Hungarian phonology

Hungarian phonology
For assistance in making IPA transcriptions of Hungarian for Wikipedia articles, see Help:IPA for Hungarian.

Hungarian language

Closeup of a Hungarian keyboard

Alphabet

cs

dz

dzs

gy

ly

ny

sz

ty
zs

Grammar

Noun phrases
Verbs

T-V distinction
History
Sound correspondences with
other Uralic languages

Other features

Phonetics and phonology

Vowel harmony

Orthography

Old Hungarian script

Hungarian Braille
Hungarian names
Hungarian and English

Hungarian pronunciation of English

English words from Hungarian

Regulatory body

v
t

e [1]

The phonology of the Hungarian language is notable for its process of vowel harmony, the frequent use of geminate
consonants and the presence of otherwise uncommon palatal stops.

Hungarian phonology

Consonants
This is the Hungarian consonantal system, using symbols from the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).

Consonant phonemes of Hungarian

Labial Alveolar

Post- Palatal Velar Glottal

alveolar

Nasal

Stop

pb

td

c
c*

Affricate
Fricative

fv

tsdz

td

sz

Trill

Approximant

^* It is debated whether the palatal consonant pair consists of stops or affricates. They are considered affricates
by Tams Szende, head of the department of General Linguistics at PPKE, Doctor of Linguistics,[2] and stops by
Mria Gsy, research professor, head of the Department of Phonetics at ELTE, doctor of the HAS. The reason for
the different analyses is that the relative duration of the friction of /c/ (as compared to the duration of its closure)
is longer than those of the stops, but shorter than those of the affricates. /c/ has the stop-like nature of having a full
duration no longer than those of other (voiceless) stops such as /p, t, k/ but, considering the average closure time
in relation to the friction time of the consonants, its duration structure is somewhat closer to those of the
affricates.
Almost every consonant may be geminated, written by doubling a single letter grapheme: bb, pp, ss etc., or by
doubling the first letter of a grapheme cluster: ssz, nny, etc.
The phonemes /dz/ and /d/ can appear on the surface as geminates: bridzs [bridd] ('bridge (the card game)'). (For
the list of examples and exceptions, see Hungarian dz and dzs.)
Hungarian does not use any haceks or any other consonant diacritics like the surrounding Slavic languages. Instead,
the letters c, s, z are used alone (ts, , z) or combined in the digraphs cs, sz, zs (t, s, ), while y is used only in the
digraphs ty, gy, ly, ny as a palatalization marker to write the sounds c, , j (formerly ), .
The most notable allophones are:
/j/ becomes [] if between a voiceless obstruent and a word boundary (e.g. lopj [lop] 'steal').
/j/ becomes [] e.g. between voiced obstruents, such as dobj be [dob b] 'throw (one/some) in'
/h/ may become [] between two vowels (e.g. teht [tat] 'so'), [] after front vowels (e.g. ihlet [ilt]
'inspiration'), and [x] word-finally after back vowels (e.g. doh [dox] 'musty/mouldy/stale smell') if it isn't deleted
(which it often is; e.g. mh [me] 'bee').
According to Gsy, it becomes [x] (rather than []) in words such as pech, ihlet, technika ('bad luck,
inspiration, technology/technique'), while it becomes postvelar fricative in words such as doh, sah, jacht,
Allah, eunuch, potroh.
/h/ becomes [x] when geminated, in certain words: dohhal [doxl] ('with blight'), peches [px] ('unlucky').

