Hungarian alphabet

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 (or geminate) consonants do not. Long consonants are marked by duplication: e.g. ⟨tt⟩, ⟨gg⟩, ⟨zz⟩ (ette 'he ate' (det.obj.), függ 'it hangs', azzal 'with that'). For the di- and tri-graphs a simplification rule normally applies (but not when the compound is split at the end of a line of text due to hyphenation), only the first letter being duplicated, e.g.

⟨sz⟩ + ⟨sz⟩ → ⟨ssz⟩ (asszony 'woman'),

⟨ty⟩ + ⟨ty⟩ → ⟨tty⟩ (hattyú 'swan'),

⟨dzs⟩ + ⟨dzs⟩ → ⟨ddzs⟩ (briddzsel 'with bridge (playing game)').

An exception is made at the joining points of compound words, for example: jegygyűrű 'engagement ring' (jegy + gyűrű) rather than *jeggyűrű.

⟨Dz⟩ and ⟨dzs⟩ were recognized as individual letters in the 11th edition of Hungarian orthography (1984).[3] Prior to that, they were analyzed as two-letter combinations ⟨d⟩+⟨z⟩ and ⟨d⟩+⟨zs⟩.

The pronunciation given for the following Hungarian letters is that of standard Hungarian.

Letter	Name	Phoneme (IPA)	Complementary allophones (IPA)[4]	Close to	Notes
A	a	/ɑː/		similar to British English car	Car, start, aren't, [ɑ̝̹] might describe it better.
Á	á	/aː/		an extended father	Not nearly as open as the a in American English hat, but closer to it than Hungarian a (without the accent mark)
B	bé	/b/		as by, absence etc.
C	cé	/ts/		like pots
Cs	csé	/tʃ/		as check, cheek, etching etc.
D	dé	/d/		deck, wide etc.
E	e	/ɛ/		like less, cheque, edge, bed	about 40-50% of speakers also have a phoneme /e/ (see below at Ë). /e/ is not considered part of standard Hungarian, wherein /ɛ/ takes the place of /e/.
É	é	/eː/		café
F	ef	/f/		find, euphoria
G	gé	/ɡ/		get, leg, go etc.
Gy	gyé	/ɟ/		(not used in English; soft form of /d/. Mostly similar to during, as pronounced in Received Pronunciation)	denoting /ɟ/ by <gy> is a remnant of (probably) Italian scribes who tried to render the Hungarian sound. <dy> would be a more consistent notation in scope of <ty>, <ny>, <ly> (see there), as the <y> part of digraphs show palatalisation in the Hungarian writing system.
H	há	/h/	1. [ɦ]   2. ∅ 3. [x]   4. [ç]	Basic: hi 1. behind 2. honest 3. Loch, Chanukah 4. human	1. when in intervocalic position. 2. not rendered usually when in final position méh /meː/ 'bee', cseh /tʃɛ/ 'Czech' 3. seldom, in final position, such as in doh 'dampness', MÉH 'metal recycling facility' 4. seldom, such as in ihlet 'inspiration'
I	i	/i/		sea, key, tree	Pronounced the same as Í, only shorter
Í	í	/iː/		leek, leave, seed, sea	Vowel length is phonemically distinctive in Hungarian: irt = 'to exterminate' and írt = 'to write (past tense)'
J	jé	/j/	[ç], [ʝ]	you, yes, faith	allophones occur when /j/ occurs after a consonant; (voiceless after voiceless, voiced after voiced consonants). e.g. férj 'husband', kapj 'get! (imperative)'
K	ká	/k/		key, kiss, weak
L	el	/l/		leave, list
Ly	elly, el-ipszilon	/j/   / /ʎ/		play, pray
M	em	/m/		mind, assume, might
N	en	/n/	[ŋ]   [n]	thing, lying (before k, g), need, bone (anywhere else)	allophone before /k/, /ɡ/
Ny	eny	/ɲ/		canyon
O	o	/o/		force, sorcerer	A shorter, more open variant of Ó. Unlike with short e, which is opened to /ɛ/ in standard speech, short o remains /o/, rather than opening to /ɔ/ where it would come close to clashing with short a.
Ó	ó	/oː/		Not in standard English. go, snow are approximations, but are diphthongs, unlike the Hungarian	Same as /o/ except longer. It is important to pay attention to. (eg.: kor = 'age' and kór = 'disease')
Ö	ö	/ø/		learnt, earl, fern	(Corresponds to (short) German Ö); similar to shwa /ə/ (e.g. cola) except with rounded lips. A shorter, more open variant of Ő
Ő	ő	/øː/		burn, murder	(A longer, more closed variant of Ö.) Minimal pair to /ø/: öt = 'five' and őt = 'him/her (Hungarian pronouns do not specify gender)'
P	pé	/p/		peas, apricot, hope
R	er	/r/		The closest equivalent is r	also called apical trill as pronounced by trilling the tip of your tongue (the apex) and not the uvula.
S	es	/ʃ/		share, wish, shout	This notation is unusual for European writing systems where <s> usually stands for /s/. In Hungarian, /s/ is represented by <sz>.
Sz	esz	/s/		say, estimate
T	té	/t/		tell, least, feast
Ty	tyé	/c/		tube
U	u	/u/		rude
Ú	ú	/uː/		do, fool	minimal pair to /u/: hurok 'loop' ∼ húrok 'cords'
Ü	ü	/y/		(not used in English, corresponds to German Ü)	A shorter, more open variant of ű
Ű	ű	/yː/		(not used in English, corresponds to a longer version of the German Ü)
V	vé	/v/		very, every
Z	zé	/z/		desert, roses
Zs	zsé	/ʒ/		pleasure, leisure

