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: 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
when sorting words alphabetically, 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 consonants do not. Long
consonants are marked by duplication: e.g. , , ', függ 'it hangs', azzal 'with
that'). For the di- and tri-graphs a simplification rule normally applies:
only the first letter is duplicated: e.g. +→, +→, +→').
An exception is made at the joining points of compound words, for example:
jegygyűrű 'engagement ring' not *jeggyűrű.
Pronunciation Hungarian orthography generally follows
the phonemic principle: most words can be read out correctly if one knows the
pronunciation of the letters. However, there are also traditional, etymological
and simplifying principles to the orthography which cause some deviations
from an exact correspondence between spelling and sound.
The pronunciation given for the following Hungarian letters is that of
standard Hungarian. The letter ë is not part of the
Hungarian alphabet; however, linguists use this letter to distinguish between
the two kinds of short e sounds of some dialects. This letter was first used in
1770 by György Kalmár, but has never officially been part of the Hungarian
alphabet, as the standard Hungarian language does not distinguish between
these two sounds. However, the ë sound is pronounced differently from the e
sound in 6 out of the 10 Hungarian dialects and the sound is pronounced as
ö in 1 dialect. The digraph ch also exists in some words
and is pronounced the same as h. In names, it is pronounced like cs.
^ In Northern Hungary, Ä was traditionally used instead of Á because
of the accent. ^ List of complementary allophone
variants possibly not complete. = Historic spellings used in names =
Old spellings used in some Hungarian names and their corresponding
pronunciation according to modern spelling include the following:
Generally, y in historic spellings of names formed with the -i affix can exist
after many other letters. Here are listed only examples which can be easily
misread because of such spelling. Examples:
= Historic spellings of article and conjunctions =
In early editions the article a/az was written according to the following
rules: ° before vowels and h — az: az ember, az
híd; ° before consonants — a’: a’ csillag.
The abbreviated form of the conjunction és, which is always written today as s,
was likely to be written with an apostrophe before — ’s.
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 character as well.
Thus: A magyar helyesírás szabályai
MHSZ A MAGYAR HELYESÍRÁS SZABÁLYAI
Alphabetical ordering 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. In cases
where two words are differentiated solely by the presence of an accent, the
one without the accent is put before the other one.
The polygraphic consonant signs are treated as single letters.
The simplified geminates of multigraphs such as , are collated as +, + etc., if
they are double geminates, rather than co-occurrences of a single letter and a
geminate. könnyű is collated as . tizennyolc of
course as , as this is a compound: tizen+nyolc.
Similar 'ambiguities', which can occur with compounds are dissolved and
collated by sense. e.g. házszám 'house number' = ház + szám
and of course not *házs + *zám. These rules make Hungarian alphabetic
ordering algorithmically difficult, which was a problem for computer
software development. Keyboard layout
The standard Hungarian keyboard layout is German-based. This layout allows
direct access to every character in the Hungarian alphabet.
The letter "Í" is often placed left of the space key, leaving the width of the
left Shift key intact. "Ű" may be located to the left of Backspace, making
that key smaller, but allowing for a larger Enter key. Ű being close to Enter
often leads to it being typed instead of hitting Enter, especially when one has
just switched from a keyboard that has Ű next to backspace.ű
Letter frequencies The most common letters in Hungarian are
e and a. The list below shows the letter frequencies for the smaller Hungarian
alphabet in descending order. See also
Hungarian orthography Hungarian braille
Hungarian phonology ISO/IEC 8859-2
References External links
X-SAMPA for Hungarian