Sound
Forty-four letters, no guessing
Hungarian is close to one sound per letter. The catch: some letters are two Latin keys, s is sh, and length changes the word.
v marks a vowel. A dashed key is a loan letter.
A
a · /ɒ/
alma — apple
British hot, what — never the English ‘ay’.
Forty-four letters, fourteen vowels
Hungarian treats cs, dz, dzs, gy, ly, ny, sz, ty, zs as single letters. They sort as their own entries, not as c + s. Q, W, X and Y are in the alphabet too — they just turn up almost only in loans and old family names.
Stress is boring — in a good way
Primary stress always falls on the first syllable. Never shift it. fiaié is still stressed on fi-.
No diphthongs
Each vowel is its own beat. autó is a-u-tó, not ‘ow-to’. Stack them and still nothing merges: fia (his son) → fiai (his sons) → fiaié (his sons’ one) is four separate vowels.
Length is meaning
Short vs long is a different word, not a mood. kor (age) / kór (disease), öreg (old) is not őrög. Accents are not optional.
Doubling holds the sound
abban is ab-ban. Digraphs double the first glyph only: busz + -szal → busszal (busz-szal).
s and sz are swapped
s = English sh. sz = English s. This is the first trap. Magyarország starts with a sh.
The four rare ones
Dashed in the grid above. They are part of the alphabet, but you will meet them almost only in foreign words and old family names.
- Q (kú) — Foreign words only (quasi). qu reads /kv/.
- W (dupla vé) — Loans and names (Washington). Said like v.
- X (iksz) — Loans (taxi). Reads /ks/.
- Y (ipszilon) — Old family names, and the tail of gy, ly, ny, ty.