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!