Basic Words & Sentences

Today we're gonna jump into the deep end and learn a bunch of new Hungarian vocab! I personally like to sort out words to make them easier to learn. Try which way works best for you. Some good methods are flashcards or writing them down. 😉

Nouns

• Reggel - Morning
• Dél - Afternoon
• Tűz - Fire
• Jég - Ice
• Hó - Snow
• Álom - Dream
• Óra - Clock
• Tanár - Teacher
• Sofőr - Driver 
• Orovos - Doctor
• Játék - Game/Toy

Verbs

• Várok - I wait or I am waiting (no difference between present and present continuous in Hungarian)
• Vársz - You wait (sg.)
• Vár - He/she/it waits
• Állok - I stand
• Állsz - You stand (sg.)
• Áll - He/she/it stands
• Sétálok - I walk
• Sétálsz - You walk (sg.)
• Sétál - He/she/it walks
• Csinálok - I do
• Csinálsz - You do (sg.)
• Csinál - He/she/it does

Adverbs

• Gyakran - Often/Usually
• Ritkán - Rarely (opposite of gyakran)
• Mindig - Always
• Délután - In the afternoon
• Délben - At noon
• Ma - Today
• Most - Now
• Már - Already
• Akkor - Then
• Korán - Early
• Ilyen korán - This early
• Egyedül - Alone

Adjectives

• Kicsi - Small
• Nagy - Big
• Alacsony - Short
• Magas - Tall
• Piros - Red
• Fekete - Black
• Magyar - Hungarian
• Angol - English
• Fiatal - Young
• Szép - Beautiful

Locations

• Elöl - In the front
• Hátul - In the back
• Otthon - At home

Question Words

• Milyen - What kind of
• Milyen a/az/egy - What is the/a/an ... like?
• Ki? - Who?

Examples

• A telefon elöl van, az alma pedig hátul - The telephone is in the front whereas the apple is in the back
• Reggel van - It is morning
• Hol van a férfi délután? - Where is the man in the afternoon?
• Itt nincs este - It isn't evening here
• A busz gyakran itt van - The bus is often here
• A szék mindig elöl van - The chair is always in front
• Soha nem kint vagyok - I am never outside
• A férfi otthon van - The man is at home
• Nincs jég otthon - There is no ice at home
• Milyen autó ez? - What type of car is this?
• Milyen az auto? - What is the car like?
• Ki vagy te? - Who are you?
• Nem vagyok tanár - I am not a teacher
• Hol sétál az orvos? - Where does the doctor walk?
• Mit csinálsz? - What are you doing?
• Nem vagyok fiatal - I am not young
• Az angol nő szép - The English woman is beautiful
• Mit csinálsz most? - What are you doing now?
• Akkor és ott - Then and there
• Mit csinálsz ilyen korán? - What are you doing so early?
• Hol van a játék? - Where is the game?

Note that van is the positive form and nincs is the negative form.

I also a Duolingo sentence, "Hol van hó?" and I began to ask myself why not "Hol va a hó?"?. Well, I got a really interesting answer from Duolingo user RyagonIV had this to say:

"Hol van a hó?" does mean "Where is the snow?"
This (article-less) sentence here asks about where snow is, where it exists, in general. It's not talking about a certain snow. Here you'd get an answer like "Fent a hegyen" - "(There is snow) up on the mountain", for instance.

Next week, I'm gonna learn about word order to help me :)

The weekly challenge, introduce yourself, say are you a boy, girl, man or a woman (ember = person/gender neutral), and answer this question "Milyen az autó?".

Here is my answer, if you are Hungarian please check it for me:

Szia!

Daniel vagyok.

Diák vagyok.

Nem vagyok magyar.

Ír vagyok.

Fiú vagyok.

Autó kicsi és piros. Nem nagy és fekete.

Also I'm trying to make a sentence, does it sound OK? "Magyar vagy én angol vagyok"

I only realised now, that we never learned about phrases. Let's do them next week!

Basic Sentences

For this lesson, I'm using two Duolingo skills. Basic 1 and Basic 2 from the Duolingo Hungarian course. It's 100% free and it is really useful if you're learning Hungarian. You can learn more here. Also, I found this really cool video about the Hungarian language by one of my favourite language channels on YouTube, NativLang. You can watch his video here.

