Learn how to ask about someone's nationality
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| Sziasztok, Lívia vagyok! Hi everybody! I’m Livia. |
| Welcome to HungarianPod101.com’s “Magyar nyelvleckék három percben”. The fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn Hungarian. |
| In the last lesson, we learned how to talk about your plans. In this lesson, we are going to deal with the verb “to be” in Hungarian, van. |
| We will also discuss how to talk about your nationality. |
| When you meet a new person in Hungary, they might ask you Honnan jöttél? which literally means "Where did you come from?" |
| Honnan means “from where”. |
| The verb “to come” is jön. |
| Jöttél is the conjugated form, meaning “you came”. |
| All together it's Honnan jöttél? |
| [slowly] Honnan jöttél? |
| Answering this question is very easy! You just say your nationality and then vagyok, which means “I am.” This is that verb "van"' but in a conjugated form. |
| For example, Amerikai vagyok. |
| [slowly] Amerikai vagyok. |
| Just replace “amerikai” with your own nationality. |
| "I am German" is Német vagyok. |
| "I am Italian" is Olasz vagyok. |
| "I am Brazilian" is Brazil vagyok. |
| You can also say, “I come from...”. |
| using the verb in the question. |
| Amerikából jöttem. I’m from America. |
| To return the question you can simply say És te? which is "And you?" in an informal way. |
| If you want to be formal, instead of te, you have to use the formal pronoun, Ön. |
| És Ön? |
| Now it’s time for Livia’s tips. |
| Be careful because in Hungarian, we don’t write nationality names with a capital letter like in English! |
| In this lesson we learned how to talk about nationalities. |
| Next time, we’ll continue to study the verb van and we'll see how to use it to talk about locations. By the way, do you know how to ask someone where they are in Hungarian? I'll be waiting for you in our next Magyar nyelvleckék három percben lesson. |
| Sziasztok! |
Comments
HideHi everyone,
where are you from?
Hi Anneke!
That's a great question! 😊 In Hungarian, the names of nationalities can have different endings. For example, "amerikai" (American) ends with "-i," while "brazil" (Brazilian) does not change. This is because the suffix "-i" is used for certain nationalities to indicate origin or nationality, but not all nationalities follow the same pattern. It's one of those unique aspects of Hungarian grammar!
If you have any more questions, feel free to let us know.
Köszönjük! (Thank you!)
Team HungarianPod101.com
Hi Why is it amerikai and not brazili etc?