In this skill, you'll meet your very first Hungarian phrases as well as a few verbs, most importantly 

lenni ‘to
be’. It is conjugated as follows:

SG PL

1 (én) vagyok ‘I am’ (mi) vagyunk ‘we are’

2 (te) vagy ‘you (sg.) are’ (ti) vagytok ‘you (pl) are’

3 (ő) van ‘s/he is’ (ők) vannak ‘they are’

The pronouns in the Hungarian examples are in parentheses because you don't have to use them. The
verb form tells you clearly enough which person and number is indicated. So English How are you? is
Hungarian Hogy vagy? or Hogy vagytok?.

Orthography and pronunciation

Hungarian uses the Latin alphabet (like English) with some additional letters and diacritics. Let's start with
the vowels.

Vowels can be short and long. Short vowels are a, e, i, o, u, ö and ü. Their long versions

are á, é, í, ó, ú, ő and ű.

Consonants can also be short and long. Long consonants are written by doubling them, as
in reggel ’morning’, for example.

The spelling of some Hungarian consonants is very different from their English counterparts:

Letter Hungarian pronunciation

c like ts in cats

cs like ch in channel

s like sh in shower

sz like s in sing

zs like s in pleasure

So Hungarian szia ’hello’ or ’goodbye’ sounds a bit like English see ya.

The letters gy, ny, ty represent sounds which not all varieties of English have. They sound a bit like
adding a y sound to the preceding sound.
You can have a look at this video (and others) to hear how the vowels and consonants are pronounced:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjSQ3E1zSxo

Another video as a gentle introduction to the Hungarian language:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikODMvw76j4

Please note that this course is frozen in beta. The creators of the course are aware of the technical errors
and shortcomings - like missing audios and typos - of this very lesson. We suggest that you do not report
them any longer. Thank you.

Lesson 1

Just like English, Hungarian has a so-called definite article (or definite determiner).
Hungarian a and az correspond to English the. So English the boy is Hungarian a fiú. It is easy to figure
out whether you have to use a or az: when the following word (usually an adjective or a noun) starts with
a vowel, you use az. When it starts with a consonant, you use a.

This is very similar to the indefinite determiner in English: a and an. While it is a boy, it's an apple. In this
case, Hungarian is simpler: the indefinite determiner is simply egy.

Be careful not to confuse Hungarian a/az, which is the definite article meaning the, with English a/an,
which is the indefinite article, meaning egy!

Lesson 2

You will notice that Hungarian sometimes lacks a verb where English has is. For example, while in
English you would say What is this?, Hungarian does not have a verb here: Mi ez?

In addition, Hungarian word order is freer than English word order. To ask What is this?, in Hungarian
both Mi ez? and Ez mi?are fine.

Be careful! The verb is only missing when the subject is in the third person and the sentence expresses a
property relating to the subject like Ez mi? “What is this?“, Péter egy diák “Péter is a student.”, or Péter
álmos “Péter is tired.”

Lesson 3

The third person form of the English verb to be in Hungarian is van. This form is used when the verb is
combined with a question word or an adverb like hol (‘where’), ott (‘there’), bent(‘inside’), etc.

Here are all the present-tense forms again:

SG PL

1 (én) vagyok ‘I am’ (mi) vagyunk ‘we are’

2 (te) vagy ‘you (sg.) are’ (ti) vagytok ‘you (pl) are’

3 (ő) van ‘s/he is’ (ők) vannak ‘they are’

 In this skill, you'll learn some common Hungarian names, like Péter, Kati or Éva, as well as how to ask
someone for their name.

There are several ways of asking someone what their name is, two of which you'll learn here.

 The first one involves a neved, meaning ‘your name’ (you'll learn the exact structure later!). You
can ask someone Mi a neved or ‘What is your name?’ — Recall that we don't always have to say isin
Hungarian.
 Another way is to use hogy hívnak, which literally ‘How do they call you?’, but it's really just
another way to say ‘What's your name?’.

The verb lenni ‘to be’

In this skill, you will learn the forms of the Hungarian verb lenni, English ‘to be’. We have already seen its
conjugation, repeated here:

SG PL

1 (én) vagyok ‘I am’ (mi) vagyunk ‘we are’

2 (te) vagy ‘you (sg.) are’ (ti) vagytok ‘you (pl) are’

3 (ő) van ‘s/he is’ (ők) vannak ‘they are’

Like in many other languages (for example English!), this verb is somewhat irregular. The most important
thing to keep in mind is when to use the third person forms van ‘is’ and vannak ‘are’.

The following examples illustrate this difference.

Én tanár vagyok. meaning ‘I am a teacher.’

Ő tanár. meaning ‘She/he is a teacher.’

As you can see, in the first sentence above, there is a verb, namely vagyok, but in the second sentence
there is no van.

Here Hungarian differs from English: when expressing what something is like, you do not use van in
Hungarian.

So the following examples are all fine without van or vannak, in fact, it is not possible to add van here.

Az autó piros. ‘The car is red.’

A fiúk tanárok. ‘The boys are teachers.’

Personal pronouns
 Like English, Hungarian has personal pronouns, words like ‘I’, ‘you’, ‘we’, etc. Here are the Hungarian
ones:

SG PL

1 én ’I’ mi ’we’

2 te ’you (sg.)’ ti ’you (pl.)’

3 ő ’she/he/it’ ők ’they’
But there are some important differences between the two languages:

 Hungarian has distinct pronouns for second person singular and second person plural: te means
‘you (sg.)’, while ti means ‘you (pl.)’.

 Hungarian has no gender: the third person singular pronoun őmeans both ‘she’ and ‘he’. Thus a
Hungarian sentence like Ő tanár can mean either ‘She is a teacher’ or ‘He is a teacher’.

 Like German, French and Spanish, Hungarian has pronouns that are used to address someone
in a formal way: ön in the singular and önök in the plural. These can be translated to English as ‘you’ and
they are used in formal settings when talking to someone senior, strangers and when being polite.

Gender in occupations

We have already seen that Hungarian does not have gender: the pronoun ő means both ‘she’ and ‘he’.
However, when speaking about jobs and occupations, there is a way of expressing whether someone is
male or female.

For most occupations, like művész ‘artist’ or rendőr ‘policeman’, you only have to add the
word nő ‘woman’ and you get the female version.

művésznő is a female artist, and rendőrnő is a policewoman.

In this skill, you'll start learning about places and about how to express relations between places. Lesson
1 mostly includes words for different types of buildings.

Lesson 2 introduces further buildings and places, as well as postpositions. English has
many prepositions, words like on, in, by, etc. which can be used with nouns to express a certain location:

 on the building, in the city, by the tree

Hungarian expresses some of these meanings using case suffixes (you'll learn about those soon!), and
some of them using postpositions. This simply means that rather than preceding the noun they modify,
they follow it.

In English, we say behind the tree and in Hungarian, we say a famögött.

In Lesson 3, you'll learn more nouns!

 In this skill, you'll learn about verbs in the present tense. As you will see in later lessons, there is a lot
more to Hungarian verbs, but we will start with some simple things.

What is very important in this lesson is a concept called vowel harmony, which we need to understand
how to conjugate the Hungarian verb. Let's look at an example (from Lesson 1).

 The verb tanul means ‘to learn’ or ‘to study’. In the singular, it is conjugated as follows.

tanul ‘to learn/study’ suffix (ending)

1 tanul-ok ‘I learn’ -ok

2 tanul-sz ‘you learn’ -sz

3 tanul ‘she/he learns’ (null)

You can use these suffixes for all the verbs in Lesson 1. Easy enough!

In Lesson 2, however, we'll find verbs like siet ‘to hurry’. The following table shows you the forms of siet.

siet ‘to hurry’ suffix (ending)

1 siet-ek ‘I hurry’ -ek

2 siet-sz ‘you hurry’ -sz

3 siet ‘she/he hurries’ (null)

Do you notice something? The first person singular suffix for sietis -ek, not -ok as above. Why?

