# Hungarian language/Alphabet

See also the corresponding artice on Wikipedia.

## The alphabet

| letter | 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 | r | s | sz | t | ty | u | ú | ü | ű | v | z | zs |
| name | a | á | bé | cé | csé | dé | dzé | dzsé | e | é | ef | gé | gyé | há | i | í | jé | ká | el | ely | em | en | eny | o | ó | ö | ő | pé | er | es | esz | té | tyé | u | ú | ü | ű | vé | zé | zsé |

### Digraphs

    Some consonants look like two (or three) English symbols and represent a single Hungarian letter.

### Long vs. short

    The alphabet lists all the short and long vowels, but not the long consonants. Nonetheless each letter has a long variant, which alters the meaning of the word. Long vowels are indicated by acute (ˊ) or double acute (˝) -- the only diacritic in Hungarian. Long simple consonants are written doubled (fusson); long digraph consonants have only their first letter doubled (messze). Thus, long digraphs are written as followed:
       ccs (=cs+cs), ddz (=dz+dz), ddzs (=dzs+dzs), ggy (=gy+gy), lly (=ly+ly), nny (=ny+ny), ssz (=sz+sz), tty (=ty+ty), zzs (=zs+zs)
    unless they are cut from each other at the end of the line, in which case they are written separately (vissza → visz-sza). It may happen that two identical digraph consonants meet in a compound word on the roots' boundary, but from grammatical view that is not a long consonant and is written accordingly (lánynyak).

### Foreign letters

    Note that there are no q, w and x letters in the (official) Hungarian alphabet because they do not occur in native Hungarian words. Also there is no y letter on its own, but it occurs in digraphs gy, ly, ny and ty. In exceptional cases, unusual letters may occur in Hungarian words, such as the x in Xénia (name), or ch in pech (=hard luck) being a single letter pronounced as in German. Other similar words, such as szex (=sexuality, sexual intercourse), are widely spread and used, but they eventually have their own translation without foreign letters.

### Sorting

    When sorting words alphabetically, diacritic is not taken into account, unless it is the only difference between the two words, in which case the acute comes later. For example: kád, kar, kár, kor, kór, kos, kör are alphabetically sorted. Long consonants are treated like two short ones, and digraphs are taken into account. For example: egzotikus, egyéb, lócukor, loccsan, locsog are alphabetically sorted. Note that distinct consonants may accidentally look (and may or may not sound) like digraphs, but those are treated as separate letters when sorting.

## Pronunciation
### Vowels

| short | short | short | long | long | long |
| a | ɒ | like a in car but shorter | á | aː | like a in the German "guten Tag" |
| e | ɛ | like a in man | é | eː | like é in the French enchanté but longer |
| i | i | like i in gift | í | iː | like ea in please |
| o | o | like o in no | ó | oː | like oo in door |
| ö | ø | like eu in the French bleu | ő | øː | like ö in the German schön |
| u | u | like u in put | ú | uː | like oo in cool |
| ü | y | like ü in the German über | ű | yː | like üh in the German Führer |
The pronunciation of a vs. á and e vs. é noticeably differ from each other, while the others only differ in duration.
Vowels in groups like ie, eu etc. are always pronounced independently.

### Consonants

Simple consonants :
| b | like b in bed |
| c | like ts in tsunami (except for cs) |
| d | like d in door (except for dz, dzs) |
| f | like f in finger |
| g | like g in guitar (except for gy) |
| h | like h in how; may be silent at the end of some words |
| j | like y in you |
| k | like c in cat |
| l | like l in let (except for ly) |
| m | like m in man |
| n | like n in need (except for ny) |
| p | like p in pet |
| r | like r in the German rot |
| s | like s in sugar (except for cs, sz, zs, dzs) |
| t | like t in tow (except for ty) |
| v | like v in Vienna |
| z | like z in zero (except for dz, dzs, sz, zs) |
Digraphs :
| cs | like ch in child |
| dz | like dz in adze |
| dzs | like j in juice |
| gy | like dj in adjust |
| ly | like y in you (exactly as for j) |
| ny | like n in news |
| sz | like s in sit |
| ty | like t in Tuesday |
| zs | like s in visual |
The letters j and ly are pronounced exactly the same. The latter is less common. There is no general rule by which the spelling of an unknown word containing j or ly could be deduced.
It is not unusual that a simple consonant is accidentally followed by such a digraph that it looks like a long digraph (meggyón, vasszeg). In that case the pronunciation may and may not be affected.

### Stress

Primary stress is always on the first syllable of a word. Elongated vowels in non-initial syllables can also seem to be stressed to the ear of an English speaker, since length and stress correlate in English.

## Footnotes

* ↑ The Slovak language, for example, has two long consonants ĺ and ŕ and the alphabet explicitly lists them.
* ↑ I believe that the number of generally accepted words containing x is comparable to the number of words containing dz or dzs.
* ↑ Even though I've seen a dictionary which took kör before kos.
* ↑ I took ɛ from phonetic transcriptions on Wikipedia and Wiktionary. It is important to notice that the e/é from Slavic languages and the Spanish and Italian e (which are sometimes noted ɛ too) are clearly between the Hungarian short e and long é.