Hungarian alphabet

For the non-Latin script descended from Old Turkic, see Old Hungarian script.

Hungarian language
Closeup view of a Hungarian keyboard
Alphabet
ő ű 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 names Tongue-twisters
Hungarian and English
Hungarian pronunciation of English English words from Hungarian
Regulatory body

The Hungarian alphabet is an extension of the Latin alphabet used for writing the Hungarian language.

One sometimes speaks of the smaller and greater Hungarian alphabets, depending on whether or not the letters Q, W, X, Y are listed, which can only be found in foreign words and traditional orthography of names. The 44 letters of the greater Hungarian alphabet are:

A

Á

B

C

Cs

D

Dz

Dzs

E

É

F

G

Gy

H

I

Í

J

K

L

Ly

M

N

Ny

O

Ó

Ö

Ő

P

(Q)

R

S

Sz

T

Ty

U

Ú

Ü

Ű

V

(W)

(X)

(Y)

Z

Zs

Description

Each sign shown above counts as a letter in its own right in Hungarian. Some, such as the letter ó and ő, are inter-filed with the letter preceding it; whereas others, such as ö, have their own place in collation rather than also being inter-filed with o.

While long vowels count as different letters, long (or geminate) consonants do not. Long consonants are marked by duplication: e.g. <tt>, <gg>, <zz> (ette 'he ate (det.obj.)', függ 'it hangs', azzal 'with that'). For the di- and tri-graphs a simplification rule normally applies (but not when the compound is split at the end of a line of text due to hyphenation): only the first letter is duplicated: e.g. <sz>+<sz>→<ssz> (asszony 'woman'), <ty>+<ty>→<tty> (hattyú 'swan'), <dzs>+<dzs>→<ddzs> (briddzsel 'with bridge (card game)').
An exception is made at the joining points of compound words, for example: jegygyűrű 'engagement ring' (jegy + gyűrű) not *jeggyűrű.

Pronunciation

Further information: Hungarian phonology

Hungarian orthography's principles include being phonemic along with being traditional, etymological and simplifying. Therefore most words can be read out correctly, if one knows the pronunciation of the letters.

The pronunciation of Hungarian letters which follows is that of standard Hungarian.

