Learn about Hungarian sentence structure
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| Michael: How are sentences structured in Hungarian? |
| Krisztina: And are the rules rigid? |
| Michael: At HungarianPod101.com, we hear these questions often. In the following situation, Ben Lee, a foreign-exchange student, thinks he sees a famous Hungarian singer as he's walking with a friend in central Budapest. He gestures to his friend, Sara Simon, |
| "I know him, it's Joci Pápai." |
| Ben Lee: Őt ismerem, ő Pápai Joci. |
| Dialogue |
| Ben Lee: Őt ismerem, ő Pápai Joci. |
| Simon Sára: Őt én is. |
| Michael: Once more with the English translation. |
| Ben Lee: Őt ismerem, ő Pápai Joci. |
| Michael: "I know him, it's Joci Pápai." |
| Simon Sára: Őt én is. |
| Michael: "I know him too." |
Lesson focus |
|---|
| Michael: In this lesson, we will talk about how sentences are structured in Hungarian and how strict the rules are around sentence structure. |
| Let's start answering these questions by looking at the dialogue you just heard. |
| [Recall 1] |
| Michael: Do you remember how Ben Lee says "I know him, it's Joci Pápai?" |
| (pause 4 seconds) |
| Krisztina as Ben Lee: Őt ismerem, ő Pápai Joci. |
| Michael: which means "I know him, it's Joci Pápai." However, the Hungarian word order is "Him I know, it's Joci Pápai." As you can hear, Ben has placed the object first and the verb second. What's interesting about this is that Hungarian is actually like English in that it uses the S-V-O, or Subject-Verb-Object, pattern to construct sentences. Ben could change the word order the way he did because, while Hungarian follows the S-V-O pattern, the word order is not strict. Word order is pretty flexible in Hungarian. |
| Don't think that this means that word order is not important though. It might be flexible, but changing the word order in Hungarian has a specific purpose. Usually, it changes the focus of the sentence. This is why it's a good idea to know what you are doing. You can't just randomly change the order. |
| So, how do we know what word order to use? Well, when it comes to sentence structure, there are several rules that are followed. The first rule we'll talk about has to do with prioritizing the word you want to emphasize. In English, if you want to emphasize a particular word or part of a sentence, you have to write in italics or capitals if you are writing, or change your tone if you are speaking. This is not the case in Hungarian. If you want to emphasize a word, you should put it at the beginning of the sentence and before the finite verb. The most important part of this rule is that the word you want to emphasize must come before the verb. There are times when it can't be at the beginning of the sentence, but that's okay. The most important thing is that the emphasized word comes before the verb. This is what Ben did in the dialogue. He placed the word |
| Krisztina: őt |
| Michael: which means "him" before the verb, which is |
| Krisztina: ismerem |
| Michael: and means "I know." The pronoun "I" or |
| Krisztina: én |
| Michael: in this sentence is implied by the conjugation of the verb. Ben was very excited to see a celebrity and that is why he put the object first in the sentence. He wanted to draw attention to it immediately and to emphasize it. If he had only seen a poster, or had simply been talking about the celebrity, then it is very likely he would not have put the object first and the sentence would have sounded like this: |
| Krisztina: Ismerem őt, ő Pápai Joci. |
| Michael: Spoken like this, it follows the same structure as standard English would: "I know him, it's Joci Pápai." Sára's reply is interesting too because there is no verb in it at all. |
| [Recall 2] |
| Michael: She is saying, "I know him too." |
| (pause 4 seconds) |
| Krisztina as Simon Sára: Őt én is, |
| Michael: which translates directly to "Him me too." If you've listened to our ninth episode, then you will know that this is sometimes possible when the context is enough to tell us that the person is still on the same subject. |
| And now, after that interesting aside, let's get back to the topic of emphasis by looking at some more examples. This sentence, for instance, means "John [EMPHASIS on "John"] sees Lili." |
| Krisztina: John látja Lilit. |
| Michael: In other words, it is not someone else who sees Lili, it is John. Now, let's see what happens if we want to place the emphasis on who John sees. |
| Krisztina: Lilit látja John. |
| Michael: The emphasis in this sentence is on Lili because the word "Lili" is at the beginning of the sentence and is placed before the finite verb. The meaning is that it is Lili, and not someone else, who is being seen by John. Now, I'm sure some of you are asking yourselves, "But what if I want to place emphasis on the verb itself?" Well, the answer is simple: put the verb at the beginning of the sentence. Listen: |
| Krisztina: Látja John Lilit. |
| Michael: Here, with the emphasis on the verb, the meaning of the sentence is that John sees [EMPHASIS on "sees"] Lili; he doesn't hear her, for instance. Now, let's consider a sentence with a bit more information. Although this sounds a bit unnatural in Hungarian, it still makes sense if you say it. |
| Here, we will find out that John sees her in the garden and, by implication, not elsewhere. In order to achieve this in Hungarian, we will need to emphasize the phrase "in the garden," which is |
| Krisztina: a kertben |
| Michael: Now, listen to the sentence: |
| Krisztina: John a kertben látja Lilit. |
| Michael: As I said, this sentence emphasizes the fact that John sees her in the garden and not elsewhere, like the house, for instance. What you might have noticed about this sentence is that the emphasized word was not at the beginning of the sentence. As I've mentioned before, the most important rule is that the word you want to emphasize should be placed directly before the finite verb. It's great if it's also at the beginning of the sentence, but sometimes this is just not possible. |
| Now, let's move on to another rule which is that, if you want to make a negative or negating sentence, the negative word needs to be placed at the beginning of the sentence and directly preceding the word it is negating. |
| A typical negative word in Hungarian is |
| Krisztina: nem |
| Michael: and it basically means "no" or "not." Let's stick with the characters we were introduced to earlier and make a negative sentence this time. This sentence means "I don't see Lili:" |
| Krisztina: Nem látom Lilit. |
| Michael: As you can hear, the negative word has been placed before the verb "to see" in order to negate it. Now what if we wanted to say, "It's not Lili that I see?" Yes, you guessed it. We would have to place the negative word at the beginning of the sentence as we did before, but this time it would have to be before Lili's name. Like so: |
| Krisztina: Nem Lilit látom. |
| Michael: Pretty simple, right? Remember, in order to form a negative sentence, all you have to do is put the negative word at the beginning of the sentence, directly preceding the word you want to negate. |
| Now, let's look at question sentences. You will be pleased to hear, I'm sure, that a similar rule to the one you already know is applied to questions. When making questions, the question word comes first in the sentence. Let's look at the question: "Who does Lili see?" In Hungarian, it would sound like this: |
| Krisztina: Kit lát Lili? |
| Michael: As you can hear, the question word is at the beginning of the sentence. That being said, if you want to put the emphasis on the subject, "Lili," you can put it at the beginning of the sentence, like this: |
| Krisztina: Lili kit lát? |
| Michael: With all these different ways of ordering words in a Hungarian sentence, the most important thing to remember is that the verb is the key to it all. Put something before the verb if you want to emphasize it. |
| [Summary] |
| Michael: Thus far, in this lesson, you learned that Hungarian sentence structure is flexible, but not random. It is flexible so that speakers and writers can choose what to emphasize in the sentence. The emphasized part of the sentence is always placed before the verb and often at the beginning of the sentence. Negative words and question words almost always come at the beginning of the sentence unless the speaker or writer chooses to emphasize another part of the sentence. |
| Expansion/Contrast |
| Michael: Where pronouns are placed in Hungarian sentences is an interesting issue. Pronouns are usually implied by the way the verb is conjugated so, for the most part, if you are in doubt, then don't add the nominative pronoun. Just in case you are not sure what I mean by "nominative pronoun," a nominative pronoun is one that is the subject of the sentence. Usually, we only include the nominative pronoun when we want to emphasize it. This might be in reply to a greeting, for instance. Let's imagine someone greets you by saying |
| Krisztina: Hogy vagy? |
| Michael: This translates to "How are you?" in English, but the Hungarian sentence does not contain the pronoun "you." It is implied and is obvious from the conjugated form of the verb "to be." However, one might want to add the pronoun when replying to the question we've just heard. Have a listen: |
| Krisztina: Te hogy vagy? |
| Michael: This time, you can hear the pronoun |
| Krisztina: te. |
| Michael: Here's another example of when one might want to include the pronoun. In this first sentence, there is no pronoun: |
| Krisztina: Itt ülök. |
| Michael: It means, "I sit / I am sitting here," but, of course, the pronoun "I" has been excluded since it is obvious from the conjugated form of the verb "to sit." However, if one wants to say something like, "It is me who is sitting here and not someone else," you can add the pronoun, like so: |
| Krisztina: Én ülök itt. |
| Michael: The pronoun in this case being |
| Krisztina: én |
| Michael: In this case, the speaker wanted to emphasize the pronoun, hence placing it right at the beginning of the sentence. |
| Practice Section |
| Michael: Let's review. Respond to the prompts by speaking aloud. Then, repeat after the native speaker focusing on pronunciation. |
| Do you remember how Ben Lee says "I know him, it's Joci Pápai?" |
| [Beep. Pause 5 seconds.] |
| Krisztina as Ben Lee: Őt ismerem, ő Pápai Joci. |
| Michael: Listen again and repeat. |
| Krisztina as Ben Lee: Őt ismerem, ő Pápai Joci. |
| [Beep. Pause 5 seconds.] |
| Krisztina as Ben Lee: Őt ismerem, ő Pápai Joci. |
| Michael: And do you remember how Sara Simon says "I know him too?" |
| [Beep. Pause 5 seconds.] |
| Krisztina as Simon Sára: Őt én is. |
| Michael: Listen again and repeat. |
| Krisztina as Simon Sára: Őt én is. |
| [Beep. Pause 5 seconds.] |
| Krisztina as Simon Sára: Őt én is. |
| Cultural Insight/Expansion |
| Michael: A simple way to think of Hungarian sentence structure is to think of each sentence as being composed of a topic and a predicate. The topic is the main idea of the sentence, the thing we are talking about, while the predicate is everything else. Often, the topic is information that is already known while the predicate will consist of new information. Hungarian is, to put it simply, a "topic-first" language. What this means is that the important stuff is put at the beginning of the sentence and before the verb. Everything that comes at the end of the sentence and after the verb is less important and, interestingly, on that side of the verb, the word order can be almost random. |
| English does this as well, but to a lesser extent by far. Consider the sentence, "I went to the shop this morning," and then compare it with "This morning I went to the shop." In each sentence, the important part is at the beginning. |
Outro |
| Michael: Do you have any more questions? We're here to answer them! |
| Krisztina: Viszontlátásra! |
| Michael: See you soon! |
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