Hungarian has vowel harmony. This means that the vowels (like e and o) in suffixes (like -ek and -ok)
depend on the vowels in the word they attach to:

 -ok occurs when the verb it attaches to contains the vowels a, á, o, ó, u, or ú.

 -ek occurs when the verb it attaches to contains i, í, e, é.
 -ök occurs when the verb it attaches to contains ö, ő, ü, or ű.

The idea is that the vowels in the suffixes are in “harmony” with the vowels in the word they attach to. This
“harmony” relates to two groups of vowels, called “back” and “front”:
 front vowels back vowels

i, í, ü, ű u, ú

e, é, ö, ő o, ó

a, á

This table will help you determine which vowel should precede the -k in the first person singular — just
check the vowels of the verb! If they are back, we get -ok. If they are front, we get -ek or -ök.

Now you're a vowel harmony pro! (As usual, there are exceptions.. you'll learn about those later!)

A note on word order

While word order in Hungarian is more flexible than in English, it is not completely free (you'll read more
about this soon). The most important thing to remember is that some parts of the sentence have to come
right before the verb.

For example, question words like ki ‘who’ or mi ‘what’:

 Ki sétál a piac mellett? ‘Who is taking a walk next to the market?‘

Also, when you compare and contrast two phrases, they have to come right before the verb. For example:

 Nem a piac mellett sétálok, hanem az áruház mellett. ‘I am not walking next to the market, but
next to the department store.‘
The contrast here is a piac mellett ‘next to the market‘ and az áruház mellett ‘next to the department
store‘.

Objects and accusative

This skill is about accusative case. In Hungarian, accusative case is marked by the suffix -t on a direct
object. A noun like fiú ’boy’ becomes fiút when it is in the accusative.

In English, direct objects generally follow the subject and the verb, as in

 The girl sees a boy.

where a boy is the direct object, the girl is the subject, and sees is the verb.

In Hungarian, the word order can be more free, but the direct object is marked with -t, so in Hungarian we
get:

 A lány lát egy fiút.

The subject is a lány which does not have a case ending (we say it is “nominative”). The verb
is lát and egy fiút is the direct object, with its accusative -t.
 In the first lesson, this -t is simply added to the word:

 fiú -> fiút
 tanár ‘teacher’ -> tanárt etc.
In later skills, you'll see that sometimes we have to add a vowel before the -t, for example:

 ház ‘house’ -> házat
 ügyvéd ’lawyer’ -> ügyvédet
 diák ‘student’ -> *diákot
The vowel is determined by vowel harmony, as with verbs! Words with front vowels in them get a front
vowel before the -t, words with back vowels get a back vowel.

front vowels back vowels

i, í, ü, ű u, ú

e, é, ö, ő o, ó

a, á

A note on word order

In sentences with a subject, a verb and an object, Hungarian has very flexible word order. All of the
following can be used in certain contexts:

 Péter lát egy házat.

 Péter egy házat lát.
 Egy házat lát Péter.
 Egy házat Péter lát.
While the all mean ‘Péter sees a house.’, each sentence conveys slightly different information with
respect to which element is focused. A focused phrase appears right in front of the verb in Hungarian
and it often represents new information or contrast.

The first sentence with Péter above, for example, would be a valid answer to a question like ‘Who sees a
house?’ but the second sentence would be odd, because here egy házat ‘a house’ immediately precedes
the verb and is therefore in focus.

This can be a bit tricky to understand, but English has similar restrictions! If you have the following
question

 What does Péter see?

the question word is in focus and asks for new information. In the reply, the answer to what will also be
new information and in focus. In English you can say,
 Péter sees a house.
or

 It's a house that Péter sees.

It is however odd to answer the question with:

 It is Péter who sees a house.

The analogy is the following: the X in the “It is X that ...” construction is the X that comes right before the
verb in Hungarian.

Word order in questions

Question words generally ask for some (new) information and in Hungarian they behave like other
focused parts of the sentence. So in a question like ‘Who(m) does Mary know?’ ’who(m)’ is in focus in
Hungarian and has to appear right before the verb:

 Kit lát Mari?

 Mari kit lát?

Plural
You've just learned how to spot, form and use accusative case. However, all of our examples so far
were in the singular. In this skill, you'll also learn plural forms. The plural of Hungarian nouns is formed
with the suffix -k, often preceded by a vowel.

Let's take the demonstrative determiners ez ‘this’ and az ’that’ first.

 ez ’this’ -> ezek ’these’
 az ’that’ -> azok ’those’
How do you know which vowel to choose? Remember vowel harmony? The word ez has a front vowel,
and the word az has a back vowel, as you can see from the table here.

front vowels back vowels

i, í, ü, ű u, ú

e, é, ö, ő o, ó

a, á

This means that the vowel before the plural ending -k will also be front, and back, respectively. Thus we
get ezek and azok.

When a word ends in a vowel, like a or e, for example alma‘apple’, the vowel becomes long before the
plural ending:
 alma ‘apple’ -> almák ‘apples’
Plural and accusative
When words are in the plural and the accusative, we have to arrange both the plural -k and the
accusative -t somehow. Note that if both are there, we will definitely need a vowel between the -k and
the -t!

 alma + -k (plural) + -t (accusative) -> almá+k+at = almákat‘apples (obj.)'

The vowels we need to add will all be front or back, so if we want to use these and those as objects, we
get:

 ez ‘this’ -> ezek ‘these’ -> ezeket ’these (obj.)’

 az ‘that’ -> azok ‘those’ -> azokat ‘those (obj.)’
Sneak preview: definite conjugation
You'll learn about the definite conjugation soon, but here's a little primer. When an object in the
accusative is definite, the form of the verb changes slightly. Definite phrases are those with a definite
article a or az ‘the’, with demonstratives like ez ‘this‘ or az‘that‘, and names, for example.

So when you see apples, you say:

Látok almákat ‘I see apples’ Látsz almákat ‘you (sg.) see apples’

because almákat is indefinite. When you want to say I see those, which is definite, you say:

Látom azokat ‘I see those’ Látod azokat ‘you (sg.) see those’

You can also use a form like látom without an object to say ‘I see it’. In this lesson, you'll see a few
examples of the definite conjugation using forms like the following.

SG

1 hallom ‘I hear it’

2 hallod ‘you hear it’

SG

1 keresem ‘I am looking for it’

2 keresed ‘you are looking for it’

 Plural
You've just learned how to spot, form and use accusative case. However, all of our examples so far
were in the singular. In this skill, you'll also learn plural forms. The plural of Hungarian nouns is formed
with the suffix -k, often preceded by a vowel.

Let's take the demonstrative determiners ez ‘this’ and az ’that’ first.

 ez ’this’ -> ezek ’these’
 az ’that’ -> azok ’those’
How do you know which vowel to choose? Remember vowel harmony? The word ez has a front vowel,
and the word az has a back vowel, as you can see from the table here.

front vowels back vowels

i, í, ü, ű u, ú

e, é, ö, ő o, ó

a, á

This means that the vowel before the plural ending -k will also be front, and back, respectively. Thus we
get ezek and azok.

When a word ends in a vowel, like a or e, for example alma‘apple’, the vowel becomes long before the
plural ending:

 alma ‘apple’ -> almák ‘apples’
Plural and accusative
When words are in the plural and the accusative, we have to arrange both the plural -k and the
accusative -t somehow. Note that if both are there, we will definitely need a vowel between the -k and
the -t!

 alma + -k (plural) + -t (accusative) -> almá+k+at = almákat‘apples (obj.)'

The vowels we need to add will all be front or back, so if we want to use these and those as objects, we
get:

 ez ‘this’ -> ezek ‘these’ -> ezeket ’these (obj.)’

 az ‘that’ -> azok ‘those’ -> azokat ‘those (obj.)’
Contrast and word order
As mentioned in the Tips & Notes for Accusatives 1, Hungarian word order is less free in sentences which
express some contrast. The following sentence from this skill illustrates this:

The judge is looking for lawyers and finds actors.