Letter	Name	Phoneme (IPA)	Complementary allophones (IPA)	Close to	Notes
A	a	/ɒ/		bod, call	[ɑ̝̹] might describe it better (raised, more rounded; sign rendered probably incorrectly, containing two diacritical marks below). Still definitely not [ɔ]
Á	á	/aː/		an extended cat, bad
B	bé	/b/		as by, absence etc.
C	cé	/ts/		like tsunami
Cs	csé	/tʃ/		as check,cheek, etching etc.
D	dé	/d/		deck, wide etc.
Dz	dzé	/dz/		like in kids	does not occur at the beginning of words. When neither post- nor preconsonantic, always realised as a geminate.
Dzs	dzsé	/dʒ/		jam, George, bridge, edge, fridge	when final or intervocalic, usually realised as a geminate: maharadzsa /mɑhɑrɑdʒɑ/ [mɑhɑrɑd͡ʒːɑ] 'maharajah', bridzs /bridʒ/ [brid͡ʒː] 'bridge (card game)', but dzsungel /dʒuŋɡɛl/ [d͡ʒuŋɡɛl] 'jungle', fridzsider /fridʒidɛr/ [frid͡ʒidɛr] coll. 'refrigerator'
E	e	/ɛ/		like less, cheque, edge, bed	about 40-50% of speakers also have a phoneme /e/ (see below at Ë). /e/ is not considered part of standard Hungarian, wherein /ɛ/ or /æ/ takes the place of /e/.
(Ë)	ë	/e/		like in "same", without the /ɪ/ part of the diphthong /eɪ/	Although not part of the alphabet, this symbol is sometimes used to denote the phoneme /e/, e.g. when noting down texts spoken or sung in a dialect where this sound is present.
É	é	/eː/		café, hey
F	ef	/f/		find, euphoria
G	gé	/ɡ/		get, leg, go etc.
Gy	gyé	/ɟ/		(not used in English) similar to: duke, dew, due (British, not American, pronunciation)	denoting /ɟ/ by <gy> is a remnant of (probably) Italian scribes who tried to render the Hungarian sound. <dy> would be a more consistent notation in scope of <ty>, <ny>, <ly> (see there), as the <y> part of digraphs show palatalisation in the Hungarian writing system.
H	há	/h/	1. [ɦ]  2. ∅ 3. [x]  4. [ç]	Basic: hi 1. behind 2. <mute> 3. Loch, Chanukah 4. human	1. when in intervocalic position. 2. not rendered usually when in final position méh /meː/ 'bee', cseh /tʃɛ/ 'Czech (noun/adj.)' 3. seldom in final position, such as in doh 'dampness', MÉH 'metal recycling facility' 4. seldom, such as in ihlet 'inspiration'
I	i	/i/		thick, thin	Pronounced the same as Í, only shorter
Í	í	/iː/		lead, leave, seed, sea	Vowel length is phonemically distinctive in Hungarian: irt 'he eradicates' ∼ írt 'he wrote'
J	jé	/j/	[ç], [ʝ]	you, yes, faith	allophones occur when /j/ occurs after a consonant; (voiceless after voiceless, voiced after voiced consonants). e.g. férj 'husband', kapj 'get! (imperative)'
K	ká	/k/		key, kiss, weak
L	el	/l/		leave, list
Ly	ely, el ipszilon	/j/		hey, ray	Orthographic tradition. Once /ʎ/, now /j/ in standard Hungarian.
M	em	/m/		mind, assume, might,
N	en	/n/	[ŋ]  [n]	thing, lying (before k,g), need, bone (anywhere else)	allophone before /k/, /ɡ/
Ny	eny	/ɲ/		new (in BE, not AE) niño/niña (Spanish)
O	o	/o/		force, sorcerer	A shorter, more open variant of Ó
Ó	ó	/oː/		go, sew, snow	minimal pair to /o/: kor 'age' ∼ kór 'disease'
Ö	ö	/ø/		(Not used in English; corresponds to German Ö) similar to: Bird, Third, Heard	A shorter, more open variant of Ő
Ő	ő	/øː/		(Not used in English; a longer, more closed variant of Ö)	Minimal pair to /ø/: öt 'five' ∼ őt 'him/her (Hungarian pronouns do not specify gender)'
P	pé	/p/		peas, apricot, hope
(Q)	kú				Q occurs only as part of the digraph qu in foreign words, realised as /kv/: Aquincum [ɑkviŋkum] (name of an old Roman settlement on the area of present-day Óbuda). Words originally spelled with qu are today usually spelled with kv, as in akvarell 'watercolor painting'.
R	er	/r/		(not used in BE, pronounced like Spanish R or like the t and tt in AE water and butter)	also called apical trill as pronounced by trilling the tip of your tongue (the apex) and not the uvula.
S	es	/ʃ/		share, wish, shout	This notation is unusual for European writing systems where <s> stands for /s/ virtually everywhere. In Hungarian, /s/ is represented by <sz>.
Sz	esz	/s/		say, estimate
T	té	/t/		tell, least, feast
Ty	tyé	/c/		(not used in English) similar to: stew, Stuart (BE RP)
U	u	/u/		rude
Ú	ú	/uː/		do, fool	minimal pair to /u/: hurok 'loop' ∼ húrok 'cords'
Ü	ü	/y/		(not used in English, corresponds to German Ü)	A shorter, more open variant of ű
Ű	ű	/yː/		(not used in English)
V	vé	/v/		very, every
(W)	dupla vé	/v/		view, evolve, vacuum	only occurs only in foreign words and in Hungarian aristocratic surnames
(X)	iksz				occurs only in loanwords, and there only when denoting /ks/; [ɡz] is transcribed: extra, Alexandra, but egzakt 'exact'.
(Y)	ipszilon	/i/			in loanwords, usually rendered as /i/ or /j/. Occurs very often in old Hungarian aristocratic surnames where it stands for /i/ or /ʲi/: 'Báthory' [baːtori], 'Batthyány' [bɑcːaːɲi] or [bɑcːaːni] (<n>+<y> ∼ /n/+/ʲi/ ∼ /nʲi/ ∼ /ɲi/)
Z	zé	/z/		desert, roses
Zs	zsé	/ʒ/		pleasure, leisure, genre

