How to Form Questions in Hungarian for English Speakers

Understanding Question Formation in Hungarian

Forming questions in Hungarian is quite straightforward once you understand the basic rules. Unlike English, Hungarian does not always require auxiliary verbs or inversion to form questions. Instead, intonation and question words play a key role.

Yes/No Questions

In Hungarian, yes/no questions are often formed by simply raising the intonation at the end of a statement. There is no need to change the word order. For example, the statement "Te jössz" means "You are coming." To ask "Are you coming?" you say "Te jössz?" with a rising intonation.

Alternatively, you can add the question particle "-e" to the verb to explicitly mark a yes/no question, especially in formal or written Hungarian. For example, "Jössz-e?" means "Are you coming?".

Using Question Words

Hungarian uses question words similar to English to ask for specific information. These question words usually appear at the beginning of the sentence.

Common Hungarian question words include:

• Ki? – Who?
• Mi? – What?
• Hol? – Where?
• Mikor? – When?
• Miért? – Why?
• Hogyan? – How?
• Melyik? – Which?

For example, to ask "Where are you?" you say "Hol vagy?".

Word Order in Questions

Hungarian is a flexible language in terms of word order, but the question word typically comes first in a question. The rest of the sentence follows the usual subject-verb-object order.

Example: "Mikor jössz haza?" means "When are you coming home?" where "Mikor" is the question word, followed by the verb and other sentence elements.

Examples of Common Questions in Hungarian

Tips for English Speakers Learning Hungarian Questions

Remember that Hungarian does not require auxiliary verbs like "do" or "does" to form questions. Focus on intonation and question words instead.

Practice listening to native speakers to get a feel for the rising intonation in yes/no questions.

Use the question particle "-e" when you want to be more formal or clear in your questions.