Here, the subject is and remains judge, but there are two different verbs, is looking for and finds, as well
as two different objects, lawyers and actors. Since there is a contrast between the two objects, not all
word orders in Hungarian are accepted here. In fact, the objects are most naturally placed just before the
verb:

A bíró ügyvédeket keres  és  színészeket talál.

If a bíró is in focus, we can get the following order, too:

A bíró keres ügyvédeket és talál színészeket talál.

which means something like ‘It is the judge who is looking for lawyers and finding actors.’

However, mixing the order of the two verbs and their objects not possible here.

Plural adjectives

Hungarian differs from English in that adjectives have to be plural when the subject is plural as well.

While in English you say The women are German, with the word German being the same form for both
singular and plural, in Hungarian the adjective has to be in the plural as well, so we say:

A nők németek.

Have a look at the Tips and Notes section of the skill Plurals 1 to refresh your memory about how to form
plurals of nouns.

Adjectives are a bit different: often, the plural suffix will be -akwhen an adjective consists of back vowels
and ends in a neutralvowel like e, i. Have a look at the following words:

amerikai + -k = amerikaiak ‘Americans’  kanadai  +  -k = kanadai*ak ‘Canadians’  egyiptomi + -k  =

*egyiptomiak** ‘Egyptians’

If an adjective ends in a consonant, you can often rely on what you've learned in Plurals 1:

brazil + -k = brazil*ok  ‘Brazilians’ japán  +  -k = japán*ok‘Japanese’ (plural)

Finally, note that in Hungarian you don't have to capitalise words referring to nationalities, but in English
you do.

van in Hungarian

Remember that in Hungarian, the third person forms of to be do not always appear. When we talk about
the properties of the subject and express those using adjectives, there is no verb in the Hungarian
sentence.

In

A nők németek.

there is no verb. You can't leave it out in English, of course!

Generic statements
You will come across so-called generic statements. Those are sentences that express something that
is true in general, for example the following:

Dogs have four legs.

This means that In general, dogs have four legs. There is an important difference between such
statements in English and Hungarian. While in English you don't have to use an article for the subject in
such sentences, in Hungarian you usually do. Compare the following:

Dutch people are tall. A hollandiak magasak.

In Hungarian, you can't say Hollandiak magasak to Dutch people are tall, you have to add the definite
determiner a(z).

More adjectives

Hungarian differs from English in that adjectives have to be plural when the subject is plural as well.

In English you say The women are German, with the word German being the same form for both singular
and plural. But in Hungarian the adjective has to be in the plural as well, so we say:

A nők németek.

Have a look at the Tips and Notes section of the skill Plurals 1 to refresh your memory about how to form
plurals of nouns.

Adjectives are a bit different: often, the plural suffix will be -akwhen an adjective consists of back vowels
and ends in a neutralvowel like e, i. Have a look at the following words:

rossz + -k = rosszaak  ‘bad’ (plural) fontos + -k  =  fontos*ak‘important’ (plural)  lassú  +  -k =

*lassúak** ‘slow’ (plural)

van in Hungarian

Remember that in Hungarian, the third person forms of to be do not always appear. When we talk about
the properties of the subject and express those using adjectives, there is no verb in the Hungarian
sentence.

In

A nők németek.

there is no verb. You can't leave it out in English, of course!

Generic statements

You will come across so-called generic statements. Those are sentences that express something that
is true in general, for example the following:

Dogs have four legs.

 This means that In general, dogs have four legs. There is an important difference between such
statements in English and Hungarian. While in English you don't have to use an article for the subject in
such sentences, in Hungarian you usually do. Compare the following:

Dutch people are tall. A hollandok magasak.

In Hungarian, you can't say Hollandok magasak to mean Dutch people are tall, you have to add the
definite determiner a(z).

More verb forms

Remember the singular verb forms you learned before? In this skill, you'll learn to use plural forms. As
before, you have to remember that Hungarian has vowel harmony. Let's start with an example.

 The verb csinál means ‘to make’ or ‘to do’. You can tell that it has a back vowel (á). Its forms are
as follows:

csinál ‘to make/do’ suffix (ending)

1SG csinál-ok ‘I make’ -ok

2SG csinál-sz ‘you make’ -sz

3SG csinál ‘s/he makes’ (null)

1PL csinál-unk ‘we make’ -unk

2PL csinál-tok ‘you make’ -tok

3PL csinál-nak ‘they make’ -nak

We'll also see verbs with front vowels. The following table shows you the forms of pihen ‘to rest’.

pihen ‘to rest’ suffix (ending)

1SG pihen-ek ‘I rest’ -ek

2SG pihen-sz ‘you rest’ -sz

3SG pihen ‘s/he rests’ (null)

1PL pihen-ünk ‘we rest’ -ünk

2PL pihen-tek ‘you rest’ -tek

3PL pihen-nek* they rest’ -nek

You can see the different types of endings. The following table summarises the suffixes based on vowel
harmony:
 front suffixes back suffixes

1SG -ek/-ök -ok

2SG -sz -sz

3SG (null) (null)

1PL -ünk -unk

2PL -tek/-tök -tok

3PL -nek -nak

-ik-verbs

There's one more type of verb that is worth mentioning here, the so-called -ik-verbs. Their name come
from their third person singular form, which ends in -ik rather than having no ending like regular verbs.

 játsz-ik ‘s/he plays’, ‘s/he is playing’

 esz-ik ‘s/he eats’, ‘s/he is eating’
The main other difference between these verbs and regular verbs is that first person singular can end in -
m even without an object:

 játsz-om ‘I play‘, ‘I am playing’

 esz-em ‘I eat’, ‘I am eating’
In many grammars, you would only find these forms ending in -m, but these days, many speakers
alternate between using -mforms or the regular -k ending for first person. We teach you both, and accept
both!

Some -ik-verbs are: dolgozik ‘to work’, eszik ‘to eat’, iszik ‘to drink’, játszik ‘to play’, úszik ‘to swim’.

Subjects

Hungarian is a so-called null subject language, meaning that in general, you don't have to express the
subject in Hungarian. Compare the following examples.

They are going home.

Haza mennek.

Both mean the same, yet in the Hungarian example there is no word corresponding to English they.

In addition, Hungarian has more pronouns than English. Here is a little overview to guide you in this
lesson.

Singular Plural

1st én mi
 Singular Plural

2nd te ti

3rd ő ők
Note that you in English can refer to either singular or plural, Hungarian makes a difference here. te refers
to second person singular, ti refers to second person plural. When you encounter an English sentence
like

Are you going home?

you can translate this to Hungarian in the singular or plural.

Hungarian has a few more pronouns that are you used to address someone in a formal context, just like
French vous, Spanish usted and German Sie.

In Hungarian, these pronouns are ön (singular) and önök (plural), as well as maga (singular)

and maguk (plural). One thing to keep in mind when using these pronouns is that they behave like a third
person pronoun (like Spanish usted). When using ön, then, the verb looks like it has a third person
subject:

Ön haza megy.

Ő haza megy.

Te haza mész.

The so-called definite conjugation is one of the trickier parts of Hungarian grammar and provides a nice
little challenge for learners of the language!

In sentences with an accusative object (or direct object), the verb form depends on whether the object is
definite or not. Most verb forms you have learned so far were part of the indefinite conjugation. When a
direct object is definite, however, the verb appears in the definite conjugation. Compare the following
examples:

(i) Lát-ok egy kutyá-t.

(ii) Lát-om a kutyá-t.

In (i), the object is indefinite, meaning ’a dog’. In (ii), it is definite, meaning ’the dog’. In (ii), therefore, the
verb changes to látom. The ending -om indicates that this is the definite conjugation.

When you use the definite conjugation, the verb is understood to imply an object, even if there is none:

(iii) Látom.

(iii) means ‘I see it.’ You can only use the definite conjugation with a definite direct object, which is why
these verb forms imply the presence of an object.

