Better Hungarian

Tag: hungarian lessons

  • [Hungarian] Future Tense: fog vs lesz

    While a lot of the time, Hungarian uses the simple present alongside specific words to indicate future tense, there are a couple actual verbs for it as well. 1st Option – “fog“ One option is “fog”, which is used with other verbs to mean “will do X”.  Be1 fogsz menni…

  • [Hungarian] Translative Case: -vá/-vé

    The translative case is less common than some of the other ones, but it’s still used semi-regularly (just in more specific situations). The purpose of this case is to show that something/someone is becoming/turning into something/someone else. The translative works like-val/-vel in that if the word ends in a consonant,…

  • [Hungarian] Have to/Must/Need: Kell / Muszáj / Szükség

    Expressing necessity in Hungarian can be done in several ways, and I would like to say that they aren’t very hard. There is a little bit of conjugation involved, but the rules are pretty straightforward.  Kell – have to, must Past: kellettFuture/Conditional: kellene (can be shortened to “kéne”, which is…

  • [Hungarian] Interrogative and Relative Pronouns: Basic

    At its core, this concept is simple, but there is quite a lot to go over. To (hopefully) avoid overwhelming anyone new to this concept, I’ll be splitting this into 3 posts again. This first post will go over the common, basic pronouns that you will encounter most regularly. The…

  • [Hungarian] Expressing Potential: -hat/-het vs ‘tud’

    You may have already learned about ‘tud‘, and how to express ‘can/cannot‘ in this way. BUT there is another way that potential is expressed in Hungarian – and you guessed it, it’s by adding another suffix. -hat/-het will only be attached to verbs, and it will always come BEFORE the…

  • [Hungarian] Literary/Formal Conjunctions

    This is the third and last post in a 3-part explanation of different conjunctions in Hungarian. This particular one will focus on more literary or formal conjunctions, some of which are used in common speech and others that you will more often see in literature. You can read my post about connecting/contrasting/comparing…

  • [Hungarian] Conjunctions: Explanatory

    This is the second post in a 3-part explanation of different conjunctions in Hungarian. This particular one will focus on explanatory conjunctions. You can read my post about connecting/contrasting/comparing conjunctions here. mert: BECAUSE Mert will always come at the beginning of a subsequent clause (you can’t place it at the beginning of…

  • [Hungarian] Conjunctions: Connecting/Contrasting/Comparing

    This is the first post in a 3-part explanation of different conjunctions in Hungarian. This post focuses on conjunctions that connect, contrast, or compare clauses. The other posts will cover explanatory conjunctions and more literary/formal conjunctions. Note that not all of these are technically considered ‘conjunctions’ in Hungarian, but they…

  • [Hungarian] Postpositions with Cases

    Certain postpositions require the relative object to take a specific case. This is not necessarily a comprehensive list, but I’ll be going over some of these and showing how they work.  Át OR Keresztül – across, throughTakes: superessive case -(o/e/ö)n Szeretnék utazni a világon át/keresztül (I would like to travel…

  • [Hungarian] Imperative Tense: Usage

    HUNGARIAN VERB TENSES Present (Definite)Present (Indefinite)Past (Definite & Indefinite)Conditional (Definite & Indefinite)Conditional Tense: UsageSubjunctive/Imperative (Definite & Indefinite)Subjunctive Tense: Usage※ Imperative Tense: Usage – YOU ARE HERE As mentioned previously, the subjunctive and imperative tenses are conjugated the same. In this post I will be going over just the imperative version…