You're at the hairdresser in Budapest, you want to pay the stylist a compliment, and you confidently say: "Szép a hájad!". She looks at you, glances down at her waistline and quietly puts the scissors down. What happened? You meant to tell her she has lovely hair (haj), but you told her she has lovely fat (háj). One tiny accent mark, and your compliment has turned into an insult.
Hungarian is full of traps like this. In this article we'll show you the funniest (and most embarrassing) examples, and explain why they exist. Because behind every slip there's a perfectly logical rule.
First things first: it's not stress, it's length
In English, stress can change meaning. You REcord a song, but you reCORD it; a PREsent is a gift, while to preSENT is to show something. So when English speakers see those little marks above Hungarian letters, it's tempting to read them as stress marks. In Hungarian, however, things work differently. Stress always falls on the first syllable of a word, without exception. What the accent mark does tell you is the length of the vowel.
An a without a mark is short and sounds close to the o in British "hot". An á is long and open, like the a in "father". With e and é the difference is similar: short as in "bet", long a bit like the ay in "say", but without the glide at the end. And then there are the double marks: ő and ű are the long siblings of ö and ü.
Hungarian vowel pairs
| Short | Long | Example |
|---|---|---|
| a | á | kar (arm) / kár (damage) |
| e | é | kerek (round) / kerék (wheel) |
| i | í | irt (exterminated) / írt (wrote) |
| o | ó | bor (wine) / bór (boron) |
| ö | ő | öt (five) / őt (him, her) |
| u | ú | szurok (tar) / szúrok (I stab) |
| ü | ű | tűz (fire) / tüzet (fire, as a direct object) |
So if you pronounce a vowel too short or too long, you're not saying the same word with a funny accent. You're simply saying a different word. And sometimes that other word is spectacularly badly chosen.
18 word pairs where one little mark changes everything
Long and short vowels
haj / háj
örült / őrült
szar / szár
agy / ágy
hat / hát
kar / kár
ver / vér
szel / szél
kor / kör / kőr
kerek / kerék
öt / őt
irt / írt
Double consonants
It's not only vowels that can be short or long. In Hungarian a double consonant is genuinely held a little longer. Forget that, and these surprises await:
megy / meggy
kasza / kassza
hal / hall
tol / toll
kel / kell
szál / száll
The dots matter too
Besides the accent marks, Hungarian also has dots: ö and ü are completely different sounds from o and u. English has no equivalent, so these are easy to skip, and forgetting them can land you with an unexpected order at the bar:
| Without dots | With dots or marks | What goes wrong |
|---|---|---|
| sor (row, line) | sör (beer) | "Egy sört kérek" gets you a beer; "egy sort kérek" gets you a queue. |
| bor (wine) | bőr (skin, leather) | Ordering a glass of bőr means asking for a glass of leather. |
| tok (case, cover) | tök (pumpkin) | A phone in a tök is very autumnal, but not very practical. |
Words that have two meanings all by themselves
English speakers know this phenomenon well: a bat can fly or hit a ball, and a dog's bark has nothing to do with a tree's. Hungarian has plenty of these homonyms too, words that are spelled and pronounced exactly the same but mean two very different things. Often one is a noun and the other a verb, which lets you build sentences that sound like riddles:
| Word | Meaning 1 | Meaning 2 | Fun sentence |
|---|---|---|---|
| vár | castle | waits | A vár vár. (The castle waits.) |
| ég | sky | burns | Ég az ég. (The sky is burning.) |
| sír | grave | cries | Sír a sírnál. (He's crying at the grave.) |
| nyúl | rabbit | reaches, grabs | A nyúl után nyúl. (He reaches for the rabbit.) |
| fél | half | is afraid | Fél órát fél. (He's afraid for half an hour.) |
| fog | tooth | will; grabs | Fáj a fogam, de nem fogok sírni. (My tooth hurts, but I won't cry.) |
| nyár | summer | poplar | Nyáron a nyár alatt ülök. (In summer I sit under the poplar.) |
| ér | vein, brook | is worth, reaches | Ez az ér nem ér semmit. (This vein isn't worth anything.) |
| terem | hall, room | grows, thrives | Gomba terem a teremben. (Mushrooms are growing in the hall.) |
| dob | drum | throws | Dobot dob. (He throws a drum.) |
| levél | leaf | letter | Levél esett a levélre. (A leaf fell on the letter.) |
| állam | the state (country) | my chin | Leesett az állam. (My jaw dropped, or: the state has fallen.) |
| szemét | rubbish | his/her eye (direct object) | Kidobta a szemét. (He threw out the rubbish, or his eye.) |
The last two examples are the best, because they show how grammar creates the riddle. Szem means eye. Add the possessive suffix -e and you get szeme (his eye); add the direct-object ending -t and you get szemét, which happens to be exactly the same as the word for rubbish. Állam works the same way: áll (chin) plus the possessive suffix -am (my) produces the same word as állam, the state. Fortunately the context almost always makes clear which one is meant.
And yet: stress can change things after all
Although word stress in Hungarian is fixed, stress does matter at the level of the sentence. The word directly in front of the verb is emphasised and carries the key part of the message. Hungarians call this the fókusz, or focus position.
- Péter ment el. It was Péter who left (and not someone else).
- Tegnap ment el Péter. Péter left yesterday (and not today).
- Elment Péter. Péter left (a neutral statement).
Notice how the verbal prefix el- breaks off and jumps behind the verb as soon as another word takes the focus position. English does something similar with intonation alone ("Peter left" versus "Peter left"), but Hungarian rearranges the words. If you say "Péter elment" with heavy stress on Péter, you'll probably be understood, but you'll immediately sound like a learner. It's one of the giveaways native speakers pick up on fastest.
What can we learn from all this?
- Accent marks aren't decoration. They show vowel length, and vowel length determines meaning. Always learn words with their accents.
- Neither are the dots. o and ö are different sounds, and so different words.
- Stress always comes first. Unlike in English, you never have to guess which syllable is stressed: it's always the first one.
- You can hear double consonants. Hold them a fraction longer, or your checkout turns into a scythe.
- Suffixes create new ambiguities. As with szemét and állam: once you know the endings, the riddle solves itself.
- Sentence stress follows word order. Whatever stands right before the verb is what you're emphasising.
The good news: Hungarians tend to be very forgiving towards foreigners who make the effort to speak their language. If you accidentally tell your hairdresser she has lovely fat, there will usually be plenty of laughter. But it's still nicer to know why she's laughing.
Want to avoid these traps from now on?
Vowel length, suffixes and word order: these are exactly the areas where Hungarian differs most from English. With Meester Magyar you practise them step by step, so you say what you mean, and not something completely different by accident.
Try Meester Magyar!