On top of this, we have to remember vowel harmony! Here are two tables showing the definite verb forms
of hall ‘to hear’ and keres ‘to be looking for’.
 SG PL

1 hallom ‘I hear it’ halljuk ‘we hear it’

2 hallod ‘you hear it’ halljátok ‘you (pl) hear it’

3 hallja ‘s/he hears it’ hallják ‘they hear it’

SG PL

1 keresem ‘I am looking keressük ‘we are looking

for it’ for it’

2 keresed ‘you are keresitek ‘you (pl) are

looking for it’ looking for it’

3 keresi ‘s/he is looking keresik ‘they are looking for

for it’ it’
As you can see in these tables, the -j- does not always appear in the definite conjugation. Importantly,
when it follows -s, -z, -sz, or -zs, the consonant is doubled and swallows the -j-:

 keres + jük = keressük ‘we look for it’

 hoz + ja = hozza ‘s/he brings it’
 (meg)vesz + jük = (meg)vesszük ‘we buy/take it’
Verb prefixes

There is one more thing you have to keep in mind for this lesson. Many Hungarian verbs come with a so-
called verbal particle, as in this example:

meg-látogatja ‘s/he visits’ (with a definite object!)

This particle often comes before the verb, but can also follow it, for example in questions or when the
sentence is stressing information about the subject or the object. Have a look at the following sentences.

(v) Ki látogatja  meg  Pétert? ‘Who visits Péter?’

(vi) Péter  látogatja meg Zsuzsát. ‘PETER is visiting Zsuzsa.‘

The Hungarian word order in (vi) very naturally translates into English by stressing PETER: you want to
convey that the sentence is about Peter, and not about someone else.

In this skill, you'll learn about how to express date and time. You'll learn a few past tense expressions
(more on that later), the days of the week, months, etc.

The past tense is not too difficult, fortunately. You can mostly use the same verbal endings as before, but
before the endings, a -t- indicates that the verb is in the past tense:
 csinál ‘to make/do’

1SG csinál-t-am ‘I made’

2SG csinál-t-ál ‘you (sg.) made’

3SG csinál-t ‘he made’

1PL csinál-t-unk ‘we made’

2PL csinál-t-atok ‘you (pl.) made’

3PL csinál-t-ak ‘they made’

You'll learn more about the past tense in a later skill!

As in many languages, in Hungarian you can use the present tense to talk about things in the future. It is
fine to say.

 Holnap megyek. (literally ’tomorrow go-I’)

to say ‘I will go tomorrow.’

The days of the week

The word nap means both ‘day’ and ‘sun’ in Hungarian. It only shows up in one of the week days,
however, which are as follows:

 hétfő ‘Monday’
 kedd ‘Tuesday’
 szerda ‘Wednesday’
 csütörtök ‘Thursday’
 péntek ‘Friday’
 szombat ‘Saturday’
 vasárnap ‘Sunday’
If you speak a Slavic language, some of these might sound familiar to you! To express that something
happened on a certain day, Hungarian uses a case-suffix that we'll see later on (and which is also used
for some of the seasons):

 kedd-en ‘on Tuesday’
 csütörtök-ön ‘on Thursday’
 szombat-on ‘on Saturday’
As in the plural, the vowel in the suffix depends on the vowels in the stem, so we get either -en, -ön or -
on.

The months
In Hungarian, the names of the months are similar to the names of the months in many other European
languages, including English.

 január ‘January’
 február ‘February’
 március ‘March’
 április ‘April’
 május ‘May’
 június ‘June’
 július ‘July’
 augusztus ‘August’
 szeptember ‘September’
 október ‘October’
 november ‘November’
 december ‘December’
To say that something happened in a certain month, Hungarian uses the case suffix -ban or -ben:

 január-ban ‘in January’
 szeptember-ben ‘in September’
The seasons
While English simply uses in or during to express that something is happening in a season, Hungarian is
a bit different. The seasons, first of all are the following:

 tavasz ‘spring’
 nyár ’summer’
 ősz ‘autumn’
 tél ‘winter’
Easy enough. However, there are two different case-suffixes to mark what's happening during a season:

 tavas-szal ’in spring’
 nyár-on ‘in summer’
 ős-szel ‘in autumn’
 tél-en ‘in winter’
 We'll learn about these cases in later lessons, but for now, you'll just have to learn them!

Accusative pronouns
By now, you know very well how to form the accusative of a noun. Unfortunately, pronouns are slightly
more complicated and have special forms (like they do in English!). Look at the following table:

Person/Number Nominative Accusative

1SG én ‘I’ engem ‘me’

2SG te ‘you (sg.)’ téged ‘you (sg., obj.)’

3SG ő ‘he/she/it’ őt ‘him/her/it’

1PL mi ‘we’ minket ‘us’

2PL ti ‘you (pl.)’ titeket ‘you (pl., obj.)’

3PL ők ‘they’ őket ‘them’

So far, we have seen that definite direct objects require the verb to be in the definite conjugation. When
the direct object is a personal pronoun, the situation is a bit more complicated.

Whether the verb is in the definite or the indefinite conjugation depends on the person of the pronoun.
When the object is őt or őket, i.e. the third person singular and plural pronoun, the verb is always in
the definite conjugation:

 Én látom őt. ‘I see her/him.’

 Ti látjátok őket. ‘You guys see them.’
 Mari látja őt. ‘Mari sees her/him.’
When the object is first person, like engem ‘me’ or minket ‘us’, the verb is always in
the indefinite conjugation:

 Mari lát engem. ‘Mari sees me.’

 Ti láttok minket. ‘You guys see us.’
 A fiúk látnak engem. ‘The boys see me.’
When the object is second person, téged ‘you (sg.)’ and titeket‘you (pl.)’, we have to take the person of
the subject into account. With third person subjects, we see the indefinite conjugation:

 Mari lát téged. ‘Mari sees you (sg.).’

 A fiúk látnak titeket. ‘The boys see you guys.’
However, when the subject is first person, we encounter a verb form we have seen already in the
expression szeret-lek ‘I love you’:

 Én látlak téged. ‘I see you (sg.).’

 Én kereslek titeket. ‘I am looking for you guys.’
The following table illustrates this slightly complicated system (don't worry about the gaps).
The bold forms indicate the indefinite conjugation, and the italic ones indicate the definite
conjugation. Bold and italic indicates the -lak/-lek ending.

subject →
1 2 3
object

1 Én látlak Én lát-om
téged. őt/őket.

2 Te látsz Te látod
engem. őt/őket.

3 Ő lát Ő lát Ő látja

engem. téged. őt/őket.

van and nincs

Remember the word van? It's the third person singular of the verb ‘to be’, but we don't use it all too often
in Hungarian. It is is restricted to sentences which you would translate to English as

 there is ...
 ... is here
 ... is there, etc.
When we negate van, it turns into a different form:

 nincs means ‘there is no(t)’

Some examples:

 Van itt madár. ‘There are birds here.’

 Nincs itt madár. ‘There are no birds here.’
melyik and demonstratives

In Lesson 2, you'll learn the words melyik ‘which’ and demonstrative determiners. In English,

demonstratives are ‘this’ and ‘that’. In Hungarian, they are a bit more complex:
 ez a ‘this’
 az a ‘that’
They consist of ez ‘this’ plus a definite article a; or az ‘that’ and a definite article a. In both cases, the
definite article can take on a -z if the following word starts with a vowel:

 ez a ház ‘this house’
 az az alma ‘that apple’

Numbers and plural

As you will see throughout this lesson, Hungarian and English differ in how they form phrases like five
students. In English, nouns that follow a number are in the plural, but in Hungarian, they are in the
singular.

 Engl. five students
 Hung. öt diák
Rather than using the plural, diákok, we use the singular after number words in Hungarian: diák.

Accordingly, the verb in Hungarian also shows the third person singular form, rather than the plural.
Compare:

 Engl. five students run

 Hung. öt diák fut
Counting
The numbers from one to ten are quite different from most other European languages (if you speak some
Finnish or Estonian, you might recognise some of them, though):

egy kettő három négy öt hat hét nyolc kilenc tíz

From ten to one hundred, we have the following:

tíz húsz harminc negyven ötven hatvan hetven nyolcvankilencven száz

As you can see, from 40-90, you use the forms above and add -van (compare English -ty).

