Better Hungarian

We already went over some postpositions of time here. There are many other postpositions unrelated to time that I am going to go over in a series of different posts.

For this post specifically, I am going to show how to add possessive suffixes to postpositions and how to use them in sentences.

It is recommended to go over vowel harmony if you haven’t, so you can remember easily which suffixes to add.

The possessive endings added to postpositions are mostly the same as definite present tense. The position of the possessive postposition in a sentence is not fixed, and can change depending on the specific sentence and what you want to emphasize. You can read in previous posts about neutral sentences and focus sentences.

Examples

	szerint (according to)	nélkül (without)	miatt (because of)
én	szerintem	nélkülem	miattam
te	szerinted	nélküled	miattad
ő	szerinte	nélküle	miatta
mi	szerintünk	nélkülünk	miattunk
ti	szerintetek	nélkületek	miattatok
ők	szerintük	nélkülük	miattuk

Example Sentences

Ne menj moziba nélkülem (Don’t go to the cinema without me)

Szerintük Magyarország nagyon gyönyörű (According to them, Hungary is very beautiful)

Szerintem a leves finom volt (In my opinion, the soup was delicious)

Magyarországra jöttem miattad (I came to Hungary because of you)

Miattuk nem tudunk menni Norvégiába (Because of them we can’t go to Norway)

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There are many other postpositions that you can make possessive. This is not a comprehensive list, and I will go into more detail about postpositions of location in a different post.

Postposition	English Equivalent	Example Sentence
előtt	in front of	Előtted állok (I am standing in front of you)
mögött	behind	A macska mögöttük van (The cat is behind them)
mellett	next to	A fiú mellettem ül (The boy is sitting next to me)
helyett	instead of	Petra ment moziba helyettem (Petra went to the cinema instead of me)
után	after	Utánad megyek be a házba (I go into the house after you)

NOTE: While it doesn’t occur in any of the examples here, in the event that a postposition ends in a vowel, then the 3rd person singular ending may or may not include the -j in their suffix, just as with regular 3rd person possessive form. This will unfortunately have to be memorized as you learn the words.