: tej [tay]
• Do you speak English?: Besz�l angolul? ['bes-ayl 'Ahn-go-lool?]
• I love you: szeretlek ['seretlek]
• Help!: Seg�ts�g! [sheg-eet-shayg]

Quotes

Sir John Bowring, English linguist, political economist, and writer, was the author of the first Hungarian anthology in English. In the preface of Poetry of the Magyars (1830) he writes:

"The Magyar language stands afar off and alone. The study of other tongues will be found of exceedingly little use towards its right understanding. It is moulded in a form essentially its own, and its construction and composition may be safely referred to an epoch when most of the living tongues of Europe either had no existence, or no influence on the Hungarian region."

External links

• Hungarian - A Strange Cake on the Menu - article by N�dasdy �d�m (http://www.filolog.com/languageStrangeCake.html)
• Ethnologue report for Hungarian (http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=HNG)
• Numerals of some Uralic languages (http://www.ut.ee/Ural/num.html)
• Uralic page (http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/3093/finnugor.html)
• Introduction to Hungarian (http://impulzus.sch.bme.hu/info/magyar.shtml)

Dictionaries

• Hungarian-English-Hungarian (http://dict.sztaki.hu/english-hungarian)
• Hungarian-English False cognates (http://www.btk.elte.hu/delg/people/core/lazar/falsefriends.html) (False Cognates)
• Hungarian slang (http://www.notam02.no/~hcholm/altlang/ht/Hungarian.html)
• Hungarian-Japanese-Hungarian online dictionary (http://www.japanmagyarszotar.hu/)

Online Language Courses

• Online course hungarotips.com (http://www.hungarotips.com/hungarian/b/)
• Hungarian Profile (http://www.lmp.ucla.edu/profiles/profh02.htm)
• Study Hungarian! (AFS.com) (http://www.afs.hu/hungary/study.html)
• Hungarian Phrase Guides (http://www.single-serving.com/Hungarian/)
• Magyar�ra: New paths to the Hungarian language (http://www.magyarora.com/)

More links for learners

• Course, Vocabularies, Phrases, Literature... (http://www.sprachprofi.de.vu/english/h.htm)

ast:H�ngaru bs:Mađarski jezik ca:Hongar�s de:Ungarische Sprache et:Ungari keel es:Idioma h�ngaro eo:Hungara lingvo fr:Langue hongroise it:Lingua ungherese hu:Magyar nyelv nl:Hongaars ja:ハンガリー語 no:Ungarsk spr�k pl:Język węgierski pt:L�ngua h�ngara ro:Limba maghiară sr:Мађарски језик sl:Madžarščina fi:Unkarin kieli sv:Ungerska