Better Hungarian

A coverb is a word or prefix that accompanies a verb, thereby modifying it in some way.

Hungarian coverbs can indicate the direction, manner, or completion of a verb. Sometimes a coverb can change the meaning of the word completely. In this post we’ll go over some of the common ways coverbs occur in Hungarian and how they function.

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1. Direction of an action

This can be thought of as similar to English phrasal verbs, such as “put up”, “back down”, “count on”, etc. Below I will list some common directional coverbs and what they roughly correspond to in English. Keep in mind this is not the only way to use these coverbs.

Coverb	English Equivalent	Example	English
ki	out	Kilépek a boltból	I step out of the shop
be	in	Beugrom a medencébe	I jump into the pool
fel	up	Felmegyek a szobába	I go up (in)to the room
le	down	Leteszem a pultra a sajtot	I put the cheese down on the counter
oda	(over) there	Odaülök a székre	I sit (over) there on(to) the chair
vissza	back	Visszamegyek az iskolába	I go back to the school

Note that more often than not, a directional coverb will be accompanied by a directional case (suffix), depending on the verb and objects in the sentence. If you are unfamiliar with directional cases, you can read about the different ones here.

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2. Manner of an action

Certain coverbs in Hungarian indicate to what extent a verb goes, and can serve to intensify the verb in some cases.

agyon – all the way/too much/to death

Verb	English	Verb (with coverb)	English
beszél	to talk	agyonbeszél	to talk way too much, to talk somebody ‘to death’
lő	to shoot	agyonlő	to shoot somebody dead

végig – all the way/to the end

Verb	English	Verb (with coverb)	English
csinál	to do	végigcsinál	to do something all the way, to see something through
játszik	to play	végigjátszik	to play out, to play to the end

túl – beyond/excessively

Verb	English	Verb (with coverb)	English
fizet	to pay	túlfizet	to overpay, to pay too much
lép	to step	túllép	to exceed, to overstep

újra – new, again

Verb	English	Verb (with coverb)	English
épít	to build	újraépít	to rebuild (build again)
ír	to write	újraír	to rewrite (write again)

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3. Aspect/completion of a verb

Hungarian only has one past tense form, unlike English which can express the past in different ways (I went, I was going…). There are instead some coverbs that serve to make this distinction between perfect and imperfect tenses in Hungarian. Perfect refers to actions that have been or will be completed, while imperfect indicates an action that is on-going. The most common ‘perfecting’ coverbs are meg and el. I will show some short examples here, but I plan to make a separate post to go in depth about these two coverbs and their variety of uses.

Take the verb ‘eszik‘ (to eat). You can say both “ettem a sütit” and “megettem a sütit”, with each version having a slightly different meaning.

• Ettem a sütit
  • I was eating the cake (on-going action) – Indicates an action that was on-going but may or may not have been completed.
  • If talking about only eating *some* cake, you could say “Ettem a sütiből” (lit. ‘I ate from the cake’) or “Ettem sütit” (lit. ‘I ate (some) cake’).

• Megettem a sütit
  • I ate the (whole) cake. – In this instance it is taken to mean you ate the entirety of the cake you were given. The eating action has been completed.

Now, let’s take the verb ‘olvas‘ (to read).

• Olvasom az újságot
  • I read the newspaper (habitually)
  • I am reading the newspaper (on-going action) – This indicates you are reading some of the newspaper, and does not necessarily mean you will read the entire newspaper.

• Elolvasom az újságot
  • I read the (entire) newspaper (habitually)
  • I am going to read the (entire) newspaper

There are many, many other uses of these coverbs that I won’t go in depth on here. This post is meant to serve as an overview to become familiar with their basic functions, and there will be more detailed posts in the future.