Historic spellings used in names

Old spellings used in some Hungarian names and their modern correspondents include the following:

Consonants

Historic spelling	Pronounced like modern spelling
ch	cs
ts	cs
cz	c
th	t

Vowels

Historic spelling	Pronounced like modern spelling
aa	á
eé	é
eö	ö
ew	ö
oó	ó
(l)y	(l)i
(n)y	(ny)i

Examples:

Name	Pronounced as if spelled
Madách	Madács
Széchenyi	Szécsényi
Batthyány	Battyányi
Thököly	Tököli
Weöres	Vörös
Eötvös	Ötvös
Cházár	Császár
Czukor	Cukor
Gaál	Gál
Veér	Vér
Soós	Sós
Thewrewk	Török

An extreme example is the name Dessewffy, which is pronounced as if spelled Dezsőfi.

Capitalisation

The di- and the trigraphs are capitalised in names and at the beginning of sentences by capitalising the first glyph of them only.

• Csak jót mondhatunk Székely Csabáról.

In abbreviations and when writing with all capital letters, however, one capitalises the second (and third) character as well.

Thus ("The Rules of Hungarian Orthography", a book edited by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences):

• A magyar helyesírás szabályai
• MHSZ (not *MHSz)
• A MAGYAR HELYESÍRÁS SZABÁLYAI (not *SzABÁLyAI)

Alphabetical ordering (collation)

While the characters with diacritical marks are considered separate letters, vowels that differ only in length are treated the same when ordering words. Therefore, for example, the pairs O/Ó and Ö/Ő are not distinguished in ordering, but Ö follows O.

The polygraphic consonant signs are treated as single letters.

comb
cukor
csak	<cs> comes after <c>
...
folyik
folyó	<ó> is sorted as <o>
folyosó
...
fő	and <ő> is sorted as <ö>,
födém	but <ö> comes after <o>
...

The simplified geminates of multigraphs (see above) such as <nny>, <ssz> are collated as <ny>+<ny>, <sz>+<sz> etc., if they are double geminates, rather than co-occurrences of a single letter and a geminate.

könnyű is collated as <k><ö><ny><ny><ű>. tizennyolc of course as <t><i><z><e><n><ny><o><l><c>, as this is a compound: tizen+nyolc ('above ten' + 'eight' = 'eighteen').

Similar 'ambiguities', which can occur with compounds (which are highly common in Hungarian) are dissolved and collated by sense.

e.g. házszám 'house number (address)' = ház + szám and of course not *házs + *zám.

These rules make Hungarian alphabetic ordering algorithmically difficult (one has to know the correct segmentation of a word to sort it correctly), was a problem for computer software development. The program called Hunspell is a good spell checker, designed specifically for the Hungarian language.

Keyboard layout

The Hungarian keyboard layout is German-based (QWERTZ). This layout allows direct access to every character in the Hungarian alphabet.

Hungarian keyboard layout

The letter "Í" is often placed left of the space key, leaving the width of the left Shift key intact.

Letter frequencies

The most common letters in Hungarian are e and a. The list below shows the letter frequencies for more letters in order of descending frequency.

Letter	Frequency
e	12.256%
a	9.428%
t	7.380%
n	6.445%
l	6.383%
s	5.322%
k	4.522%
é	4.511%
i	4.200%
m	4.054%
o	3.867%
á	3.649%
g	2.838%
r	2.807%
z	2.734%
v	2.453%
b	2.058%
d	2.037%
sz	1.809%
j	1.570%
h	1.341%
gy	1.185%
ő	0.884%
ö	0.821%
ny	0.790%
ly	0.738%
ü	0.655%
ó	0.634%
f	0.582%
p	0.509%
í	0.499%
u	0.416%
cs	0.260%
ű	0.125%
c	0.114%
ú	0.104%
zs	0.021%

See also

• ISO/IEC 8859-2
• Latin-derived alphabet

External links

• X-SAMPA for Hungarian