Welcome to the Hungarian course!
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:
(én) vagyok 'I am'
(mi) vagyunk 'we are'
(te) vagy 'you (sg.) are'
(ti) vagytok 'you (pl) are'
(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.
Szia = Hello
Jo = good
Ejszakat = Night
Kivanok = wish
Jo Ejszakat Kivanok = Good night
Estet = evening
Jo estet kivanok= Good evening
Reggelt = morning
Jo reggelt =good morning
Napot = day, afternoon, sun
Jo napot = good afternoon
Hogy vagy ? =How are you ?