Hungarian phonology

Examples
Phoneme

Example

/p/

pipa

[pip]

'pipe'

/b/

bot

[bot]

'stick'

/t/

toll

[tol]

'feather'

/d/

dob

[dob]

'throw', 'drum'

/k/

kp

[kep]

'picture'

//

gp

[ep]

'machine'

/f/

fa

[f]

'tree'

/v/

vg

[va]

'cut'

/s/

sz

[so]

'word'

/z/

zld

[zld]

'green'

//

[o]

'salt'

//

zseb

[b]

'pocket'

/j/

[jo]

'good'

/h/

[ho]

'snow', 'month'

/ts/

cl

[tsel]

'goal', 'target'

/dz/

edz

[dz]

'coach'

/t/

csak

[tk]

'only'

/d/

dzsessz [dss]

'jazz'

/l/

[lo]

'horse'

/c/

tyk

[cuk]

'hen'

//

gyr

[ar]

'factory'

/r/

[ro]

'carve'

/m/

ma

[m]

'today'

/n/

nem

[nm]

'no', 'gender'

//

nyr

[ar]

'summer'

Hungarian phonology

Vowels
Hungarian has seven pairs of corresponding short and
long vowels. Their phonetic values do not exactly
match up with each other, so e represents // and
represents /e/; likewise, a represents // while
represents /a/.[3] For the other pairs, the short vowels
are slightly lower and more central, and the long
vowels more peripheral.
The sound marked by a is considered to be [] by
Tams Szende and [] by Mria Gsy. Gsy also
mentions a different short /a/ that contrasts with both
/a/ and //, present in a few words like Svjc
('Switzerland'), sv ('schwa'), advent ('advent'), hardver
The vowel phonemes of Hungarian. From Szende (1994:92)
('hardware', this usage is considered hyperforeign), and
hall (used when answering the phone; contrasting with hal ['dying'], and hl ['web']).
Although not found in Budapest, some dialects contrast three mid vowels /e/ (written ), //, and /e/. Thus mentek
could represent four different words: mntk [mentek] ('you all go'), mntek [mentk] ('they went'), mentk [mntek]
('I save'), and mentek [mntk] ('they are exempt'). In Budapest, the first three collapse to [mntk], while the latter
one is unknown, having a different form in the literary language (mentesek).

Examples
Phoneme

Example

//

hat [ht~ht]

'six'

/a/

lt

[lat]

'see'

/o/

ok

[ok]

'cause'

/o/

[to]

'lake'

/u/

fut

[fut]

'run'

/u/

kt

[kut]

'well'

//

lesz

[ls]

'become'

/e/

rsz

[res]

'part'

/i/

visz

[vis]

'carry'

/i/

vz

[viz]

'water'

//

sr

[r]

'beer'

//

br

[br]

'skin'

/y/

[yt]

'hit'

/y/

tz

[tyz]

'fire'

Hungarian phonology

Vowel harmony
As in Finnish, Turkish, and Mongolian, vowel harmony plays an
important part in determining the distribution of vowels in a word.
Hungarian vowel harmony classifies the vowels according to front vs.
back assonance and rounded vs unrounded for the front vowels.
Excluding recent loan words, Hungarian words have either only back
vowels or front vowels due to these vowel harmony rules.

A Venn diagram of Hungarian vowel harmony,

featuring front rounded vowels, front unrounded
vowels (neutral vowels), and back vowels.

Hungarian vowel harmony

Front

Back

unrounded rounded back

Close i i

y y

u u

Mid

o o

Open

While [i], [i], [], and [e] are all front unrounded vowels, they are considered to be neutral vowels in Hungarian
vowel harmony. Therefore if a word contains back vowels, neutral vowels may appear alongside them. However if
only neutral vowels appear in a stem, the stem is treated as though it is of front vowel assonance and all suffixes
must contain front vowels.
Vowel harmony is most notable when observing suffixation in Hungarian. Vowel harmony must be maintained
throughout the entire word, meaning that most suffixes have variants. For example, the dative case marker [nk] vs.
[nk]. Stems that contain back vowels affix back vowel suffixes, and stems that contain only front vowels affix front
vowel stems. However the front vowel stems distinguish rounded vs. unroundedness based on the last vowel in the
stem. If the last vowel is front and rounded, it takes a suffix with a front rounded vowel; otherwise it follows the
standard rules. While suffixes for most words have front/back vowel variants, there are not many that have
rounded/unrounded variants, indicating that this is a rarer occurrence.
One is able to observe the distinction when looking at the plural affix, either [-ok] (back), [-k] (front unrounded), or
[-k] (front rounded).