Putting these together is straightforward. The multiples of ten precede the multiples of one, thus:

sixty-one = hatvanegy

Only with tíz and húsz do you add an infix between the two and the vowel is shortened:

eleven = tizenegy

twelve = tizenkettő

twenty-three = huszonhárom etc.
Higher numbers work in the same way:

one hundred and twenty three = százhuszonhárom

Hungarian has many more cases than most other European languages, but they are a lot less scary than
you might think.

While many languages, like English, use prepositions to express certain spatial concepts, Hungarian
uses case suffixes. Compare the following words and phrases:

English Hungarian

the shop az üzlet

in the shop az üzletben

the hotel a szálloda

in the hotel a szállodában

Using the suffix -ban/-ben is like using the English preposition in, but after the word.

In addition, you have to know when to choose -ban and when to choose -ben. Recall from Lesson Plurals
1 that Hungarian has vowel harmony. The choice of vowel in the suffix depends on the vowels in the
stem:

Front vowels Back vowels

i/í u/ú

ü/ű o/ó

e/é

ö/ő a/á
Because üzlet has front vowels, the vowel in the suffix also has to be a front vowel: we choose -ben.

In szálloda, however, we have back vowels, therefore we choose the suffix -ban.

The superessive case is one more Hungarian case that is used to express a spatial relation. As with
the inessive case that you learned in the previous lesson, the superessive in Hungarian conforms to a
preposition in English and has distinct forms, based on vowel harmony.

The superessive is easy to remember for English speakers, as it often just sounds like the preposition
‘on’! Compare the following words and phrases:
 English Hungarian

the table az asztal

on the table az asztalon

the airplane a repülőgép

on the airplane a repülőgépen

the ground a föld

on the ground a földön

Using the suffix -on/-en is like using the English preposition on, but after the word.

But there is one more thing to mention about the superessive in Hungarian. It does not simply have two
forms, -on and -en, but it also has a third form, -ön. Vowel harmony with superessive is a bit more
complicated!

Front vowels Back vowels

i/í u/ú

ü/ű o/ó

e/é

ö/ő a/á
For words with back vowels, like asztal, we only get the form asztal-on. However, for words with front
vowels, the suffix is sometimes -en and sometimes -ön. Finding out which one to use is easy! Just think
about whether the vowels in the word are rounded or not (if you wonder why it is called rounding,
pronounce u and ü in front of a mirror, and look at what your lips are doing!).

Rounded front vowels Unrounded front vowels

ü, ű, ö, ő i, í, e, é
In words with ö, like föld meaning ‘ground, Earth’, superessive becomes földön ‘on the ground’.

Like the inessive and the superessive, the adessive is another case that expresses a spatial relation in
Hungarian. It is similar to the English prepositions by or next to. Like the other cases, it follows the rules of
vowel harmony and can appear as -nál (after back vowels) and -nél (after front vowels). Compare the
following forms:

English Hungarian

the table az asztal

 English Hungarian

by the table az asztalnál

the shop az üzlet

by the shop az üzletnél

Again, a suffix in Hungarian corresponds to an English preposition.

Note that there are some exceptions to the general rules of vowel harmony. The word híd ‘bridge’, for
example, takes the suffix -nál:

hídnál ‘by the bridge’

Remember that Hungarian does not always need the verb van ’to be’ when English does.

Ez egy szép ajtó. ’This is a nice door.’

But there is no van in Hungarian. You have to use van and vannak, however, when you translate English
sentences starting with there is or there are and when you talk about where something is. See the
following examples.

Van a polcon egy alma. ‘There is an apple on the shelf.’

Ők a házban vannak. ‘They are in the house.’

Postpositions

Another difference between Hungarian and English is that Hungarian mostly has postpositions, as
opposed to prepositions. You will find some of those in this section.

While in English, you say under the picture, in Hungarian the noun comes first: a kép alatt. Similarly, in
English the word between comes before the noun(s):

between the houses

In Hungarian, the order changes:

a házak között

Dressing up in Hungarian

A common way to express what someone is wearing in Hungarian is to say, literally,

On the man is a jumper.

to express ‘the man is wearing a jumper’.

You've already learned the superessive case: -on/-en/-ön. In this skill, you'll get to use it a lot!
Demonstratives
In English, demonstrative pronouns are this, that, these, those, and so on. In Hungarian, the
words ez and az correspond to thisand that.

In the plural and in other cases, these demonstratives are very regular:

ez + -ek = ezek ‘these’

az + -ok = azok ‘those’

ez + -ek + -ben = ezekben ‘in these’

But be careful: When the singular demonstratives ez and az are followed by a case suffix like -nak/-
nek (dative), -ban/-ben(inessive), -val/-vel (comitative), etc., -z assimilates to the first consonant of the
case suffix:

ez + -ben = ebben ‘in this’

az + -val = azzal ‘with that’

Demonstratives and nouns

When using a demonstrative with a noun, both the demonstrative and the noun can have plural and case
suffixes:

ebben a házban ‘in this house’

azoknál a kerteknél ‘by those gardens’

Demonstratives and postpositions

Hungarian has one more complication in store for you. When you combine a demonstrative and a noun
like ez a ház ‘this house’ with a postposition like mellett ‘next to‘, the resulting form is like with the case
suffixes above:

e mellett a ház mellett ‘next to this house’

a fölött a kert fölött ‘above that garden’

Ordinal numbers (like first, second, etc.) are formed on the basis of the number, and -adik, -edik, and -
ödik in Hungarian. The choice of the suffixes depends on vowel harmony, as you know by now.

When the number has a long vowel (like hét, tíz or húsz), the vowel shortens:

tíz becomes tizedik ‘tenth’

In három, the long vowel shortens, and the other one disappears, so we get harmadik ‘third‘.

And finally, like in English second is not based on the number two (we don't use twoth!):
második ‘second’

(más meaning ‘different’ but also ‘another‘)

When talking about animals and their characteristics, we often make general statements like the
following.

Lions are carnivores.

In English, it is possible to use the plural of a word without an article, like lions above, to express such a
generic statement.

In Hungarian, generic statements are expressed slightly differently. As we've learned before, when talking
about the properties of a third-person subject, we cannot use the verb to be. In addition, in Hungarian, we
need an article (it can be definite or indefinite when in the singular). The English sentence above
becomes:

Az oroszlánok húsevők. = literally ‘the lions carnivores’

or

Egy oroszlán egy húsevő. = literally ‘A lion is a carnivore.’

The same is true with negation. The English sentence

Dolphins are not fish.

becomes

A delfinek nem halak. = lit. ‘the dolphins not fish’

Continuing with Hungarian cases, this lesson teaches you the illative case. It is used to denote motion
into something and it basically corresponds to English into:

a házba ‘into the house’

It will not come as a surprise to you that the illative suffix is also subject to vowel harmony:

a kertbe ‘into the garden'

It's easy to confuse the illative case with the inessive case -ban/-ben, corresponding to the English
preposition in, so be careful! The -b- in both case suffixes contributes the inside-meaning.

Our next Hungarian case is sublative case, which indicates motion onto something. It corresponds to
the English preposition onto and shows vowel harmony:

a házra ‘onto the house’ a tetőre ‘onto the roof’

 The allative is another movement case, expressing movement to something. In English, it can be
translated with to. The allative also shows vowel harmony, with a special quirk: there are twofront
suffixes, based on whether the vowels in the noun are rounded, like ö and ü, or not, like e. (If you're
wondering about the term ‘rounding’, pronounce a couple of ös and üs in front of a mirror and look at your
lips!).

a kerthez ‘to the garden’ a tükörhöz ‘to the mirror’ a házhoz ‘to the house’

Preverbs: simple cases

In this lesson, you'll learn about a very common type of particle in Hungarian: preverbs, verbal
modifiers or verbal prefixes(igekötő in Hungarian). Many of these modifiers have a meaning
expressing motion towards something: ki ‘towards outside’, be‘towards
inside’, le ‘down‘, el ‘away‘, ide ‘towards here‘, oda‘towards there‘.