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. It is also used in names.

The digraph ch also exists in some words (technika, monarchia) and is pronounced the same as h. In names, however, it is pronounced like cs as well as like h or k (as in German) (see below).

The letter Y is only used in loanwords and several digraphs (gy, ly, ny, ty), and thus in a native Hungarian word, Y never comes as the initial of a word, except in loanwords. So, for native Hungarian words, the capital Y only exists in all caps or small caps formats, such as the titles of newspapers.

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 (and third) character as well.

Thus ("The Rules of Hungarian Orthography", a book edited by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences):

• A magyar helyesírás szabályai
• MHSZ (not MHSz)
• A MAGYAR HELYESÍRÁS SZABÁLYAI (not SzABÁLyAI)

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 situation is the same for lower and upper-case letters: in alphabetical ordering, varga is followed by Varga.)

The polygraphic consonant signs are treated as single letters.

The simplified geminates of multigraphs (see above) such as <nny>, <ssz> are collated as <ny>+<ny>, <sz>+<sz> etc., if they are double geminates, rather than co-occurrences of a single letter and a geminate.

könnyű is collated as <k><ö><ny><ny><ű>. tizennyolc of course as <t><i><z><e><n><ny><o><l><c>, as this is a compound: tizen+nyolc ('above ten' + 'eight' = 'eighteen').

Similar 'ambiguities', which can occur with compounds (which are highly common in Hungarian) are dissolved and collated by sense.

e.g. házszám 'house number (address)' = ház + szám and of course not *házs + *zám.

These rules make Hungarian alphabetic ordering algorithmically difficult (one has to know the correct segmentation of a word to sort it correctly), which was a problem for computer software development.

The standard Hungarian keyboard layout is German-based (QWERTZ). This layout allows direct access to every character in the Hungarian alphabet.

Hungarian keyboard layout

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. The German "Ä" and "ß", the Polish "Ł", and the Croatian "Đ" are also present.

The most common letters in Hungarian are e and a.[7]

The list below shows the letter frequencies for the smaller Hungarian alphabet in descending order.

Note that some letters were omitted (notably, Dz, Dzs, Gy, Í, Ly, Ny, Ty, Ú, Ű).[8][9]

• Hungarian orthography
• Hungarian braille
• Hungarian phonology
• ISO/IEC 8859-2

• X-SAMPA for Hungarian