Hungarian phonology

Hungarian vowel harmony and suffixation

Stem

Gloss

Description of stem

Plural

asztal

table

Only back vowels

asztal-ok

gyerek

child

Only neutral (front) vowels, last vowel unrounded. gyerek-ek

fzet

notebook

Only front vowels, last vowel unrounded.

fzet-ek

ismers acquaintance Only front vowels, last vowel rounded.

ismers-k

papr

papr-ok

paper

Back vowel with neutral vowel

As can be seen above, the neutral vowels are able to be in both front and back vowel assonance words with no
consequence.
However, there are about fifty monosyllabic roots that only contain [i], [i], or [e] that all take a back vowel suffix
instead of the front vowel suffix.

Irregular suffixation
Stem Gloss

"At"

"From"

hd

bridge hd-nl hd-tl

cl

aim

cl-nl cl-tl

These exceptions to the rule are hypothesized to be caused by those roots originally containing a phone no longer
present in modern Hungarian, [], which could elongate to []. As it was an unrounded back vowel, it is theorized
that while these roots merged with the vowels [i] or [i], and less commonly [e] or [u], the vowel harmony rules of
the original, now obsolete sound remained in place.

Assimilation
The overall characteristics of the consonant assimilation in Hungarian are the following:[4][5]
Assimilation types are typically regressive, that is the last element of the cluster determines the change.
In most cases, it works across word boundaries if the sequence of words form an "accentual unity", that is there is
no phonetic break between them (and they bear a common phase stress). Typical accentual unities are:
attributes and qualified nouns, e.g. hideg tl [hidktel] 'cold winter';
adverbs and qualified attributes, e.g. nagyon kros [nokaro] ~ [nonkaro] 'very harmful';
verbs and their complements, e.g. nagyot dob [noddob] 's/he throws long toss', vesz belle [vzbll]
'take some (of it)'.
There are obligatory, optional and stigmatized types of assimilation.
The palatal affricates behave like stops in assimilation processes. Therefore they will be treated as stops in this
section, including IPA notations [] and [c].

Hungarian phonology

Voice assimilation
In a cluster of consonants ending in an obstruent, all obstruents change their voicing according to the last one of the
sequence. The affected obstruents are the following:
In obstruent clusters, retrograde voicing assimilation occurs, even across word boundaries:
Voiced Voiceless

Undergoes devoicing

Undergoes voicing

Causes voicing
futball [fudbl] 'soccer'

Causes devoicing

b [b]

p [p]

dobtam [doptm] 'I threw (it)'

'kpzs [kebze]
'training, forming'

kzpont [kspont] 'center'

d [d]

t [t]

adhat [tht] 's/he can give'

htbl [hedbl] 'from csapda [tbd]

7'

pnztr [penstar] 'cash desk'

dz [dz]

c [ts]

edzhet [tsht] 's/he can train'

ketrecben [ktrdzbn] alapdzadzki [lbdzdziki]

'in (a) cage'
'standard tzatziki'

abcg! [ptsu] 'down with

him!'

dzs
[d]

cs [t]

bridzstl [brittl] '(because) of

bridge <game of cards>'

csbl [adbol] 'from barackdzsem [brdzdm] ~

(a) carpenter'
[brdm] 'apricot jam'

tvcs [taft] 'telescope'

g []

k [k]

fogtam [foktm] 'I held (it)'

zskbl [abol] 'out lltgat [alidt] 's/he

of (a) bag'
constantly adjusts'

zsebkend [pknd]
'handkerchief'

gy []

ty [c]

gytl [actol] 'from (a) bed'

pintybl [pibl]
'fom (a) finch'

gpgyr [ebar] 'machine

factory'

lbty [lapcy] 'socks with

sleeves for the toes'

v [v]

f [f]

szvtam [siftm] 'I

smoked/sucked (it)'

szfben [sevbn] 'in

(a) safe'

lbfej [lapfj] 'part of the

foot below the ankle'

z [z]

sz [s]

mztl [mestl] 'from honey'

mszbl [mezbl]
'out of lime'

alapzat [lbzt] 'base(ment)'

rabszolga [rpsol] 'slave'

zs []

s []

rzstl [rutol] 'from lipstick'

'hasba [hb] 'in(to)

(the) stomach'

kldkzsinr [kldinor]
'umbilical cord'

klnbsg [kylmpe] ~
[kylme] 'difference'

h [h]

adhat [t.ht] 's/he can give'

[6] /v/ is unusual in that it undergoes assimilation but doesnt cause voicing, e.g. hatvan ('sixty') is pronounced
[htvn] not *[hdvn]. Voicing before [v] occurs only in south-western dialects, though it is
stigmatized.Wikipedia:Citation needed
Similarly, /h/ causes devoicing, but never undergoes voicing in consonant clusters. e.g. dohbl [doxbol] 'from
(the) musty smell'.
Other than a few foreign words, morpheme-initial /dz/ doesn't occur (even its phonemic state is highly debated),
therefore it is hard to find a real example when it induces voicing (even alapdzadzki is forced and not used
colloquially). However, the regressive voice assimilation before [dz] does occur even in nonsense sound
sequences.

Nasal place assimilation

Nasals assimilate to the place of articulation of the following consonant (even across word boundaries):
only [] precedes a velar consonant (e.g. hang [h], 'voice'), [] precedes a labiodental consonant (e.g. hamvad
[hvd], 'smoulder'), and [m] precedes bilabial consonants.
[m] before labial consonants /p b m/: sznpad [simpd] ('stage'), klnb [kylmb] ('better than'), nmagam
[emmm] ('myself');
[] before labiodental consonants /f v/: klnfle [kylfel] ('various'), hamvas [hv] ('bloomy');
[] before palatal consonants c : pinty [pic] ('finch'), ngy [a] ('wife of a close male relative'),
magnnyomoz [maomozo] ('private detective');
[] before velar consonants /k /: munka [muk] ('work'), angol [ol] ('English');

Hungarian phonology
Nasal place assimilation is obligatory within the word, but optional across a word or compound
boundary,Wikipedia:Citation needed e.g. sznpor [sempor] ~ [senpor] ('coal-dust'), nagyon kros
[nokaro] ~ [nonkaro] ('very harmful'), olyan ms [ojmma] ~ [ojnma] ('so different').

Sibilant assimilation
Voiceless sibilants form a voiceless geminate affricate with preceding alveolar and palatal stops (d [d], gy [], t [t],
ty [c]):
Clusters ending in sz [s] or c [ts] give [ts]: metszet [mtst] 'engraving, segment', tdszr [ttsr] 'for the
fifth time', ngyszer [netsr] 'four times', fttysz [fytso] 'whistle (as a signal)'; tcipel [atsipl] 's/he lugs
(something) over', ndcukor [natsukor] 'cane-sugar'.
Clusters ending in s [] or cs [t] give [t]: ktsg [kete] 'doubt', fradsg [fartsa] 'trouble', egysg
[te] 'unity', hegycscs [htut] 'mountain-top'.
Two sibilant fricatives form a geminate sibilant fricative; the assimilation is regressive as usual:
sz [s] or z [z] + s [] gives []: egszsg [eee] 'health', kzsg [ke] 'village, community';
sz [s] or z [z] + zs [] gives []: vadszzskmny [vdaakma] 'hunters game'; szraz zsmle
[sarml] 'dry bread roll';
s [] or zs [] + sz [s] gives [s]: kisszer [kisery] 'petty', rozsszalma [roslm] 'rye straw';
s [] or zs [] + z [z] gives [z]: tilos zna [tilozzon] 'restricted zone', parzs zene [prazzn] 'hot
music'.
Clusters zs+s [], s+zs [], z+sz [s] and sz+z [z] are rather the subject of the voice assimilation.
If one of the two adjacent sibilants is an affricate, the first one changes its place of articulation, e.g. malacsg
[mlta], halszcsrda [hlatard] 'Hungarian fish restaurant'. Sibilant affricate-fricative sequences like
/t/ are pronounced the same as geminate affricate [t] during normal speech.
Sibilant assimilation can be omitted in articulated speech, e.g. to avoid homophony: rozsszalma [roslm] ~
[roslm] 'rye straw' rossz szalma [rosslm] 'straw of bad quality', and rossz alma [roslm] 'apple of
bad quality' as well.
NB. Letter cluster szs can be read either as sz+s [], e.g. egszsg [ee e] 'health', or as s+zs [], e.g.
liszteszsk [listak] 'bolting-bag' depending on the actual morpheme boundary. Similarly zsz is either zs + z
[z], e.g. varzszr [vrazar] 'magic lock', or z + sz [s], e.g. hzszm [hasam] 'street-number'; and csz: cs + z
[dz] ~ c + sz [tss]. Moreover, single digraphs may prove to be two adjacent letters on morpheme boundary, like
cs: cs [t] ~ c + s [t]; sz: sz [s] ~ s + z [z], zs: zs [] ~ z + s [].

Palatal assimilation
Combination of a "palatalizable" consonant and a following palatal consonant results in a palatal geminate.
Palatalizable consonants are palatal ones and their non-palatal counterparts: gy [] ~ d [d], l [l] ~ j [j], n [n] ~ ny [],
ty [c] ~ t [t].
Full palatal assimilation occurs when the ending palatal consonant is j [j]: nagyja [n] 'most of it', adja []
's/he gives it'; tolja [toj] 's/he pushes it'; unja [u] 's/he is bored with it', hnyja [ha] 's/he throws it'; ltja
[lac] 's/he sees it', atyja [c] 'his/her father'. Cluster lyj [j] is a simple orthographic variant of jj [j]:
folyjon [fojon] 'let it flow'.
Partial assimilation takes place if an alveolar stop (d, t) is followed by palatal is gy [], ty [c]: hadgyakorlat
[hkorlt] 'army exercises', nemzetgyls [nmzyle] 'national assembly'; vadtyk [vcuk] 'wild chicken',
hat tyk [hccuk] 'six hens'.
Some sources report that alveolars stops change into their palatal counterparts before ny []: ldnyak [luk]
'neck of a goose', tnylik [aculik] 'it extends over'. The majority of the sources doesn't mention this kind of
assimilation. Maybe just palatalized allophones [d], [t] are pronounced in this position.

Hungarian phonology
When the first consonant is nasal, the partial palatal assimilation is a form of the nasal place assimilation (see
above).
The full palatal assimilation is an obligatory feature in the standard Hungarian: its omission is stigmatized and it
is considered as a hypercorrection of an undereducated person. Partial palatal assimilation is optional in
articulated speech.

Degemination
Long consonants become short when preceded or followed by another consonant, e.g. folttal [foltl] 'by/with (a)
patch', varrtam [vrtm] 'I sewed'.

Intercluster elision
The middle alveolar stops may be omitted in clusters with more than two consonants, depending on speed and
articulation of speech: azt hiszem [shism] ~ [sthism] 'I presume/guess', mindnyjan [miajn] 'one and all',
klnbsg [kylmpe] ~ [kylme] 'difference'. In morpheme onsets like str- [tr], middle stops tends to be more
stable in educated speech, falanxstratgia [flntrtei] ~ [flktrtei] ~ [flkstrtei] 'strategy based
on phalanxes'.

Elision of [l]
/l/ assimilates to [r] before /r/ (e.g. balra [brr], 'to the left').
/l/ also tends to be omitted between a preceding vowel and an adjacent stop or affricate rapid speech, causing the
lengthening of the vowel or diphthongization (e.g. volt [vot] 'was', polgr [poar] 'citizen'). This is considered
non-standard.

