Better Hungarian

I’ve found that verb conjugation in Hungarian is fairly simple. There are only 4 tenses (technically 5, but the imperative and subjunctive are conjugated the same), and there are only about 10 or so major verbs that are irregular and therefore don’t conjugate like the rest (there will be a separate post about those).

The key thing to remember with Hungarian verb conjugation is whether a word is back or front vowel (you can read my post on that here), and whether it needs to be definite or indefinite (you can read an overview on that here).

My advice for remembering verb conjugation is to take down notes from this post in a way that makes it easier for you to understand and study, and make LOTS of verb charts. When you learn a new verb? Conjugate it! You can double check a lot of verbs on Wiktionary, where you can find a very helpful conjugation table! Once you get the hang of it, these conjugations will be second nature.

And lastly, just be thankful this isn’t French or Spanish.

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HUNGARIAN VERB TENSES

※ Present (Definite) – YOU ARE HERE
Present (Indefinite)
Past (Definite & Indefinite)
Conditional (Definite & Indefinite)
Conditional Tense: Usage
Subjunctive/Imperative (Definite & Indefinite)
Subjunctive Tense: Usage
Imperative Tense: Usage

This is only Definite Present Conjugation.

To see how to conjugate Indefinite Present Tense, please go here.

To see how and when to use the Definite verb conjugation, please go here.

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SUFFIXES

Subject	Back-vowel word	Front-vowel word	Rounded front-vowel word1
Én	-om	-em	-öm
Te	-od	-ed	-öd
Ő (Ön)	-ja	-i
Mi	-juk	-jük
Ti	-játok	-itek
Ők (Önök)	-ják	-ik

¹Some subjects will have a separate ending for rounded front-vowel words, otherwise the same ending is applied for both un-rounded and rounded front-vowel words.

NOTE: If the stem of the vowel ends in s, sz, z, dz, the leading -j in the ending turns into the last letter (mos + ja = mossa). You will see this occur in one of the example words in this post.

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DROPPING THE PRONOUN

Note that in most cases, the pronoun is left off of Hungarian sentences, just like in languages such as Spanish and Japanese. It can sound quite unnatural to constantly use pronouns in Hungarian; instead, the verb conjugation tells you who is being spoken of.

The only exception to this is ő/Ön and ők/Önök, which have the same conjugations as each other, so you would need to use the pronoun to specify if the subject isn’t already clear.

For example, you would not say „én játszom”, but rather just „játszom”, unless you wanted to specify that it was YOU playing, and not someone else.

Therefore, for these first verb lessons I will include the pronouns so you can familiarize yourself with the matching conjugations, but in my other posts the pronouns will be absent for the most part.

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EXAMPLES

Játsz(ik)¹ (back-vowel word) – to play

Én játszom	Mi játsszuk
Te játszod	Ti játsszátok
Ő játssza	Ők játsszák
Ön játssza	Önök játsszák

Note that you essentially ignore the -ik on the end when conjugating the definite present tense. It’s removed for every conjugation except the indefinite third person (where it stays and doesn’t change).

¹This verb ends in „sz” (once you remove -ik) which means the -j will change and take on the last letter to double it. In the case of „sz”, this means only the -s will double. The -z is left untouched.

Énekel (front-vowel word) – to sing

Én énekelem	Mi énekeljük
Te énekeled	Ti énekelitek
Ő énekeli	Ők énekelik
Ön énekeli	Önök énekelik

Ad (back-vowel word) – to give

Én adom	Mi adjuk
Te adod	Ti adjátok
Ő adja	Ők adják
Ön adja	Önök adják