How many letters the Hungarian alphabet has: 40 in the official alphabet, 44 once q, w, x and y are counted in. Full letter table with pronunciation, the eight digraphs and the trigraph dzs, the seven long vowel pairs and first-syllable stress.
Can say how many letters the Hungarian alphabet has and why, name every letter, and read Hungarian words aloud with the right digraph sounds, vowel length and first-syllable stress.
Look at these examples. Can you spot the grammar pattern?
Szegeden a halászlé csípős, Debrecenben a kolbász füstölt.
In Szeged the fish soup is spicy, in Debrecen the sausage is smoked.
Nyáron a Balatonnál lángost eszünk, télen kürtőskalácsot a vásárban.
In summer we eat lángos at Lake Balaton, in winter kürtőskalács at the market.
Puskás Ferenc a legnagyobb magyar futballista volt.
Ferenc Puskás was the greatest Hungarian footballer.
Az edző bodzaszörpöt ivott, a gyerekek dzsemet ettek.
The coach drank elderflower cordial, the children ate jam.
Pay attention to the highlighted parts. What do they have in common?
The Hungarian alphabet has 40 letters. Count in q, w, x and y, which survive only in loanwords and in old family names, and you get the 44-letter extended alphabet. Both numbers are right, and the difference between them is exactly those four letters: the Academy's orthography lists the 40 in rule 10 and then, in rule 11, shows where q, w, x and y are slotted into the sequence.
Of the 40, thirty-one are written with a single character, eight are digraphs (cs, dz, gy, ly, ny, sz, ty, zs) and one, dzs, is a trigraph. Counted by sound that is 14 vowels and 26 consonants. A digraph here is one letter, not a cluster of two, and Hungarians treat it that way: in a dictionary every c word comes before the first cs word, and the surname Szabó is filed after Sándor, because s and sz sit in separate blocks.
The alphabet in its official order. An asterisk marks the four letters that belong only to the 44-letter set:
| Letter | IPA | Sounds like | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| a | [ɒ] | short 'a' with rounded lips, like British hot | alma (apple) |
| á | [aː] | long open 'a', like father | Árpád (Prince Árpád) |
| b | [b] | as in bed | Buda (Buda) |
| c | [ts] | 'ts' in cats, never 'k' | cukor (sugar) |
| cs | [tʃ] | 'ch' in church | csárda (roadside inn) |
| d | [d] | as in door, never softened | Duna (the Danube) |
| dz | [dz] | 'ds' in kids | bodza (elderberry) |
| dzs | [dʒ] | 'j' in jam | dzsem (jam) |
| e | [ɛ] | open 'e' in bed | eper (strawberry) |
| é | [eː] | long close 'e', no glide at the end | édes (sweet) |
| f | [f] | as in fish | fürdő (thermal bath) |
| g | [ɡ] | hard 'g' in go | gulyás (goulash) |
| gy | [ɟ] | soft 'd', close to British due | magyar (Hungarian) |
| h | [h] | as in house | Hortobágy (the Hortobágy puszta) |
| i | [i] | short 'ee' | igen (yes) |
| í | [iː] | long 'ee' | ír (writes) |
| j | [j] | 'y' in yes | jó (good) |
| k | [k] | as in sky, no puff of air | kürtőskalács (chimney cake) |
| l | [l] | clear 'l', never dark | lángos (fried flatbread) |
| ly | [j] | identical to j | gulyás (goulash) |
| m | [m] | as in map | Mátyás (King Matthias) |
| n | [n] | as in net | nap (sun, day) |
| ny | [ɲ] | 'ny' in canyon | nyár (summer) |
| o | [o] | short close 'o' | ország (country) |
| ó | [oː] | long 'o' | óra (hour, clock) |
| ö | [ø] | German ö | öt (five) |
| ő | [øː] | long ö | őz (roe deer) |
| p | [p] | as in spin, no puff of air | paprika (paprika) |
| q * | [kv] | loanwords and place names only | Aquincum (Roman Óbuda) |
| r | [r] | tapped or rolled | Rubik (Ernő Rubik) |
| s | [ʃ] | 'sh' in ship | sör (beer) |
| sz | [s] | 's' in sun | Szeged (Szeged) |
| t | [t] | as in stop, no puff of air | tokaji (Tokaj wine) |
| ty | [c] | soft 't', close to British tune | tyúk (hen) |
| u | [u] | short 'oo' | utca (street) |
| ú | [uː] | long 'oo' | út (road) |
| ü | [y] | German ü | ünnep (holiday) |
| ű | [yː] | long ü | űr (outer space) |
| v | [v] | as in van | víz (water) |
| w * | [v] | old family names only | Wesselényi (a noble family) |
| x * | [ks] | loanwords only | taxi (taxi) |
| y * | [i] | on its own only in old surnames, and as the second half of gy, ly, ny, ty | Ady (the poet Endre Ady) |
| z | [z] | as in zoo | zene (music) |
| zs | [ʒ] | 's' in measure | Zsolnay (the Pécs porcelain works) |
The mark on á, é, í, ó, ő, ú and ű has nothing to do with emphasis. It marks a separate letter with a separate sound: the vowel is held roughly twice as long, and that length alone can change the word.
| Short | Long |
|---|---|
| agy (brain) | ágy (bed) |
| kor (era, age) | kór (disease) |
| örül (is glad) | őrül (goes mad) |
| tör (breaks) | tőr (dagger) |
Note that a and á differ in quality as well as length: a is a short rounded [ɒ], á a long unrounded [aː]. The pairs ö/ő and ü/ű are the German ö and ü in short and long versions.
