Mini language lesson #6: Dates, numbers in Hungarian

The expression of dates, days and numbers form a crucial and everyday part of our lives. Just think about it, one of the first things you learn in a foreign language is how to tell your age. Surprise-surprise, the Hungarian language has some tricky ways here as well, but we try to break down the most basic expressions, words to you 🙂

Keep in mind that we are not linguists in any way, we’re just as dazzled by the curiosities of the Hungarian language as foreigners are. So this series doesn’t aim to explain the etymology of words, it’s more so a fun take on our language. We try to bring Hungarian closer to you with witty learning cards made by Daily magyar, a language-enthusiast person, whose posts give an insight into the complexity of the Hungarian grammar. But don’t worry, it’s all done in an easy-going way, so that it can make learning fun.

Let’s start with numbers in Hungarian. ‘Number’ is called szám in our language, which also has two other meanings: ‘my mouth’ and ‘song’ (mostly used in slang). Numbers from 1 to 10 and round numbers go like this:

• 1 – egy
• 2 – kettő
• 3 – három
• 4 – négy
• 5 – öt
• 6 – hat
• 7 – hét
• 8 – nyolc
• 9 – kilenc
• 10 – tíz
• 20 – húsz
• 30 – harminc
• 40 – negyven
• 50 – ötven
• 60 – hatvan
• 70 – hetven
• 80 – nyolcvan
• 90 – kilencven
• 100 – száz
• 1000 – ezer

Hopefully you can see some logic. What is quite funny for instance is that hét has two meanings: ‘seven’ and ‘week’. So you can say ‘One week is seven days’ – ‘Egy hét hét napból áll’.

There are many ways to use hét as a number. The following photo is true for all numbers, but it is probably the most spectacular using ‘seven’:

There’s also a quite frequently used slang expression with szám: