Hungarian alphabet
Encyclopedia
The Hungarian alphabet is an extension of the Latin alphabet
used for writing the Hungarian language
.
One sometimes speaks of the smaller and greater Hungarian alphabets, depending on whether or not the letters Q, W, X, Y are listed, which can only be found in foreign words and traditional orthography
of names.
The 44 letters of the greater Hungarian
alphabet
are:
While long vowels
count as different letters, long (or geminate) consonants do not. Long consonants are marked by duplication: e.g. <tt>, <gg>, <zz> (ette 'he ate (det.obj.)', függ 'it hangs', azzal 'with that'). For the di- and tri-graphs a simplification rule normally applies (but not when the compound is split at the end of a line of text due to hyphenation): only the first letter is duplicated: e.g.
<sz>+<sz>→<ssz> (asszony 'woman'),
<ty>+<ty>→<tty> (hattyú 'swan'),
<dzs>+<dzs>→<ddzs> (briddzsel 'with bridge (card game)').
An exception is made at the joining points of compound word
s, for example: jegygyűrű 'engagement ring' (jegy + gyűrű) not *jeggyűrű.
The pronunciation of Hungarian letters which follows is that of standard Hungarian.
Examples:
An extreme example is the name Dessewffy, which is pronounced as if spelled Dezsőfi.
of them only.
In abbreviations and when writing with all capital letters, however, one capitalises the second (and third) character as well.
Thus ("The Rules of Hungarian Orthography", a book edited by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
):
The polygraphic consonant signs are treated as single letters.
The simplified geminates of multigraphs (see above) such as <nny>, <ssz> are collated
as <ny>+<ny>, <sz>+<sz> etc., if they are double geminates, rather than co-occurrences of a single letter and a geminate.
Similar 'ambiguities', which can occur with compounds (which are highly common in Hungarian) are dissolved and collated by sense.
These rules make Hungarian alphabetic ordering algorithmically difficult (one has to know the correct segmentation of a word to sort it correctly), was a problem for computer software development. The program called Hunspell
is a good spell checker, designed specifically for the Hungarian language
.
). This layout allows direct access to every character in the Hungarian alphabet.
The letter "Í" is often placed left of the space key, leaving the width of the left Shift key intact.
The list below shows the letter frequencies for more letters in order of descending frequency.
Latin alphabet
The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most recognized alphabet used in the world today. It evolved from a western variety of the Greek alphabet called the Cumaean alphabet, which was adopted and modified by the Etruscans who ruled early Rome...
used for writing the Hungarian language
Hungarian language
Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
.
One sometimes speaks of the smaller and greater Hungarian alphabets, depending on whether or not the letters Q, W, X, Y are listed, which can only be found in foreign words and traditional orthography
Orthography
The orthography of a language specifies a standardized way of using a specific writing system to write the language. Where more than one writing system is used for a language, for example Kurdish, Uyghur, Serbian or Inuktitut, there can be more than one orthography...
of names.
The 44 letters of the greater Hungarian
Hungarian language
Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
alphabet
Alphabet
An alphabet is a standard set of letters—basic written symbols or graphemes—each of which represents a phoneme in a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it was in the past. There are other systems, such as logographies, in which each character represents a word, morpheme, or semantic...
are:
| A A A is the first letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet. It is similar to the Ancient Greek letter Alpha, from which it derives.- Origins :... |
Á Á is a letter of the Czech, Faroese, Hungarian, Icelandic, Slovak and Sámi languages. This letter also appears in Dutch, Galician, Irish, Occitan, Portuguese, Spanish, Lakota, Navajo, and Vietnamese as a variant of the letter “a”. Some writers use á incorrectly to denote a quantity, often used on... |
B B B is the second letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. It is used to represent a variety of bilabial sounds , most commonly a voiced bilabial plosive.-History:... |
C C Ĉ or ĉ is a consonant in Esperanto orthography, representing the sound .Esperanto orthography uses a diacritic for all four of its postalveolar consonants, as do the Latin-based Slavic alphabets... |
Cs | D D D is the fourth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.- History :The Semitic letter Dâlet may have developed from the logogram for a fish or a door. There are various Egyptian hieroglyphs that might have inspired this. In Semitic, Ancient Greek, and Latin, the letter represented ; in the... |
Dz | Dzs Hungarian dzs Dzs is the eighth letter, and only trigraph, of the Hungarian alphabet. Its name is pronounced , and represents the sounds and .-Length:In several words, it is pronounced long, e.g.... |
E E E is the fifth letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet. It is the most commonly used letter in the Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Hungarian, Latin, Norwegian, Spanish, and Swedish languages.-History:... |
É É is a letter of the Czech, Hungarian, Icelandic, Kashubian, Luxembourgish, Slovak, and Catalan, Danish, English, French, Galician, Irish, Italian, Occitan, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, and Vietnamese language as a variant of the letter “e”... |
F F F is the sixth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The origin of ⟨f⟩ is the Semitic letter vâv that represented a sound like or . Graphically, it originally probably depicted either a hook or a club... |
G G G is the seventh letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The letter 'G' was introduced in the Old Latin period as a variant of ⟨c⟩ to distinguish voiced, from voiceless, . The recorded originator of ⟨g⟩ is freedman Spurius Carvilius Ruga, the first Roman to open a fee-paying school,... |
Gy | H H H .) is the eighth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The Semitic letter ⟨ח⟩ most likely represented the voiceless pharyngeal fricative . The form of the letter probably stood for a fence or posts.... |
I I I is the ninth letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:In Semitic, the letter may have originated in a hieroglyph for an arm that represented a voiced pharyngeal fricative in Egyptian, but was reassigned to by Semites, because their word for "arm" began with that sound... |
Í Í is a letter in the Faroese, Hungarian, Icelandic, Czech, Slovak, and Tatar languages. This letter also appears in Catalan, Irish, Occitan, Portuguese, Spanish, Galician, Leonese, Navajo, and Vietnamese language as a variant of letter “i”.... |
J J Ĵ or ĵ is a letter in Esperanto orthography representing the sound .While Esperanto orthography uses a diacritic for its four postalveolar consonants, as do the Latin-based Slavic alphabets, the base letters are Romano-Germanic... |
K K K is the eleventh letter of the English and basic modern Latin alphabet.-History and usage:In English, the letter K usually represents the voiceless velar plosive; this sound is also transcribed by in the International Phonetic Alphabet and X-SAMPA.... |
L L Ł or ł, described in English as L with stroke, is a letter of the Polish, Kashubian, Sorbian, Łacinka , Łatynka , Wilamowicean, Navajo, Dene Suline, Inupiaq, Zuni, Hupa, and Dogrib alphabets, several proposed alphabets for the Venetian language, and the ISO 11940 romanization of the Thai alphabet... |
Ly Hungarian ly Ly is a digraph of the Latin alphabet, used in Hungarian.- Usage :Ly is the twentieth letter of the Hungarian alphabet. Its Hungarian name is ellipszilon or elly... |
M M M is the thirteenth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The letter M is derived from the Phoenician Mem, via the Greek Mu . Semitic Mem probably originally pictured water... |
N N N is the fourteenth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.- History of the forms :One of the most common hieroglyphs, snake, was used in Egyptian writing to stand for a sound like English ⟨J⟩, because the Egyptian word for "snake" was djet... |
| Ny Hungarian ny Ny is a digraph in a number of languages such as Catalan, Hungarian, Malay, and Ganda. In most of these languages, including all of the ones named above, it denotes the palatal nasal .... |
O O O is the fifteenth letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet.The letter was derived from the Semitic `Ayin , which represented a consonant, probably , the sound represented by the Arabic letter ع called `Ayn. This Semitic letter in its original form seems to have been inspired by a... |
Ó Ó is a letter in the Faroese, Hungarian, Icelandic, Kashubian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, and Sorbian languages. This letter also appears in the Catalan, Irish, Occitan, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian and Vietnamese languages as a variant of letter “o”. It is also used in English for other purposes... |
Ö Ö "Ö", or "ö", is a character used in several extended Latin alphabets, or the letter O with umlaut to denote the front vowels or . In languages without umlaut, the character is also used as a "O with diaeresis" to denote a syllable break, wherein its pronunciation remains an unmodified .- O-Umlaut... |
Ő O O is the fifteenth letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet.The letter was derived from the Semitic `Ayin , which represented a consonant, probably , the sound represented by the Arabic letter ع called `Ayn. This Semitic letter in its original form seems to have been inspired by a... |
P P P is the sixteenth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet.-Usage:In English and most other European languages, P is a voiceless bilabial plosive. Both initial and final Ps can be combined with many other discrete consonants in English words... |
(Q Q Q is the seventeenth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet.- History :The Semitic sound value of Qôp was , a sound common to Semitic languages, but not found in English or most Indo-European ones... ) |
R R R is the eighteenth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The original Semitic letter may have been inspired by an Egyptian hieroglyph for tp, "head". It was used for by Semites because in their language, the word for "head" was rêš . It developed into Greek Ρ and Latin R... |
S S S is the nineteenth letter in the ISO basic Latin alphabet.-History: Semitic Šîn represented a voiceless postalveolar fricative . Greek did not have this sound, so the Greek sigma came to represent... |
Sz Hungarian sz Sz is a digraph of the Latin alphabet, used in Hungarian, Polish, Kashubian, and formerly in German.-Polish:In Polish orthography, sz represents a voiceless retroflex fricative , similar to English "sh"... |
T T T is the 20th letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. It is the most commonly used consonant and the second most common letter in the English language.- History :Taw was the last letter of the Western Semitic and Hebrew alphabets... |
Ty | U U U is the twenty-first letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The letter U ultimately comes from the Semitic letter Waw by way of the letter Y. See the letter Y for details.... |
Ú Ú Ú or ú is a Latin letter used in the Czech, Faroese, Hungarian, Icelandic, and Slovak writing systems. This letter also appears in Dutch, Irish, Occitan, Pinyin, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, and Vietnamese as a variant of the letter "U".... |
Ü Ü Ü, or ü, is a character which can be either a letter from several extended Latin alphabets, or the letter U with an umlaut or a diaeresis... |
Ű Double acute accent The double acute accent is a diacritic mark of the Latin script. It is used primarily in written Hungarian, and consequently is sometimes referred to as Hungarumlaut, a portmanteau of Hungarian umlaut... |
V V V is the twenty-second letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-Letter:The letter V comes from the Semitic letter Waw, as do the modern letters F, U, W, and Y. See F for details.... |
(W W W is the 23rd letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.In other Germanic languages, including German, its pronunciation is similar or identical to that of English V... ) |
(X X X is the twenty-fourth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-Uses:In mathematics, x is commonly used as the name for an independent variable or unknown value. The usage of x to represent an independent or unknown variable can be traced back to the Arabic word šay شيء = “thing,” used in Arabic... ) |
(Y Y Y is the twenty-fifth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet and represents either a vowel or a consonant in English.-Name:In Latin, Y was named Y Graeca "Greek Y". This was pronounced as I Graeca "Greek I", since Latin speakers had trouble pronouncing , which was not a native sound... ) |
Z Z Z is the twenty-sixth and final letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet.-Name and pronunciation:In most dialects of English, the letter's name is zed , reflecting its derivation from the Greek zeta but in American English, its name is zee , deriving from a late 17th century English dialectal... |
Zs |
Description
Each sign shown above counts as a letter in its own right in Hungarian. Some, such as the letter ó and ő, are inter-filed with the letter preceding it; whereas others, such as ö, have their own place in collation rather than also being inter-filed with o.While long vowels
Vowel length
In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived duration of a vowel sound. Often the chroneme, or the "longness", acts like a consonant, and may etymologically be one, such as in Australian English. While not distinctive in most dialects of English, vowel length is an important phonemic factor in...
count as different letters, long (or geminate) consonants do not. Long consonants are marked by duplication: e.g. <tt>, <gg>, <zz> (ette 'he ate (det.obj.)', függ 'it hangs', azzal 'with that'). For the di- and tri-graphs a simplification rule normally applies (but not when the compound is split at the end of a line of text due to hyphenation): only the first letter is duplicated: e.g.
<sz>+<sz>→<ssz> (asszony 'woman'),
<ty>+<ty>→<tty> (hattyú 'swan'),
<dzs>+<dzs>→<ddzs> (briddzsel 'with bridge (card game)').
An exception is made at the joining points of compound word
Compound (linguistics)
In linguistics, a compound is a lexeme that consists of more than one stem. Compounding or composition is the word formation that creates compound lexemes...
s, for example: jegygyűrű 'engagement ring' (jegy + gyűrű) not *jeggyűrű.
Pronunciation
Hungarian orthography's principles include being phonemic along with being traditional, etymological and simplifying. Therefore most words can be read out correctly, if one knows the pronunciation of the letters.The pronunciation of Hungarian letters which follows is that of standard Hungarian.
| Letter | Name | Phoneme Phoneme In a language or dialect, a phoneme is the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances.... (IPA International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic... ) |
Complementary Complementary distribution Complementary distribution in linguistics is the relationship between two different elements, where one element is found in a particular environment and the other element is found in the opposite environment... allophones (IPA International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet "The acronym 'IPA' strictly refers [...] to the 'International Phonetic Association'. But it is now such a common practice to use the acronym also to refer to the alphabet itself that resistance seems pedantic... ) |
Close to | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A A A is the first letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet. It is similar to the Ancient Greek letter Alpha, from which it derives.- Origins :... |
a | /ɒ/ | bod, call | [ɑ̝̹] might describe it better (raised, more rounded; sign rendered probably incorrectly, containing two diacritical marks below). Still definitely not [ɔ] | |
| Á Á is a letter of the Czech, Faroese, Hungarian, Icelandic, Slovak and Sámi languages. This letter also appears in Dutch, Galician, Irish, Occitan, Portuguese, Spanish, Lakota, Navajo, and Vietnamese as a variant of the letter “a”. Some writers use á incorrectly to denote a quantity, often used on... |
á | /aː/ | an extended cat, bad | ||
| B B B is the second letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. It is used to represent a variety of bilabial sounds , most commonly a voiced bilabial plosive.-History:... |
bé | /b/ | as by, absence etc. | ||
| C C Ĉ or ĉ is a consonant in Esperanto orthography, representing the sound .Esperanto orthography uses a diacritic for all four of its postalveolar consonants, as do the Latin-based Slavic alphabets... |
cé | /ts/ | like tsunami | ||
| Cs | csé | /tʃ/ | as check,cheek, etching etc. | ||
| D D D is the fourth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.- History :The Semitic letter Dâlet may have developed from the logogram for a fish or a door. There are various Egyptian hieroglyphs that might have inspired this. In Semitic, Ancient Greek, and Latin, the letter represented ; in the... |
dé | /d/ | deck, wide etc. | ||
| Dz | dzé | /dz/ | like in kids | does not occur at the beginning of words. When neither post- nor preconsonantic, always realised as a geminate Gemination In phonetics, gemination happens when a spoken consonant is pronounced for an audibly longer period of time than a short consonant. Gemination is distinct from stress and may appear independently of it.... . |
|
| Dzs Hungarian dzs Dzs is the eighth letter, and only trigraph, of the Hungarian alphabet. Its name is pronounced , and represents the sounds and .-Length:In several words, it is pronounced long, e.g.... |
dzsé | /dʒ/ | jam, George, bridge, edge, fridge | when final or intervocalic, usually realised as a geminate: maharadzsa /mɑhɑrɑdʒɑ/ [mɑhɑrɑd͡ʒːɑ] 'maharajah', bridzs /bridʒ/ [brid͡ʒː] 'bridge (card game)', but dzsungel /dʒuŋɡɛl/ [d͡ʒuŋɡɛl] 'jungle', fridzsider /fridʒidɛr/ [frid͡ʒidɛr] coll. 'refrigerator' | |
| E E E is the fifth letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet. It is the most commonly used letter in the Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Hungarian, Latin, Norwegian, Spanish, and Swedish languages.-History:... |
e | /ɛ/ | like less, cheque, edge, bed | about 40-50% of speakers also have a phoneme /e/ (see below at Ë). /e/ is not considered part of standard Hungarian, wherein /ɛ/ or /æ/ takes the place of /e/. | |
| (Ë Ë is a letter in the Albanian, Ripuarian, Uyghur Latin Script, Ladin, and Kashubian languages. This letter also appears in Afrikaans, Dutch, French, Abruzzese dialect , and Luxembourgish language as a variant of letter "e"... ) |
ë | /e/ | like in "same", without the /ɪ/ part of the diphthong Diphthong A diphthong , also known as a gliding vowel, refers to two adjacent vowel sounds occurring within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: That is, the tongue moves during the pronunciation of the vowel... /eɪ/ |
Although not part of the alphabet, this symbol is sometimes used to denote the phoneme /e/, e.g. when noting down texts spoken or sung in a dialect where this sound is present. | |
| É É is a letter of the Czech, Hungarian, Icelandic, Kashubian, Luxembourgish, Slovak, and Catalan, Danish, English, French, Galician, Irish, Italian, Occitan, Norwegian, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, and Vietnamese language as a variant of the letter “e”... |
é | /eː/ | café, hey | ||
| F F F is the sixth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The origin of ⟨f⟩ is the Semitic letter vâv that represented a sound like or . Graphically, it originally probably depicted either a hook or a club... |
ef | /f/ | find, euphoria | ||
| G G G is the seventh letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The letter 'G' was introduced in the Old Latin period as a variant of ⟨c⟩ to distinguish voiced, from voiceless, . The recorded originator of ⟨g⟩ is freedman Spurius Carvilius Ruga, the first Roman to open a fee-paying school,... |
gé | /ɡ/ | get, leg, go etc. | ||
| Gy | gyé | /ɟ/ | (not used in English) similar to: duke, dew, due (British, not American, pronunciation) | denoting /ɟ/ by <gy> is a remnant of (probably) Italian scribes who tried to render the Hungarian sound. <dy> would be a more consistent notation in scope of <ty>, <ny>, <ly> (see there), as the <y> part of digraphs show palatalisation in the Hungarian writing system. | |
| H H H .) is the eighth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The Semitic letter ⟨ח⟩ most likely represented the voiceless pharyngeal fricative . The form of the letter probably stood for a fence or posts.... |
há | /h/ | 1. [ɦ] 2. ∅ 3. [x] 4. [ç] |
Basic: hi 1. behind 2. <mute> 3. Loch, Chanukah 4. human |
1. when in intervocalic position. 2. not rendered usually when in final position méh /meː/ 'bee', cseh /tʃɛ/ 'Czech (noun/adj.)' 3. seldom in final position, such as in doh 'dampness', MÉH 'metal recycling facility' 4. seldom, such as in ihlet 'inspiration' |
| I I I is the ninth letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:In Semitic, the letter may have originated in a hieroglyph for an arm that represented a voiced pharyngeal fricative in Egyptian, but was reassigned to by Semites, because their word for "arm" began with that sound... |
i | /i/ | thick, thin | Pronounced the same as Í, only shorter | |
| Í Í is a letter in the Faroese, Hungarian, Icelandic, Czech, Slovak, and Tatar languages. This letter also appears in Catalan, Irish, Occitan, Portuguese, Spanish, Galician, Leonese, Navajo, and Vietnamese language as a variant of letter “i”.... |
í | /iː/ | lead, leave, seed, sea | Vowel length is phonemically distinctive in Hungarian: irt 'he eradicates' ∼ írt 'he wrote' | |
| J J Ĵ or ĵ is a letter in Esperanto orthography representing the sound .While Esperanto orthography uses a diacritic for its four postalveolar consonants, as do the Latin-based Slavic alphabets, the base letters are Romano-Germanic... |
jé | /j/ | [ç], [ʝ] | you, yes, faith | allophones occur when /j/ occurs after a consonant; (voiceless after voiceless, voiced after voiced consonants). e.g. férj 'husband', kapj 'get! (imperative)' |
| K K K is the eleventh letter of the English and basic modern Latin alphabet.-History and usage:In English, the letter K usually represents the voiceless velar plosive; this sound is also transcribed by in the International Phonetic Alphabet and X-SAMPA.... |
ká | /k/ | key, kiss, weak | ||
| L L Ł or ł, described in English as L with stroke, is a letter of the Polish, Kashubian, Sorbian, Łacinka , Łatynka , Wilamowicean, Navajo, Dene Suline, Inupiaq, Zuni, Hupa, and Dogrib alphabets, several proposed alphabets for the Venetian language, and the ISO 11940 romanization of the Thai alphabet... |
el | /l/ | leave, list | ||
| Ly Hungarian ly Ly is a digraph of the Latin alphabet, used in Hungarian.- Usage :Ly is the twentieth letter of the Hungarian alphabet. Its Hungarian name is ellipszilon or elly... |
ely, el ipszilon | /j/ | hey, ray | Orthographic tradition. Once /ʎ/, now /j/ in standard Hungarian. | |
| M M M is the thirteenth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The letter M is derived from the Phoenician Mem, via the Greek Mu . Semitic Mem probably originally pictured water... |
em | /m/ | mind, assume, might, | ||
| N N N is the fourteenth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.- History of the forms :One of the most common hieroglyphs, snake, was used in Egyptian writing to stand for a sound like English ⟨J⟩, because the Egyptian word for "snake" was djet... |
en | /n/ | [ŋ] [n] |
thing, lying (before k,g), need, bone (anywhere else) |
allophone before /k/, /ɡ/ |
| Ny Hungarian ny Ny is a digraph in a number of languages such as Catalan, Hungarian, Malay, and Ganda. In most of these languages, including all of the ones named above, it denotes the palatal nasal .... |
eny | /ɲ/ | new (in BE, not AE) niño/niña (Spanish) | ||
| O O O is the fifteenth letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet.The letter was derived from the Semitic `Ayin , which represented a consonant, probably , the sound represented by the Arabic letter ع called `Ayn. This Semitic letter in its original form seems to have been inspired by a... |
o | /o/ | force, sorcerer | A shorter, more open variant of Ó | |
| Ó Ó is a letter in the Faroese, Hungarian, Icelandic, Kashubian, Polish, Czech, Slovak, and Sorbian languages. This letter also appears in the Catalan, Irish, Occitan, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian and Vietnamese languages as a variant of letter “o”. It is also used in English for other purposes... |
ó | /oː/ | go, sew, snow | minimal pair to /o/: kor 'age' ∼ kór 'disease' | |
| Ö Ö "Ö", or "ö", is a character used in several extended Latin alphabets, or the letter O with umlaut to denote the front vowels or . In languages without umlaut, the character is also used as a "O with diaeresis" to denote a syllable break, wherein its pronunciation remains an unmodified .- O-Umlaut... |
ö | /ø/ | (Not used in English; corresponds to German Ö) | A shorter, more open variant of Ő | |
| Ő Double acute accent The double acute accent is a diacritic mark of the Latin script. It is used primarily in written Hungarian, and consequently is sometimes referred to as Hungarumlaut, a portmanteau of Hungarian umlaut... |
ő | /øː/ | (Not used in English; a longer, more closed variant of Ö) | Minimal pair to /ø/: öt 'five' ∼ őt 'him/her (Hungarian pronouns do not specify gender)' | |
| P P P is the sixteenth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet.-Usage:In English and most other European languages, P is a voiceless bilabial plosive. Both initial and final Ps can be combined with many other discrete consonants in English words... |
pé | /p/ | peas, apricot, hope | ||
| (Q Q Q is the seventeenth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet.- History :The Semitic sound value of Qôp was , a sound common to Semitic languages, but not found in English or most Indo-European ones... ) |
kú | Q occurs only as part of the digraph qu in foreign words, realised as /kv/: Aquincum Aquincum The ancient city of Aquincum was situated on the North-Eastern borders of the Pannonia province within the Roman Empire. The ruins of the city can be found today in Budapest, the capital city of Hungary... [ɑkviŋkum] (name of an old Roman settlement on the area of present-day Óbuda Óbuda Óbuda was a historical city in Hungary. United with Buda and Pest in 1873 it now forms part of District III-Óbuda-Békásmegyer of Budapest. The name means Old Buda in Hungarian... ). Words originally spelled with qu are today usually spelled with kv, as in akvarell 'watercolor painting'. |
|||
| R R R is the eighteenth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The original Semitic letter may have been inspired by an Egyptian hieroglyph for tp, "head". It was used for by Semites because in their language, the word for "head" was rêš . It developed into Greek Ρ and Latin R... |
er | /r/ | (not used in BE, pronounced like Spanish R or like the t and tt in AE water and butter) | also called apical trill as pronounced by trilling the tip of your tongue (the apex) and not the uvula. | |
| S S S is the nineteenth letter in the ISO basic Latin alphabet.-History: Semitic Šîn represented a voiceless postalveolar fricative . Greek did not have this sound, so the Greek sigma came to represent... |
es | /ʃ/ | share, wish, shout | This notation is unusual for European writing systems where <s> stands for /s/ virtually everywhere. In Hungarian, /s/ is represented by <sz>. | |
| Sz Hungarian sz Sz is a digraph of the Latin alphabet, used in Hungarian, Polish, Kashubian, and formerly in German.-Polish:In Polish orthography, sz represents a voiceless retroflex fricative , similar to English "sh"... |
esz | /s/ | say, estimate | ||
| T T T is the 20th letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet. It is the most commonly used consonant and the second most common letter in the English language.- History :Taw was the last letter of the Western Semitic and Hebrew alphabets... |
té | /t/ | tell, least, feast | ||
| Ty | tyé | /c/ | (not used in English) similar to: stew, Stuart (BE RP) | ||
| U U U is the twenty-first letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-History:The letter U ultimately comes from the Semitic letter Waw by way of the letter Y. See the letter Y for details.... |
u | /u/ | rude | ||
| Ú Ú Ú or ú is a Latin letter used in the Czech, Faroese, Hungarian, Icelandic, and Slovak writing systems. This letter also appears in Dutch, Irish, Occitan, Pinyin, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, and Vietnamese as a variant of the letter "U".... |
ú | /uː/ | do, fool | minimal pair to /u/: hurok 'loop' ∼ húrok 'cords' | |
| Ü Ü Ü, or ü, is a character which can be either a letter from several extended Latin alphabets, or the letter U with an umlaut or a diaeresis... |
ü | /y/ | (not used in English, corresponds to German Ü) | A shorter, more open variant of ű | |
| Ű Double acute accent The double acute accent is a diacritic mark of the Latin script. It is used primarily in written Hungarian, and consequently is sometimes referred to as Hungarumlaut, a portmanteau of Hungarian umlaut... |
ű | /yː/ | (not used in English) | ||
| V V V is the twenty-second letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-Letter:The letter V comes from the Semitic letter Waw, as do the modern letters F, U, W, and Y. See F for details.... |
vé | /v/ | very, every | ||
| (W W W is the 23rd letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.In other Germanic languages, including German, its pronunciation is similar or identical to that of English V... ) |
dupla vé | /v/ | view, evolve, vacuum | only occurs only in foreign words and in Hungarian aristocratic surnames | |
| (X X X is the twenty-fourth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet.-Uses:In mathematics, x is commonly used as the name for an independent variable or unknown value. The usage of x to represent an independent or unknown variable can be traced back to the Arabic word šay شيء = “thing,” used in Arabic... ) |
iksz | occurs only in loanwords, and there only when denoting /ks/; [ɡz] is transcribed: extra, Alexandra, but egzakt 'exact'. | |||
| (Y Y Y is the twenty-fifth letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet and represents either a vowel or a consonant in English.-Name:In Latin, Y was named Y Graeca "Greek Y". This was pronounced as I Graeca "Greek I", since Latin speakers had trouble pronouncing , which was not a native sound... ) |
ipszilon | /i/ | in loanwords, usually rendered as /i/ or /j/. Occurs very often in old Hungarian aristocratic surnames where it stands for /i/ or /ʲi/: 'Báthory' [baːtori], 'Batthyány' [bɑcːaːɲi] or [bɑcːaːni] (<n>+<y> ∼ /n/+/ʲi/ ∼ /nʲi/ ∼ /ɲi/) | ||
| Z Z Z is the twenty-sixth and final letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet.-Name and pronunciation:In most dialects of English, the letter's name is zed , reflecting its derivation from the Greek zeta but in American English, its name is zee , deriving from a late 17th century English dialectal... |
zé | /z/ | desert, roses | ||
| Zs | zsé | /ʒ/ | pleasure, leisure, genre |
Historic spellings used in names
Old spellings used in some Hungarian names and their modern correspondents include the following:| Historic spelling | Pronounced like modern spelling |
|---|---|
| ch | cs |
| ts | cs |
| cz | c |
| th | t |
| Historic spelling | Pronounced like modern spelling |
|---|---|
| aa | á |
| eé | é |
| eö | ö |
| ew | ö |
| oó | ó |
| (l)y | (l)i |
| (n)y | (ny)i |
Examples:
| Name | Pronounced as if spelled |
|---|---|
| Madách Imre Madách Imre Madách de Sztregova et de Kelecsény was a Hungarian writer, poet, lawyer and politician. His major work is The Tragedy of Man . It is a dramatic poem approximately 4000 lines long, which elaborates on ideas comparable to Goethe's Faust... |
Madács |
| Széchenyi | Szécsényi |
| Batthyány Batthyány Batthyány is the name of an old distinguished Hungarian Magnate family. The members of this family bear the title count or countess respectively prince or princess Batthyány von Német-Ujvár... |
Battyányi |
| Thököly Imre Thököly Count Imre Thököly de Késmárk was a Hungarian statesman, leader of an anti-Habsburg uprising, Prince of Transylvania, and vassal king of Upper Hungary.- Early life :Imre Thököly was born at Késmárk, Royal Hungary Count Imre Thököly de Késmárk (Thököly/Tököly/Tökölli Imre in Hungarian, Mirko... |
Tököli |
| Weöres Sándor Weöres Sándor Weöres was a Hungarian poet and author.Born in Szombathely, Weöres was brought up in the nearby village of Csönge. His first poems appeared when he was nineteen, being published in the influential journal Nyugat through the acceptance of its editor, the poet Mihály Babits... |
Vörös |
| Eötvös Eotvos Eötvös is an old spelling of the Hungarian word ötvös, meaning "gold- & silversmith".- Family name :Eötvös can refer to one of several Hungarian people:... |
Ötvös |
| Cházár | Császár |
| Czukor | Cukor |
| Gaál | Gál |
| Veér | Vér |
| Soós | Sós |
| Thewrewk | Török |
An extreme example is the name Dessewffy, which is pronounced as if spelled Dezsőfi.
Capitalisation
The di- and the trigraphs are capitalised in names and at the beginning of sentences by capitalising the first glyphGlyph
A glyph is an element of writing: an individual mark on a written medium that contributes to the meaning of what is written. A glyph is made up of one or more graphemes....
of them only.
- Csak jót mondhatunk Székely Csabáról.
In abbreviations and when writing with all capital letters, however, one capitalises the second (and third) character as well.
Thus ("The Rules of Hungarian Orthography", a book edited by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
Hungarian Academy of Sciences
The Hungarian Academy of Sciences is the most important and prestigious learned society of Hungary. Its seat is at the bank of the Danube in Budapest.-History:...
):
- A magyar helyesírás szabályai
- MHSZ (not *MHSz)
- A MAGYAR HELYESÍRÁS SZABÁLYAI (not *SzABÁLyAI)
Alphabetical ordering (collation)
While the characters with diacritical marks are considered separate letters, vowels that differ only in length are treated the same when ordering words. Therefore, for example, the pairs O/Ó and Ö/Ő are not distinguished in ordering, but Ö follows O.The polygraphic consonant signs are treated as single letters.
| comb | |
| cukor | |
| csak | |
| ... | |
| folyik | |
| folyó | <ó> is sorted as |
| folyosó | |
| ... | |
| fő | and <ő> is sorted as <ö>, |
| födém | but <ö> comes after |
| ... |
The simplified geminates of multigraphs (see above) such as <nny>, <ssz> are collated
Collation
Collation is the assembly of written information into a standard order. One common type of collation is called alphabetization, though collation is not limited to ordering letters of the alphabet...
as <ny>+<ny>, <sz>+<sz> etc., if they are double geminates, rather than co-occurrences of a single letter and a geminate.
- könnyű is collated as <k><ö><ny><ny><ű>. tizennyolc of course as <t><i><z><e><n><ny><o><l><c>, as this is a compoundCompound (linguistics)In linguistics, a compound is a lexeme that consists of more than one stem. Compounding or composition is the word formation that creates compound lexemes...
: tizen+nyolc ('above ten' + 'eight' = 'eighteen').
Similar 'ambiguities', which can occur with compounds (which are highly common in Hungarian) are dissolved and collated by sense.
- e.g. házszám 'house number (address)' = ház + szám and of course not *házs + *zám.
These rules make Hungarian alphabetic ordering algorithmically difficult (one has to know the correct segmentation of a word to sort it correctly), was a problem for computer software development. The program called Hunspell
Hunspell
Hunspell is a spell checker and morphological analyzer designed for languages with rich morphology and complex word compounding and character encoding, originally designed for the Hungarian language....
is a good spell checker, designed specifically for the Hungarian language
Hungarian language
Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
.
Keyboard layout
The Hungarian keyboard layout is German-based (QWERTZQWERTZ
thumb|175px|A computer QWERTZ keyboardThe QWERTZ or QWERTZU keyboard is a widely used computer and typewriter keyboard layout that is mostly used in Central Europe...
). This layout allows direct access to every character in the Hungarian alphabet.
The letter "Í" is often placed left of the space key, leaving the width of the left Shift key intact.
Letter frequencies
The most common letters in Hungarian are e and a.The list below shows the letter frequencies for more letters in order of descending frequency.
| Letter | Frequency |
|---|---|
| e | 12.256% |
| a | 9.428% |
| t | 7.380% |
| n | 6.445% |
| l | 6.383% |
| s | 5.322% |
| k | 4.522% |
| é | 4.511% |
| i | 4.200% |
| m | 4.054% |
| o | 3.867% |
| á | 3.649% |
| g | 2.838% |
| r | 2.807% |
| z | 2.734% |
| v | 2.453% |
| b | 2.058% |
| d | 2.037% |
| sz | 1.809% |
| j | 1.570% |
| h | 1.341% |
| gy | 1.185% |
| ő | 0.884% |
| ö | 0.821% |
| ny | 0.790% |
| ly | 0.738% |
| ü | 0.655% |
| ó | 0.634% |
| f | 0.582% |
| p | 0.509% |
| í | 0.499% |
| u | 0.416% |
| cs | 0.260% |
| ű | 0.125% |
| c | 0.114% |
| ú | 0.104% |
| zs | 0.021% |
External links
- X-SAMPA for Hungarian