Hiatus
Standard Hungarian allows (prefers) hiatus between adjacent vowels. However some optional dissolving features can
be observed:
An optional weak glide [j] may be pronounced within a word (or a compound element) between two adjacent
vowels if one of them is i [i], e.g. fiaii [fiiei] ~ [fijjijeji] ('the ones of his/her sons').
Adjacent identical short vowels other than a and e may be pronounced as the corresponding long vowel, e.g.
zoolgia [zooloi] ~ [zoloi] ('zoology').
Two adjacent is are always pronounced as single short [i] in the word endings, e.g. Hawaii [hvi]. This
reduction is reflected in the current orthography when the adjective-forming suffix -i is added to a noun ending in
i. In this case suffix -i is omitted also in writing. e.g. Lenti 'a small town in SW Hungary' + -i lenti 'of Lenti'.

Stress
The stress is on the first syllable of the word. The articles a, az, egy, and the particle is are usually unstressed.

References
[1]
[2]
[3]
[4]

http:/ / en. wikipedia. org/ w/ index. php?title=Template:Hungarian_language& action=edit

Szende (http:/ / nyelveszet. btk. ppke. hu/ Tanar/ szende. html)
Short a is slightly rounded in the standard language, though some dialects exhibit an unrounded version closer to ) .
Mikls Trkenczy: Practical Hungarian Grammar. A compact guide to the basics of Hungarian Grammar. Corvina, 2002. pp. 9-12. ISBN
963-13-5131-9

[5] A magyar helyesrs szablyai. 11.kiads, 12. lenyomat. Akadmiai Kiad, 1984-2000. pp. 26-30. ISBN 963-05-7735-6
[6] http:/ / en. wikipedia. org/ wiki/ Hungarian_phonology#endnote_v

Hungarian phonology

Bibliography
Gsy, Mria (2004), Fonetika, a beszd tudomnya ('Phonetics, the Study of Speech'), Budapest: Osiris,
ISBN963-389-666-5
Rounds, Carol (2001), "Vowel harmony", Hungarian : An Essential Grammar, Routledge, ISBN9780415226127
Rounds, Carol (2009), Hungarian: An Essential Grammar (2nd ed.), New York: Routledge, ISBN0-203-88619-4
Siptr, Pter; Trkenczy, Mikls (2007), The Phonology of Hungarian, The Phonology of the World's Languages,
Oxford University Press
Szende, Tams (1994), "Illustrations of the IPA:Hungarian", Journal of the International Phonetic Alphabet 24
(2): 9194, doi: 10.1017/S0025100300005090 (http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0025100300005090)
Vago, Robert M. (1980), The Sound Pattern of Hungarian, Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press
Vago, Robert M. (1976), "Theoretical Implications of Hungarian Vowel Harmony", Linguistic Inquiry 7 (2):
24363, JSTOR 4177921 (http://www.jstor.org/stable/4177921)

External links
The Hungarian alphabet (omniglot.com) (http://www.omniglot.com/writing/hungarian.htm)

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Article Sources and Contributors

Article Sources and Contributors

Hungarian phonology Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=598052086 Contributors: Acbeltz, Adam78, Aetil, Aeusoes1, AlexanderKaras, Andonic, Astral, Barefact, Bobrani,
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Kwamikagami, Lesgles, Lfdder, LittleWink, Matthew Beta, Mk270, Moxfyre, Neko85, Nohat, Nyenyec, Ojovemlouco, Pablo-flores, Pankykapus, PigFlu Oink, RTG, Ralesk, Ross Burgess, S.
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File:Specialkeys hungarian keyboard.jpg Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Specialkeys_hungarian_keyboard.jpg License: Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 2.5
Contributors: Cserlajos, Javier Carro, Man vyi, Qorilla, Tacsipacsi, Tomchiukc
Image:Hungarian vowel chart with rounded short a.svg Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:Hungarian_vowel_chart_with_rounded_short_a.svg License: Creative
Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 Contributors: Hungarian_vowel_chart.svg: Moxfyre (talk) derivative work: Moxfyre (talk)
File:HungarianVowelHarmony.png Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=File:HungarianVowelHarmony.png License: Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0
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