In the simplest cases, a verb with a modifier just corresponds to an English verb plus an adverb:

 kimegyek ‘I go out‘
 bemész ‘you (sg.) go in‘, ‘you (sg.) enter‘
 elmegy ‘s/he goes away‘
 leülünk ‘we sit down‘
 ideültök ‘you (pl.) sit down here‘
 odaülnek ‘they sit down there‘

Note that in English, the distinction between a location and a direction is not always made explicit: she
is running there can mean she is there and she is running or she is moving from here to there by running.
Hungarian makes this explicit: the former meaning would be ott fut and the latter, with a verbal modifier or
preverb, odafut.

Word order
These verbal modifiers can have big effects on word order! As you know by now, word order in Hungarian
is much freer than in English, but there are some important restrictions, which we discuss here.

In general, a verbal modifier precedes the verb and they are written as one word:

 Mari bemegy. ‘Mari enters.‘

However, the modifier can also be separated from the verb:

 Mari megy be.

While the sentence still means that Mari enters something, the information it conveys corresponds more
to the following English sentence:

 Mari megy be. = ‘It is Mari who enters.’ (not someone else)
In the above example, Mari is in focus because it immediately precedes the verb. This is called
the focus position. Whenever there is a focused phrase or word in this position, the particle follows the
verb. The focused phrase or word often conveys new or important information.

In addition, the particle follows the verb when there is negation or in questions with question words:
 Nem mész el. ‘You do not go away.‘
 Ki ül le? ‘Who is sitting down?’

The phrase that corresponds to a question word in an answer is also always in focus. The answer to the
question Ki ül le? could be:

 Péter ül le. ‘It is Péter who is sitting down.’ or 'Péter is sitting down.’

The boldface in the second English translation indicates prominence on the word. Try saying the English
answer out loud and you'll hear what this means.

(If you're interested in the grammar of this in more detail, read on! This knowledge might be helpful, but is
not strictly necessary.)

More on word order

As mentioned before, Hungarian word order is fairly free in a certain respect: the subject does not have to
precede the verb and the object, as it mostly does in English.

However, Hungarian word order is very strict in another respect: the order of topic, focus and the verb.
Focus, as we have just seen, often conveys new information in a sentence. The topic of a sentence is
what the sentence is about. Now, while English generally has

 subject — verb — object
word order, Hungarian generally has

 topic - focus - verb - others
order. While there is only one subject in both languages, there can be more than one topic! Let's look at
some examples.

 Mari a kertben ül le. ‘Mari is sitting down in the garden.’ or ‘It's in the garden that Mari is sitting
down.’
 A kertben Mari ül le. ‘Mari is sitting down in the garden.‘ or ‘It's Mari who is sitting down in the
garden.‘

In both sentences, we convey the information that someone (Mari) is sitting down somwhere (in the
garden), but we focus on different parts of the sentence. In the first example, the new or important
information is a kertben ‘in the garden’. In Hungarian, this is indicated by word order: a
kertben immediately precedes the verb. In English, the word order stay the same,
but stress or prominence changes. But if you use a so-called cleft construction, the English word order
changes too. Compare It's in the garden ... and It's Mary ....

Finally, let's have a look at:

 Mari leül a kertben. ‘Mari is sitting down in the garden.'

This is a fairly neutral sentence. The subject is the topic, but it is not in focus, and neither is a kertben. In
such cases, as mentioned above, the verbal modifier precedes the verb. The corresponding sentence in
English does not have particular prominence on any phrase or word.
 Here are more sentences using illative case (plus the preverbs you have learned recently). It is used to
denote motion into something and it basically corresponds to English into:

a házba ‘into the house’

It will not come as a surprise to you that the illative suffix is also subject to vowel harmony:

a kertbe ‘into the garden'

It's easy to confuse the illative case with the inessive case -ban/-ben, corresponding to the English
preposition in, so be careful! The -b- in both case suffixes contributes the inside-meaning.

We're back with some more sentences with sublative case, which indicates motion onto something. It
corresponds to the English preposition onto and shows vowel harmony:

a házra ‘onto the house’ a tetőre ‘onto the roof’

In this skill, you'll find sentences involving the separable verbs from the recent "Preverbs" skill,
like felszáll ‘to get on’, for example.

 Felszállok a vonatra. ‘I get on the train.’

Sometimes, Hungarian is more explicit than English in expressing this kind of motion. For example,

 Mari leül a székre.

literally means Mari is sitting down  onto  the chair. which sounds a bit odd in English. The important point
is that -re expresses the direction of the motion.

We're back with some more sentences with sublative case, which indicates motion onto something. It
corresponds to the English preposition onto and shows vowel harmony:

a házra ‘onto the house’ a tetőre ‘onto the roof’

In this skill, you'll find sentences involving the separable verbs from the recent "Preverbs" skill,
like felszáll ‘to get on’, for example.

 Felszállok a vonatra. ‘I get on the train.’

Sometimes, Hungarian is more explicit than English in expressing this kind of motion. For example,

 Mari leül a székre.

literally means Mari is sitting down  onto  the chair. which sounds a bit odd in English. The important point
is that -re expresses the direction of the motion.

Back to the allative is another movement case, expressing movement to something. In English, it can

be translated with to. The allative also shows vowel harmony, with a special quirk: there are two front
suffixes, based on whether the vowels in the noun are rounded, like ö and ü, or not, like e.

a kerthez ‘to the garden’ a tükörhöz ‘to the mirror’ a házhoz ‘to the house’

 In this skill, you'll be using these forms with some of the preverbs you have recently learned.

Demonstratives in locative cases

This lesson is about demonstrative pronouns in some locative cases: the illative case -ba/-be,
the allative case -hoz/-hez, and the sublative case -ra/-re.

The forms of these demonstrative show assimilation. This means that the consonant -z in the
demonstrative changes to the consonant in the case:

 ez + -ben = ebben ‘in this one’

 ez + -hez = ehhez ‘to(wards) this one’
 az + -ra = arra ‘onto that one’
And so one. This does not happen in the plural, so we get:

 az + ok + -ra = azokra ‘onto those’
Demonstratives and nouns
Another thing to remember is that these cases appear on both the demonstrative and the noun*:

 ebben  a kertben ‘in this garden’

 ahhoz  az épülethez ‘to that building’
 azokra a házakra ‘onto those houses’

You have already learned the postpositions alatt ‘behind’, fölött‘above’, mögött ‘behind’

and között ‘between‘.

If you look at these forms, you can tell that they all share the -ttending, which is an old Hungarian suffix
expression location, i.e. where something is located.

To express motion towards a location, we can take the same roots and add a different suffix to them,
namely -á/-é:

alá ‘towards underneath it’ fölé ‘towards above it’ mögé ‘towards behind it’

You have to be careful here: in English, a phrase like behind the house can be translated into Hungarian
both as a ház mögöttwhen expressing where something is happening, or as a ház mögé if there
is motion involved. In this lesson, you'll see examples involving the second meaning, motion.

You have already learned the postpositions alatt ‘behind’, fölött‘above’, mögött ‘behind’

and között ‘between‘.

If you look at these forms, you can tell that they all share the -ttending, which is an old Hungarian suffix
expression location, i.e. where something is located.
 To express motion towards a location, we can take the same roots and add a different suffix to them,
namely -á/-é:

alá ‘towards underneath it’ fölé ‘towards above it’ mögé ‘towards behind it’

You have to be careful here: in English, a phrase like behind the house can be translated into Hungarian
both as a ház mögöttwhen expressing where something is happening, or as a ház mögé if there
is motion involved. In this lesson, you'll see examples involving the second meaning, motion.

In this skill, you'll learn further more verbs with prefixes. In case you need a refresher, here's the tips and
notes from the first preverbs skill:

Preverbs: simple cases

In this lesson, you'll learn about a very common type of particle in Hungarian: preverbs, verbal
modifiers or verbal prefixes(igekötő in Hungarian). Many of these modifiers have a meaning
expressing motion towards something: ki ‘towards outside’, be‘towards
inside’, le ‘down‘, el ‘away‘, ide ‘towards here‘, oda‘towards there‘.

