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

Common Hungarian question words include:

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

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

Word Order in Questions

When using question words, the word order in Hungarian generally remains the same as in statements. The question word is placed at the beginning, followed by the subject and verb.

Example: "Mikor jössz?" means "When are you coming?" Here, "Mikor" (When) is the question word, "jössz" is the verb (you come).

Tag Questions

Hungarian also uses tag questions to confirm information, similar to English "isn't it?" or "right?" The common tag is "ugye", which is placed at the beginning or end of a sentence.

Example: "Te jössz, ugye?" means "You are coming, right?".

Practice Examples