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Phonology is the classification of the abstract elements (or precisely phonemes, whereas sounds are acoustic realisations of phonemes) in a particular language. Hungarian phonology has much in common with the English if you compare them with African or Asian languages, but you can still encounter problems with some phonological phenomena or just with pronouncing some "strange" vowels or consonants.
Vowels
Here follows the table of Hungarian vowels, with the distinctive features of the Hungarian vowel system:
Phoneme | Most common phonetic value in IPA | | [back] | [round] | [high] | [low] | [long] |
|---|
/a/ | [ɑ] | a | + | + | - | + | - |
/a:/ | [aː] | á | + | - | - | + | + |
/o/ | [o] | o | + | + | - | - | - |
/o:/ | [oː] | ó | + | + | - | - | + |
/u/ | [u] | u | + | + | + | - | - |
/u:/ | [uː], [u] | ú | + | + | + | - | + |
/e/ | [ɛ] | e | - | - | - | + | - |
/e:/ | [eː] | é | - | - | - | - | + |
/i/ | [i] | i | - | - | + | - | - |
/i:/ | [iː], [i] | í | - | - | + | - | + |
/ø/ | [ø] | ö | - | + | - | - | - |
/ø:/ | [øː] | ő | - | + | - | - | + |
/y/ | [y] | ü | - | + | + | - | - |
/y:/ | [yː], [y] | ű | - | + | + | - | + |
As you can see from the table, Hungarian has 7 pairs of corresponding short and long vowels. But their phonetic value doesn't match every time, look at the /e/--/e:/ and /a/--/a:/ pairs. However, short-long distinction in high vowels is not consistent, many dialects lack the phonemes /i:/, /u:/ and /y:/ and colloquial use is also very different than the ortography (eg. unió pronounce [uːnioː], but szomorú pronounce [somoru]).
Vowel harmony
There is a very important distinction about Hungarian vowels: just like in Finnish and Turkish, it has vowel harmony: usually a word is made up either by front vowels, or back vowels. Mixtures occur mostly in exceptions (eg. derekas), loanwords (eg. telefon) or in compound words (eg. pénz|tárca "purse"). The latter words have the harmony of the last member of the compound, loanwords usually have the harmony of the last vowel, except that /i/, /e:/ and sometimes /e/ are transparent, so if there is a back vowel before them, the word remains back. Exceptional words have /i/, /i:/ or sometimes /e:/, but are regarded as back words because in Old Hungarian, there was a */ɯ/ phoneme, that is the sound found in Russian (yery), but this became /i/.
Beside this, there is also an other type of harmony: mid-high front vowels harmonize in the aspect of rounding.
Thus most suffixes (and Hungarian has a lot of them!) have several forms, and the harmony of the stem "spreads" to the suffix. Most types are:
| alternating vowels | example | back stems | front non-rounded stems | front rounded stems |
|---|
| /a/, /e/ | -ban, -ben "in ..." | házban "in a house" | kézben "in hand" | könyvben "in a book" |
| /a:/, /e:/ | -ság, -ség "-ity, a collection of ..." | okosság "the quality of being clever" | vétség "fault" | ökörség "being like a bull = stupidity" |
| /o/, /e/, /ø/ | -on, -en, -ön "on ..." | házon "on (the top of) a house" | kézen "on hand" | könyvön "on a book" |
| /o:/, /ø:/ | -ó, -ő "-ing" | váró "(sy) waiting" | néző "(sy) looking" | lövő "(sy) shooting" |
| /u/, /y/ | -unk, -ünk "plural 1st person present suffix" | várunk "we're waiting" | nézünk "we're looking" | lövünk "we're shooting" |
| /u:/, /y:/ | -ú, -ű "something having ..." | ötágú "five-pointed (star)" | szép szemű "one having nice eyes" | gyönyörű "sg having beauty=beautiful" |
As can be seen, the phoneme /e/ is found both in the low vowel series (/a/-/e/), and in the mid vowel series (/o/-/e/-/ö/). This odd feature is solved in the old language and in dialects: there was/is an eigth short phoneme /ë/, which is just like the /e/ but it is mid, and its pronunciation is [e]. In dialects, you can find this phoneme in the mid series, and the low /e/ in the low series.
However, many suffixes have only one form: these are usually new-born suffixes (-kor "at the time of ...": hatkor "at 6 o'clock", hétkor "at 7 o'clock", ötkor "at 5 o'clock"), or they contain /i/ or /e:/ (-i "universal noun -> adjective suffix": budai "somebody from Buda", pesti "somebody from Pest"; -ért "for ...": aranyért "for gold", ezüstért "for silver").
Consonants
Hungarian has the following consonant system (not using standard SPE-like features), with unusual graphemes marked bold:
Phoneme | Most common phonetic value in IPA | | | place of articulation | type of articulation |
|---|
/p/ | [p] | p | - | | |
/b/ | [b] | b | + | | |
/t/ | [t̪] | t | - | | |
/d/ | [d̪] | d | + | | |
/c/ | [c] | ty | - | | |
/ɟ/ | [ɟ] | gy | + | | |
/k/ | [k] | k | - | | |
/g/ | [g] | g | + | | |
/f/ | [f] | f | - | | |
/v/ | [v] | v | + | | |
/s/ | [s̪] | sz | - | | |
/z/ | [z̪] | z | + | | |
/ʃ/ | [ʃ] | s | - | | |
/ʒ/ | [ʒ] | zs | + | | |
/j/ | [j] or [ʝ] | j, ly | + | | |
/h/ | [h] | h, ch | - | | |
/ts/ | [ts̪] | c | - | | |
/dz/ | [dz̪] | dz | + | | |
/ʧ/ | [ʧ] | cs | - | | |
/ʤ/ | [ʤ] | dzs | + | | |
/l/ | [l̪] | l | + | | |
/r/ | [r̪] | r | + | | |
/m/ | [m] | m | + | | |
/n/ | [n̪] | n | + | | |
/ɲ/ | [ɲ] | ny | + | | |
* /s/ and /z/ are really dental although the IPA chart puts them in the alveolar slot.
Almost every consonant has a geminate counterpair, written by doubling: bb, pp, ss etc., or by doubling the first element of the grapheme cluster: ssz, nny, ddzs, etc. The phoneme /dz/ and /ʤ/ usually appear on surface as geminates: bridzs [briʤː] "bridge (the card game)".
Most important allophones are:
- /n/ becomes [ŋ] if followed by a velar consonant (eg. hang "voice" [hɑŋg])
- /j/ becomes [ç] if preceded by a /p/, /t/, /k/ in an imperative at the end of the word (eg. kapj [kɑpç] "get (imp.)")
- /h/ may become [ɦ] between two vowels (eg. tehát [tɛɦaːt] "so")
- /h/ disappears at the end of the word in some cases: méh [meː] "bee", cseh [ʧɛ] "Czech"
- /h/ becomes otherwise [x] at the end of a syllable, even possible pronounciation for the words mentioned(méh [meː], but colloquially can be [meːx]), otherwise compulsory: doh [dox], ihlet [ixlɛt], or [içlɛt].
- /h/ becomes [xː] when geminate: méhhel [meːxːɛl] "with a bee" (in literary Hungarian the form is méhvel [meːvɛl]), peches [pɛxːɛʃ]"unlucky"
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