In the simplest cases, a verb with a modifier just corresponds to an English verb plus an adverb:

 kimegyek ‘I go out‘
 bemész ‘you (sg.) go in‘, ‘you (sg.) enter‘
 elmegy ‘s/he goes away‘
 leülünk ‘we sit down‘
 ideültök ‘you (pl.) sit down here‘
 odaülnek ‘they sit down there‘

Note that in English, the distinction between a location and a direction is not always made explicit: she
is running there can mean she is there and she is running or she is moving from here to there by running.
Hungarian makes this explicit: the former meaning would be ott fut and the latter, with a verbal modifier or
preverb, odafut.

Word order
These verbal modifiers can have big effects on word order! As you know by now, word order in Hungarian
is much freer than in English, but there are some important restrictions, which we discuss here.

In general, a verbal modifier precedes the verb and they are written as one word:

 Mari bemegy. ‘Mari enters.‘

However, the modifier can also be separated from the verb:

 Mari megy be.

While the sentence still means that Mari enters something, the information it conveys corresponds more
to the following English sentence:

 Mari megy be. = ‘It is Mari who enters.’ (not someone else)
 In the above example, Mari is in focus because it immediately precedes the verb. This is called
the focus position. Whenever there is a focused phrase or word in this position, the particle follows the
verb. The focused phrase or word often conveys new or important information.

In addition, the particle follows the verb when there is negation or in questions with question words:

 Nem mész el. ‘You do not go away.‘

 Ki ül le? ‘Who is sitting down?’

The phrase that corresponds to a question word in an answer is also always in focus. The answer to the
question Ki ül le? could be:

 Péter ül le. ‘It is Péter who is sitting down.’ or 'Péter is sitting down.’

The boldface in the second English translation indicates prominence on the word. Try saying the English
answer out loud and you'll hear what this means.

(If you're interested in the grammar of this in more detail, read on! This knowledge might be helpful, but is
not strictly necessary.)

More on word order

As mentioned before, Hungarian word order is fairly free in a certain respect: the subject does not have to
precede the verb and the object, as it mostly does in English.

However, Hungarian word order is very strict in another respect: the order of topic, focus and the verb.
Focus, as we have just seen, often conveys new information in a sentence. The topic of a sentence is
what the sentence is about. Now, while English generally has

 subject — verb — object
word order, Hungarian generally has

 topic - focus - verb - others
order. While there is only one subject in both languages, there can be more than one topic! Let's look at
some examples.

 Mari a kertben ül le. ‘Mari is sitting down in the garden.’ or ‘It's in the garden that Mari is sitting
down.’
 A kertben Mari ül le. ‘Mari is sitting down in the garden.‘ or ‘It's Mari who is sitting down in the
garden.‘

In both sentences, we convey the information that someone (Mari) is sitting down somwhere (in the
garden), but we focus on different parts of the sentence. In the first example, the new or important
information is a kertben ‘in the garden’. In Hungarian, this is indicated by word order: a
kertben immediately precedes the verb. In English, the word order stay the same,
but stress or prominence changes. But if you use a so-called cleft construction, the English word order
changes too. Compare It's in the garden ... and It's Mary ....

Finally, let's have a look at:

 Mari leül a kertben. ‘Mari is sitting down in the garden.'

 This is a fairly neutral sentence. The subject is the topic, but it is not in focus, and neither is a kertben. In
such cases, as mentioned above, the verbal modifier precedes the verb. The corresponding sentence in
English does not have particular prominence on any phrase or word.

Another case in Hungarian! In this lesson, you'll learn about the elative case which expresses motion out
of something. In English, you can translate it with the prepositions out of.

Its forms are -ból/-ből and by now you know the drill. The former is attached to words with back suffixes,
the latter to words with front suffixes:

 a házból ‘out of the house’

 a kertből ‘out of the garden’

Now you know about three cases which start with a -b, the inessive (-ban/-ben), the illative (-ba/-be) and
the elative. What connects all of these is that they express location or direction related to the inside of
something.

The delative case is in some sense the opposite of the sublative case you've already learned.

The delative expresses motion away from the surface of something and its forms are -ról/-ről (you
might recognise the -r- also found in the sublative). In English, you can often use the
prepositions from or off to translate it. Look at the following examples:

 repülőtérről ‘from the airport’

 pályaudvarról ‘from the train station’

The delative is also used more abstractly, with verbs like beszél‘talk’, where it means about:

 Az épületről  beszélek. ‘I am talking about the building.’

Another case?! The ablative case is also a case of motion, expressing motion away from something.
Its forms are -tól/-tőland it can be translated with the English preposition from (but not all uses of from can
be translated with the ablative!).

Have a look at the following examples:

 A folyótól jövök. ‘I am coming from the river.’

 Az épülettől  indul a busz. ‘The bus is leaving from the building.’

Demonstratives in elative, delative and ablative

When combining demonstrative pronouns with these cases, the -z of the demonstratives turns into the
first consonant of the suffix:
 ez + ből = ebből ‘out of this’
 az + ról = arról ’from on top/the surface of that’ or ’about that’
In the plural, the suffix -k remains, and the case suffix is simply added:

 ezek + től = ezektől ’from these’
Demonstratives and nouns
When using a demonstrative with a noun, both the demonstrative and the noun can have plural and case
suffixes:

 ebből a házból ‘out of this house’

 azoktól a kertektől ‘from those gardens’

Note that the suffix on the demonstrative and the suffix on the noun can have different vowels! Vowel
harmony is determined on a word-by-word basis, after all.

In this skill, you'll learn to use some postpositions you already know in a different way,
expressing direction from somewhere.

The suffix -ól / -ől / -ül attaches to a couple of stems like al- el-mög- etc. which you've come across

already:

 alatt ‘below’ --- alól ‘from below’

 mögött ‘behind’ --- mögül ‘from behind’
 mellett ‘next to’ --- mellől ‘from next to’
These postpositions follow a noun in the nominative:

 a ház mellől ‘from behind the house’

As you know by now, Hungarian has many ways of expressing movement in(to) several directions. In this
skill, you'll learn a couple of more ways of doing this.

You have already learned the words ide and oda which mean towards here (or hither) and towards

there (or thither). As mentioned before, English here and there can mean both a location and a direction,
whereas Hungarian always makes a difference here.

In this skill, you'll learn some more words denoting directions. Motion in a certain direction is expressed
using the sublative case -ra/-re, motion in a direction away from something using the delative case -ról/-
ről.
 towards something away from something
(sublative) (delative)

merre ‘where to?’ merről ‘where from?‘

erre ‘towards here/this’ erről ‘from here/this’

arra ‘towards there/that‘ arról ‘from there/that’

Also important are the cardinal directions north, east, south, and west:

direction towards ... from ...

észak ‘north’ északra északról

kelet ‘east’ keletre keletről

nyugat ‘west' nyugatra nyugatról

dél ‘south’ délre délről

The same cases are used for left and right:

direction towards ... from ...

bal ‘left’ balra balról

jobb ‘right’ jobbra jobbról

In this lesson, you're going to learn some more forms of adverbs, demonstratives and relative pronouns
expressing directions.

You've already learned some of the following:

 onnan ‘from there’ or ‘from that place’

 ott ‘there’
 arra ‘in that direction’
 arról ‘from that direction’ etc.
These can appear as relative pronouns as well. In the following English sentence, that introduces
the relative clause:

 We are coming from the place that you are coming from.

or
 We are coming from where  you are coming.
The first English example might sound a bit awkward, but it will help with understanding the way
Hungarian works here:

 Onnan jövünk, ahonnan ti jöttök. ‘We are coming from (the place) where you are coming from.’
onnan means ‘from there’ or ’from that place’; the relative pronoun ahonnan means ‘from where’ in
exactly the sense highlighted in the above English example. While in the second English example, we can
easily drop the ‘from that place’ in the first part of the sentence, Hungarian does not like this: we want to
have onnan here as well.