Now onto the post!

Grammar

We'll start off with some basic grammar for this lesson. First, the articles. In English, we have three articles, the, a and an. In Hungarian there are also three articles but they aren't exactly like English. The word a means the and is used before a word beginning with a consonant. If the word begins with a vowel we use az. I think this is really confusing because a fiú means the boy not a boy. But all it takes is a bit of practise. The word for a or an in egy. So egy fiú and a fiú. Not too difficult :)

Hungarian sometimes has no verb where English has is. For example, in English you would say "What's this" but in the Hungarian equivalent "Mi ez?", it's literally "What this" and because Hungarian word order is so different you can say "Ez mi?" as well. But be careful! The verb is only left out when it is in the third person form (the verb we use with he, she, it and they) and the sentences expresses something related to the subject (person or thing doing the action) or how something is. For example:

• "János egy diák", János is a student. The sentence states something related to János.
• "Az auto piros", The car is red. This is how the car is.

Also note the word order. Standard Hungarian word order is SOV or subject-object-verb. For example, if you said I am a student. You would say I a student am. However, sometimes you can move it around to emphasise something. We won't go to advanced today, we're only beginners :)

The third person forms of the verb "to be" (lenni) are van and vannak. These forms are used when the verb is used with a question word or an adverb such as hol (‘where’), ott (‘there’), bent (‘inside’), etc.

Here is the verb lenni in full:

	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’

Note that you don't need a subject pronoun because the verb ending tells us who is doing the action, so vagyok and én vagyok are the same.

Like most European languages, there are formal and informal version of you. ön in the singular and önök in the plural is used to address someone you don't no well or an older person. In general ön and önök are used to be polite.

New Words

Woah! That was a lot for one day's study! Hungarian seems to be really complex, but we can just take it bit by bit :) Now let's learn some new words. The best part about Hungarian is that there are no noun genders! So it's definitely a time to celebrate!



Now since the words are pretty different to Indo-European languages, I created a Memrise course with them here.

New Words

• A lámpa - The lamp
• Az alma - The apple
• A fiú - The boy
• A lány - The girl
• Az auto - The car
• A szék - The chair
• Az asztal - The table
• Az ablak - The window
• A telefon - The telephone
• A ablak - The window
• A nő - The woman
• A férfi - The man
• A vonat - The train
• Vagy - Or
• Mi - What
• Hol - Where
• Ez - This (is)
• Az - That (is)
• Itt - Here
• Ott - There
• Bent - Inside
• Kint - Outside
• Lent - Downstairs/Below
• Fent - Upstairs/Above
• Igen - Yes
• Nem - No/Not

I'm not including all the words from Basic 1 and 2 because there is so much. We will cover them over the coming weeks :)

About "and"

There are many words for and. The basic ones are és (used to list things, e.g. X, Y and Z) meg means the same things and "plus", pedig is used to contrast and can be translated as whereas, hanem is used in a similar way and can be translated to but rather. See the underlined sentences below for examples. Also see this discussion on Duolingo for a few good explanations on how to say "and".

Some Example Sentences

• Ez nem a lámpa - This is not the lamp
• Ez egy alma - This is an apple
• Ez asztal, nem szék - This is a table, not a chair
• Az egy ablak és ez egy telefon - This is a window and this is a phone
• Hol van a szék? - Where is the chair?
• Az ablak itt van, nem ott - The window is here, not there
• Mi van bent? - What is inside?
• A nő bent a férfi pedig kint. - The woman is inside and/whereas the man is outside
• Az alma és a lámpa - The apple and the lamp
• Az asztal itt van, az szék meg ott - The table is here plus/and the chair is there
• Ő nem lány, hanem fiú - He is not a girl but rather a boy
• A fiú nem lent van, hanem fent - The boy is not downstairs, but rather upstairs
• A busz kint van - The bus is outside

Now you're weekly challenge. Introduce yourself, say whether you are a boy or a girl and say a sentence using the words above. Here's my go at it, Hungarians, tell me if I'm wrong :D

Szia!

Daniel vagyok.

Diák vagyok.

Nem vagyok magyar.

Ír vagyok.

Egy fiú vagyok.

Mi?! Az vonat fent van?!

