Hungarian: An Essential Grammar

Carol H. Rounds

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781134589364
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Languages
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This user-friendly guide to modern Hungarian clearly introduces the most important structures of this fascinating language. Suitable for beginning, intermediate and advanced students, it can be used by those studying independently or following a taught course. Topics include:
* verbal prefixes
* aspect and tense
* word-formation mechanisms
* linking vowels
* the case system and its uses
* word order.
Appendices include the formation of irregular verbs, complete noun declensions and irregular noun patterns.

Part I

Alphabet, Pronunciation and Vowel Harmony

Chapter 1

Alphabet

Hungarian uses the Roman alphabet in addition to some diacritics placed over some vowels. The accent mark(s) above the vowels indicate that the vowel is ‘long’ – see the pronunciation section to follow. Some consonants are digraphs, i.e., they consist of two letters; one consonant (dzs) is a trigraph. Although they are written with more than one letter, digraphs (and the trigraph) are each individual letters of the alphabet.

a á b c cs d dz dzs e é f g gy h i í j k l ly m n

ny o ó ö ő p (q) r s sz t ty u ú ü ű v (w) (x) (y) z zs

Unless found in the spellings of foreign words, the letters q, w and x are not used; the letter y is found only in old spellings (pronounced as the letter i) and in digraphs.

Chapter 2

Pronunciation

2.1 Consonants

2.1.1

Many of the consonants in Hungarian are pronounced as in English. All consonants are pronounced – there are no silent letters. The following are the consonants pronounced differently from those in English.

c	as in cats	cukor ‘sugar’ ecet ‘vinegar’
cs	as in church	bocsánat ‘excuse me’ csal ‘deceive’
g	(always hard) as in go	igen ‘yes’ gaz ‘weed’
j	as in yes	jó ‘good’ fáj ‘hurt’
r	trill the tongue on the top of the mouth	kérem ‘please’ ró ‘carve’
s	as in she	este ‘evening’ sárga ‘yellow’
sz	as in sat	szervusz ‘hi’ asztal ‘table’
zs	as in azure	garázs ‘garage’ zseb ‘pocket’

2.1.2 The Palatal Series

The following four consonants are palatalized, i.e., they are pronounced with the tongue gliding off the top of the palate.

gy	similar to a dy sound as in during	magyar ‘Hungarian’ gyár ‘factory’
ly	as in yes (thus the same as the Hungarian letter j)	személy ‘person’ lyuk ‘hole’
ny	as in canyon	kenyér ‘bread’ nyár ‘summer’
ty	similar to a ty sound as in studio	kártya ‘card’ tyúk ‘hen’

2.2 Consonant Length

All consonants can be long or short. Long consonants are written as double consonants and are pronounced approximately twice as long as short ones. Great care should be paid to differences in length; it can change the meaning of a word, e.g.,

szeretem I love him/her

vs.

szerettem I loved him/her

Length of digraphs is indicated by doubling the first con...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Part I: Alphabet, Pronunciation and Vowel Harmony
• Part II: Parts of Speech
• Part III: Sentence Structure
• Appendix 1: Some irregular verbs
• Appendix 2: Sample noun declensions
• Appendix 3: Noun types and exceptions
• Index