The gist of this is that we get pairs like onnan ‘from there’ — ahonnan ‘from where’. You'll see some more
of these in this lesson:

 arra ‘in that direction’ — amerre ‘in which direction’

 arról ‘from that direction’ — amerről ‘from which direction’
Note how the English pairs have that in the main clause and which in the relative clause... that's the basic
pattern!

We're continuing with pairs of demonstratives and relative pronouns (see the Tips & Notes in this lessons
sister lesson).

As a basic pair, consider the demonstrative az a ‘that’ — in English you can use that as a relative pronoun
as well, but there's also which:

 I like that book which you like too.

This sentence might sound a bit odd with that in English, but its counterpart would be very common in
Hungarian:

 Szeretem  azt a  könyvet,  amelyiket  te is szeretsz.

The focus on this lesson is on the pair azt — amelyik(et): ‘that one ... which’.

Since demonstratives and relative pronouns can be in all kinds of cases, we get pairs like the following:

 abban ‘in that’ — amelyikben ‘in which’

 azokból ‘out of those’ — amelyekből or amikből ‘out of which’
 arról ‘about that’ — amerről ’about which’
 azokról ‘about those’ — amelyekről ‘about which’ (pl.)
To give you an example:

 Azokból jövünk ki, amikből ti is. ‘We are coming out of those, out of which you are coming

too.’ or ‘We are coming out from where you are.’
 Note that the translations of the English/Hungarian sentences will not always use exactly the same words.
For example, the Hungarian sentence

Abból eszem, amin nincs kép.

means ‘I eat from that on which there is no picture.’ This is not the most natural English translation,
however. The Hungarian sentence could be used in a context in which there are several different plates
and one of them does not have a picture on it (while the others do). In this context, the Hungarian
sentence above is just fine, but its English translation would be:

I eat from  the one  on which there is no picture.

So depending on the context, a demonstrative in Hungarian can sometimes be translated with a

demonstrative or with a definite article plus one in English.

Possessive suffixes
In many languages, you use possessive adjectives to express who a certain objects belongs to, for
example:

 my table or her shoe
Hungarian does not have possessive adjectives like my or her but possessive suffixes. They are very
similar to possessive adjectives in that they indicate the person and number of the possessor but
they appear on the noun:

 az asztalom ‘my table’
 a cipője ‘her/his shoe’

The forms are as follows:

Hungarian English

1SG -öm, -om, -m my

2SG -öd, -ed, -od, -d your (sg.)

3SG -je, -ja, -a his/her/its

1PL -ünk, -unk, -nk our

2PL -(ö)tök, -(e)tek, -(o)tok your (pl.)

3PL -jük, -juk, -uk their

They change depending on vowel harmony and whether the noun ends in a vowel. cipő ‘shoe’ has front
vowels and ends in a vowel, so its possessed forms are:

Hungarian English

1SG cipő-m my shoe

2SG cipő-d your (sg.) shoe

3SG cipő-je her/his shoe

1PL cipő-nk our shoe

2PL cipő-tök your (pl.) shoe

3PL cipő-jük their shoe

asztal ‘table' has back vowels and ends in a consonant, so its possessed forms are:

Hungarian English

1SG asztal-om my table

2SG asztal-od your (sg.) table

3SG asztal-a her/his table

1PL asztal-unk our table

2PL asztal-otok your (pl.) table

3PL asztal-juk their table

Possessors
Hungarian has two ways of expressing the possessor of something, a bit like the two English
constructions a friend's book and a book of a friend.

Possessors can be nominative, e.g. a lány, or dative, e.g. a lánynak:

 a lány cipője ‘the girl's shoe’
 a lánynak a cipője ‘the girl's shoe’
As you can see, the constructions can mean the same, but they differ in some ways. The dative (a
lánynak) is followed by a ‘the’ and you have to use the dative in questions with whose:

 Ez kinek a cipője? ‘Whose shoe is this?’

whose in this sentence is ki-nek, the dative of ki ‘who’.

Exceptions
As usual, there are a few exceptions to the general rule. When the possessor is third person plural, the
forms change in one of two ways. First, when the possessor is a pronoun, like ők ‘they’, the pronoun loses
its -k:

 az ő cipőjük ‘their shoe’
 az ő asztaluk ‘their table’
So it looks like a singular possessor, but is still plural. Second, when the possessor is a noun in the plural,
like a lányok, the possessed noun loses its plural ending -(j)uk or *-(j)ük*:

 a lányok cipője ‘the girls' shoe’

 a lányok asztala ‘the girls' table'
mine, yours, ...
Hungarian also has possessive pronouns corresponding to mine, yours, etc. The always include the
definite article a and are formed as follows:

Hungarian English

1SG az enyém mine

2SG a tiéd or a tied yours (sg.)

3SG az övé hers/his

1PL a miénk ours

2PL a tiétek yours (pl.)

3PL az övék theirs

You can use this forms in sentences like:

Ez a cipő az enyém. ‘This shoe is mine.’

 The plural of possessed nouns
You've already learned quite a bit about possession in Hungarian. You might have noticed, however, that
the examples so far were missing something, namely plurals of possessed nouns.

While usually plurals of nouns are indicated by the suffix -k (with a vowel preceding it), when we're
dealing with a possessed noun, like his bosses, the plural is formed in a different way, with -i. So:

 Péter főnöke ‘Peter's boss’

 Péter főnökei  ‘Peter's bosses‘
The great thing about this suffix is that there's no vowel harmony. It's simply -i and remains -i. Thus:

 Éva asztala ‘Éva's desk’

 Éva asztalai  ‘Evá's desks’

The so-called definite conjugation is one of the trickier parts of Hungarian grammar and provides a nice
little challenge for learners of the language!

In sentences with an accusative object (or direct object), the verb form depends on whether the object is
definite or not. Most verb forms you have learned so far were part of the indefinite conjugation. When a
direct object is definite, however, the verb appears in the definite conjugation. Compare the following
examples:

(i) Lát-ok egy kutyá-t.

(ii) Lát-om a kutyá-t.

In (i), the object is indefinite, meaning ’a dog’. In (ii), it is definite, meaning ’the dog’. In (ii), therefore, the
verb changes to látom. The ending -om indicates that this is the definite conjugation.

When you use the definite conjugation, the verb is understood to imply an object, even if there is none:

(iii) Látom.

(iii) means ‘I see it.’ You can only use the definite conjugation with a definite direct object, which is why
these verb forms imply the presence of an object.

On top of this, we have to remember vowel harmony! Here are two tables showing the definite verb forms
of hall ‘to hear’ and keres ‘to be looking for’.

SG PL

1 hallom ‘I hear it’ halljuk ‘we hear it’

 SG PL

2 hallod ‘you hear it’ halljátok ‘you (pl) hear it’

3 hallja ‘s/he hears it’ hallják ‘they hear it’

SG PL

1 keresem ‘I am looking keressük ‘we are looking

for it’ for it’

2 keresed ‘you are keresitek ‘you (pl) are

looking for it’ looking for it’

3 keresi ‘s/he is looking keresik ‘they are looking for

for it’ it’
Verb prefixes

There is one more thing you have to keep in mind for this lesson. Many Hungarian verbs come with a so-
called verbal particle, as in this example:

meg-látogatja ‘s/he visits’ (with a definite object!)

This particle often comes before the verb, but can also follow it, for example in questions or when the
sentence is stressing information about the subject or the object. Have a look at the following sentences.

(v) Ki látogatja  meg  Pétert? ‘Who visits Péter?’

(vi) Péter  látogatja meg Zsuzsát. ‘PETER is visiting Zsuzsa.‘

The Hungarian word order in (vi) very naturally translates into English by stressing PETER: you want to
convey that the sentence is about Peter, and not about someone else.

You've already learned a whole lot about Hungarian verbs! They can be intransitive (not take an object) or
transitive (take an object). When they are transitive, they can have different forms based on whether their
object is definite or not! And of course, we can put them in the past tense, too.

So far, you were practising these skills separately, but in this skill, you'll have to concentrate on whether
you're dealing with the present or the past, and with definite or indefinite objects!