Tune in next week for more Magyar!

Introduction

These are some basic stuff I got from YouTube and Duolingo.

Pronunciation

Hungarian pronunciation is fairly easy and the writing is phonetic, the whole idea of long and short vowels is a bit tricky for me though, I've never come across a language with that before, but that's cool. Most of the letters are pronounced as in English, but there are a few things to take note of.

• There are seven short vowels: a, e, i, o, u, ö and ü.
• There are seven long vowels: á, é, í, ó, ú, ő and ű.

• a is pronounced like the o in pot, and á is pronounced like the a in pat.
• e is pronounced as in egg but é is pronounced like the Irish way of saying pain. It's not a diphthong (two sounds) but one sound like the e in the Spanish parte.
• i is pronounced like the ee in meet and í is the same but longer.
• o is pronounced like the oa in boat, ó is same but longer.
• ö is pronounced like in German, Turkish, Swedish etc. and sounds a bit like the er in her but the r should be very slight. ő is the same but longer.
• u is pronounced like the oo in boot and ú is the same but longer.
• ü pronounced like in German and Turkish or the Swedish y. Make the position in your mouth as if you were about to say the oo as in boot sound but try say the ee in meet sound instead, ű is just the longer version.

As for consonants, most are pronounced as in English. But some are not:

• c is pronounced like the ts in cats
• cs is pronounced like the ch in chat
• dz is pronounced like the ds in beds
• dsz is pronounced like the j in jolly
• gy is pronounced like the d in don't followed by the y in young
• j is pronounced like the y in young
• ly is pronounced like lli in million
• ny is pronounced like the ny in canyon
• q is pronounced like the k in kite followed by the vase
• r is pronounced like a thrill as in Spanish, Polish, Italian, Russian, Ukrainian, etc.
• s is pronounced like the sh in shine (Not as in sun!)
• sz is pronounced like the s in sun (Not as in shine!)
• ty is pronounced like the t in tail followed by the y in young
• w is pronounced like the v in vase
• y is pronounced i
• zs is pronounced like the s in measure

Also be sure to check out this video to hear them pronounced (skip to 1:40 to hear the sounds).

Phrases

Here is a basic template to get you started on how to introduce yourself in Hungarian.

Szia! / Jó napot!

Én (elnevezés) vagyok.

Én (munka) vagyok.

Én magyar vagyok / Én nem vagyok magyar.

Én (nemzet) vagyok.

Translation:

Hi! / Hello!

My name is (name).

I work as a (job).
I am Hungarian / I am not Hungarian.
I am (nationailty).

Here is an example using myself.

Szia!
Én Daniel vagyok.
Én díak (student) vagyok.
Én nem vagyok magyar.
Én ír (Irish) vagyok.

Now you try! Use this video to help you! (Turn on subtitles!)

Now try to introduce yourself in Hungarian in the comments below!

Hungarian Resources

Here is a link of various resources that I will be using!

Word Order Reference
Grammar Guide
Free Online Dictionary
Duolingo Hungarian Course

Welcome! Üdvözöllek!

Welcome! Üdvözöllek!

This is a community committed to learning Hungarian. I will post about once a week (haven't chosen a day yet) where we can discuss various aspects of the Hungarian language. Today, I'm asking you:

Why have you chosen to learn Hungarian?

For me, Hungarian looks like a real challenge and I love challenges. Sure, Spanish is great and all... but can I really resist those 20+ cases, vowel harmony and flexible order? NO! Not every language you should learn should be chosen on the basis that it is easy. Everyone needs a challenge now and then. For some people, that's getting up early or going to the gym or eating their mam's Brussel sprouts. But for me it's trying a language that I tried once and never tried again. I've only done this twice, first with Hungarian and second with Vietnamese. But, don't worry, I never let a language beat me for to long! Also, I like the way that Hungarian sounds. I heard a family speaking it the other day, I thought at first that it was Swedish or maybe Norwegian as it has that strange Nordic sound to it. To add to this when I heard the word jó I thought it was the Swedish or Norwegian word for yes (which is ja or jo, I can't read and write the Scandinavian languages). But then I heard the word nem which I think means not. Don't ask me how I remembered that. I just did.

So why do you want to learn Hungarian?