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When adding (most1) suffixes to a word in Hungarian, if the word ends in a or e, then you will lengthen that vowel. a becomes á, and e becomes é.
1All of the cases talked about here follow the vowel lengthening rule, and they are the ones you’ll be using more often. Most other suffixes you will learn (which act more like noun modifiers) will not lengthen the vowel.
Note: o and ö will also lengthen like this (–ó and -ő), but it will only be relevant with foreign words/places, as no words in Hungarian actually end in -o or -ö. Vowels u/ü and i do not lengthen.
Examples
a medve – a medvém
the bear – my bear
a taska – a taskából
the bag – out of the bag
a kutya – a kutyák
the dog – the dogs
Petra – Petrával
Petra – with Petra
a macska – a macskád
the cat – your cat
Adding Multiple Suffixes
Multiple suffixes can be added to a single noun. When multiple suffixes are added, the vowel lengthening rules apply to all other suffixes as well.
Let’s look at an example!
The Process
Think of it like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. We are combining:
macska (cat) – noun
-ja (xir) – 3rd person possessive suffix1
-val (with)
1-ja/-je is not the only suffix for 3rd person singular possessive – there are others depending on the letter the noun ends in, but that will be explained later, so don’t worry too much about it now!
The a on the end of macska (cat) is lengthened to á because we add the suffix -ja (xir).
result: macskája (xir cat)
Now we’re going to add -val (with). The last suffix, -ja, ends in a. So this also lengthens to á.
end result: macskájával (with xir cat)
Tada!
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