Every Hungarian word is stressed on syllable one, wherever the long vowels fall: BA-la-ton, PÁ-lin-ka, GU-lyás, KÜR-tős-ka-lács. Tanár (teacher) is the classic trap: the stress stays on the short first syllable even though the long á is in the second.
Letters that look like a digraph can also meet across a morpheme boundary. In egészség (health) the z and the s belong to different parts of the word (egész plus ség), so this is not the letter zs. The toast Egészségedre! is the easiest way to remember it, ideally over a glass of pálinka.
A long digraph doubles only its first character: asszony (woman), meggy (sour cherry), annyi (that much). The full digraph is written twice only where two words meet, as in jegygyűrű (wedding ring).
Apply this grammar in A1 course exercises
Practice ExercisesCounting the letters wrong because the digraphs get split: cs, dz, gy, ly, ny, sz, ty, zs and the trigraph dzs are single letters, which is why the total is 40 rather than 26 plus accents. Reading s as [s] and sz as [ʃ], the wrong way round. Treating the accents as stress marks and shortening the vowel, which turns ágy (bed) into agy (brain). Moving the stress off the first syllable in words like tanár. Reading ly as an English 'ly' cluster in gulyás.
Pronouncing 's' as [s] instead of [ʃ], or 'sz' as [ʃ] instead of [s]
In Hungarian: s = [ʃ] (like English 'sh'), sz = [s] (like English 's'). Opposite of intuition for English speakers.
Not distinguishing short and long vowels (e.g. kor vs kór)
Vowel length changes meaning. Practice minimal pairs: kor/kór, kor/kőr, ut/út. The accent mark always signals a long vowel.
Szegeden a halászlé csípős, Debrecenben a kolbász füstölt.
In Szeged the fish soup is spicy, in Debrecen the sausage is smoked.
Three sibilant letters in one sentence: <em>Szeged</em> opens with sz = [s], <em>csípős</em> with cs = [tʃ] and ends in s = [ʃ], and <em>kolbász</em> ends in sz = [s]. Both c letters in <em>Debrecen</em> are [ts].
Nyáron a Balatonnál lángost eszünk, télen kürtőskalácsot a vásárban.
In summer we eat lángos at Lake Balaton, in winter kürtőskalács at the market.
<em>Nyáron</em> opens with ny = [ɲ] and a long á. The s of <em>lángos</em> and <em>vásárban</em> is [ʃ]. <em>Kürtőskalács</em> packs in ü, long ő, s = [ʃ] and cs = [tʃ], and the stress still sits on KÜR.
Puskás Ferenc a legnagyobb magyar futballista volt.
Ferenc Puskás was the greatest Hungarian footballer.
Both s letters in <em>Puskás</em> are [ʃ], which is why commentators say Push-kaash. <em>Magyar</em> and <em>legnagyobb</em> show gy = [ɟ], one soft consonant rather than g plus y.
Az edző bodzaszörpöt ivott, a gyerekek dzsemet ettek.
The coach drank elderflower cordial, the children ate jam.
The rarest letters in one go: dz in <em>edző</em> and <em>bodza</em>, and the trigraph dzs in <em>dzsem</em>. Both are single letters with their own dictionary slots, and <em>edző</em> also carries a long ő.
Az Aquincum, a Wesselényi utca és Ady Endre neve őrzi a q, a w és az y betűt.
Aquincum, Wesselényi Street and the name of Endre Ady preserve the letters q, w and y.
These are the letters that turn 40 into 44. <em>Aquincum</em> is the Roman town under today's Óbuda, <em>Wesselényi</em> a noble family and a street in Budapest, and <em>Ady</em> is read [ˈɒdi], with y standing for i. The fourth, x, lives only in loanwords such as <em>taxi</em>.
Practice in course
Apply this grammar in A1 course exercises
A1 Module 1: Hungarian greetings, vowel length, and simple sentences
Rule 10 lists the 40 letters of the Hungarian alphabet, including the eight digraphs and the trigraph dzs; rule 11 gives the position of q, w, x and y, which produce the 44-letter extended alphabet.
Péter Siptár and Miklós Törkenczy on the segmental system: the seven short and long vowel pairs as separate phonemes, the s [ʃ] versus sz [s] contrast, and fixed word-initial stress.
Reference grammar used for the letter-to-sound correspondences and for the treatment of the digraphs and the trigraph as single graphemes. Open record in the University of Szeged repository.
The standard Russian-language academic description of Hungarian phonetics; the basis for the contrasts drawn here with Russian vowel reduction, palatalization before front vowels and word-final devoicing. Print source, no stable public URL.