Better Hungarian

Last post I went over regular (or ‘cardinal’) numbers in Hungarian. This time I will be explaining ordinal numbers, which are essentially used to specify something’s position in an order. In English this would be ‘first, second, third, fourth…’ and so on. It might look complicated at first, but essentially all you do is add a suffix to the numbers to change them to ordinal ones (there are a few that change their stem, but for the most part it is pretty regular).

---

Posts to Review First:

Vowel Harmony
Cardinal Numbers (1, 2, 3…)

I will put the regular numbers side-by-side with their ordinal version here so you can compare more easily.

0-10

Number	Regular (Cardinal) #	Ordinal #	Ordinal # (English)
0	nulla	nulladik	zeroth1
1	egy	első	first (1st)
2	kettő/két	második	second (2nd)
3	három	harmadik	third (3rd)
4	négy	negyedik2	fourth (4th)
5	öt	ötödik	fifth (5th)
6	hat	hatodik	sixth (6th)
7	hét	hetedik3	seventh (7th)
8	nyolc	nyolcadik	eighth (8th)
9	kilenc	kilencedik	ninth (9th)
10	tíz	tizedik4	tenth (10th)

¹I don’t imagine you will encounter this one often, though a fun fact my friend told me is that a class starting at 7:30am in high school is referred to as “nulladik óra” (zeroth hour).

^2/3Note that ‘négy’ and ‘hét’ both loose their accent markers here. Same with ‘tíz’.

---

You may have noticed that, besides the few that change stem, essentially you just add some form of -dik to the end of the number.

There are exceptions (see: hatodik) but the rough rules are:

back-vowel word ending in consonant: -adik
front-vowel word ending in consonant: -edik
front-vowel (rounded) word ending in consonant: -ödik
word ending in vowel: -dik

---

11-19

Number	Regular (Cardinal) #	Ordinal #	Ordinal # (English)
11	tizenegy	tizenegyedik	eleventh (11th)
12	tizenkettő/tizenkét	tizenkettedik1	twelfth (12th)
13	tizenhárom	tizenharmadik2	thirteenth (13th)
14	tizennégy	tizennegyedik	fourteenth (14th)
15	tizenöt	tizenötödik	fifteenth (15th)
16	tizenhat	tizenhatodik	sixteenth (16th)
17	tizenhét	tizenhetedik	seventeeth (17th)
18	tizennyolc	tizennyolcadik	eighteenth (18th)
19	tizenkilenc	tizenkilencedik	nineteenth (19th)

^1/2Besides these two changing up somewhat, there is not much variation.

---

Multiples of 10

Number	Regular (Cardinal) #	Ordinal #	Ordinal # (English)
20	húsz	huszadik	twentieth (20th)
30	harminc	harmincadik	thirtieth (30th)
40	negyven	negyvenedik	fortieth (40th)
50	ötven	ötvenedik	fiftieth (50th)
60	hatvan	hatvanadik	sixtieth (60th)
70	hetven	hetvenedik	seventieth (70th)
80	nyolcvan	nyolcvanadik	eightieth (80th)
90	kilencven	kilencvenedik	ninetieth (90th)

Not so scary, right? The Hungarian version honestly looks much easier to me than the ones in English ending in ‘tietheethehtheteh’.

---

100+

Number	Regular (Cardinal) #	Ordinal #	Ordinal # (English)
100	száz	századik	hundreth (100th)
1000	ezer	ezredik	thousandth (1000th)
10,000	tízezer	tízezredik	ten-thousandth (10,000th)
100,000	százezer	százezredik	hundred-thousandth (100,000th)
1,000,000	(egy)millió	(egy)milliomodik	one millionth

---

Examples in Between

As you can hopefully see, the numbers are (mostly) the same as in their cardinal form, and you just have to remember which version of ‘-dik’ to add on.

Number	Regular (Cardinal) #	Ordinal #
55	ötvenöt	ötvenötödik
71	hetvenegy	hetvenegyedik
142	száznegyvenkettő/két	száznegyvenkettedik
200	kétszáz	kétszázadik
203	kétszázhárom	kétszázharmadik
1500	ezerötszáz	ezerötszázadik
2400	kétezernégyszáz	kétezernégyszázadik
10,600	tízezerhatszáz	tízezerhatszázadik
125,865	százhuszonötezernyolcszázhatvanöt	százhuszonötezernyolcszázhatvanötödik

---

Numbers can be tricky, but I find the Hungarian system to be fairly straightforward. Don’t hesitate to message/comment if you have any questions.