Surprisingly for a language with such rich history and venerable literary traditions, the orthography of Hungarian is fairly clean and phonemic, nicely representing the modern spoken language. However, the use of the Roman alphabet is not without its problems:
Here are the consonants of Hungarian, with the current orthography in black and IPA in green:
m m | n n | ny ɳ | (ng) ŋ |
---|---|---|---|
b b | d d | gy ɟ gy ʝ | g g |
p p | t t | ty c ty ç | k k |
dz ʣ | dzs ʤ | ||
c ʦ | cs ʧ | ||
v v | z z | zs ʒ | h h |
f f | sz s | s ʃ | h x |
l l | r r | h ɦ |
As you can see, gy ty and h are pronounced in different ways, depending on the context (and even on the person). In Musa, write them as you pronounce them.
Hungarian has a very systematic vowel system. Since Hungarian displays vowel harmony, native words have either all front vowels or all back vowels. They form seven short/long pairs, with just a couple of mismatched pairs.
----- Front ----- | ----- Back ----- | |||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Spread | Round | Spread | Round | |||||
High | i ɪ | í iː | ü ʏ | ű yː | u ʊ | ú uː | ||
Mid | ( ë e) | é eː | ö ø | ő øː | o o | ó oː | ||
Low | e ɛ | á aː | a ɒ |
Hungarian words are stressed on the first syllable, with some small words left unstressed.
Now that you've learned the letters, why don't you try reading a sentence?
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Egy fecske nem csinál nyarat |
© 2002-2024 The Musa Academy | musa@musa.bet | 08nov23 |