Introduction to Hungarian Adjectives for English Speakers

What Are Hungarian Adjectives?

Hungarian adjectives are words that describe or modify nouns, giving more information about their qualities, quantities, or states. Like in English, adjectives in Hungarian help to paint a clearer picture of the noun they accompany.

Position of Adjectives in Hungarian Sentences

In Hungarian, adjectives usually come before the noun they modify, similar to English. For example, "piros alma" means "red apple." However, Hungarian is flexible, and sometimes adjectives can appear after the noun for emphasis or stylistic reasons.

Adjective Agreement and Declension

Unlike English, Hungarian adjectives agree with the noun they modify in number and case. This means adjectives change their endings depending on whether the noun is singular or plural and the grammatical case used.

Singular and Plural Forms

In the singular, adjectives generally remain in their base form. In the plural, adjectives take the suffix -k to agree with plural nouns. For example:

Case Endings on Adjectives

When a noun is in a case other than the nominative, the adjective also takes the corresponding case ending. For example, in the accusative case, the adjective receives the suffix -t or -at depending on vowel harmony.

Example in accusative case:

Comparative and Superlative Forms

Hungarian forms the comparative of adjectives by adding the suffix -bb to the adjective, and the superlative by adding leg- before the comparative form.

For example:

Adjective Use with Definite and Indefinite Nouns

Hungarian adjectives do not change depending on whether the noun is definite or indefinite, but the verb conjugation changes accordingly. This is important to remember when forming sentences.

Example: