Learn Hungarian – Part 3: Essential Hungarian verbs and adjectives

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Photo: Alpár Kató - Daily News Hungary

Verbs and adjectives are critical parts of any language. Usually, they make sense to a sentence alongside with nouns, adverbs or numerals. Let’s look at eight common Hungarian verbs and adjectives!

On this week, you can learn Hungarian essentials again, and this time, the topic is verbs and adjectives! Thanks to Hungarian Pod, you can easily learn Hungarian at any levels through colourful pictures!

Adjectives:

Hungarian language learning essential
8 most common adjectives in Hungarian

To learn adjectives is way easier in Hungarian, than verbs, because adjectives are less connected to strict grammar rules.

Other very useful Hungarian adjectives:

few/little – KEVÉS (pronunciation: keh-veesh)
many/much/a lot – SOK (prn.: shok)
tiny – APRÓ
huge – HATALMAS

Verbs:

There is no doubt that Hungarian verbs are harder to learn than adjectives because we have to conjugate them. These verbs are probably used in all Hungarian’s language on a daily basis, but you may say these words in your language, too, regardless of where you are from around the world.

Hungarian language learning essential
8 Hungarian verbs, facebook.com/HungarianPod101

These eight verbs are not in infinitive forms, however. They are third person singular form, so the way you can see it on the picture is he/she is (…) (eating/drinking/sleeping) OR he/she (…) (eats, drinks, sleeps).

Infinitive forms:

  • To eat – ENNI
  • To drink – INNI
  • To sleep – ALUDNI
  • To think – GONDOLNI / GONDOLKODNI
  • To understand – ÉRTENI
  • To speak – BESZÉLNI / BESZÉLGETNI
  • To leave – TÁVOZNI
  • To run – FUTNI

Conjugation:

I eat / I am eating (something) – eszek (valamit)
you eat / you are eating (something) – eszel (valamit)
he/she eats / he/she is eating (something) – eszik
we eat / we are eating (something) – eszünk
you eat / you are eating (sthg.) – esztek
they eat / they are eating (sthg.) – esznek (valamit)

Note that the Hungarian language is really tricky and there is indefinite and definite conjugation of a verb. The upper one was an indefinite because we did not know what they were eating (something). If we do know what they are eating then it is:

I eat / I am eating (soup) – (a levest) eszem
you eat / you are eating (soup) – (a levest) eszed
he/she eats / he/she is eating (soup) – (a levest) eszi
we eat / we are eating (soup) – (a levest) esszük
you eat / you are eating (soup.) – (a levest) eszitek
they eat / they are eating (soup.) – (a levest) eszik

Try to conjugate (or at least try to memorise) the words’ infinitive forms above!

Other important Hungarian verbs:

to know/can/able to – TUDNI
to go – MENNI
to drive – VEZETNI
to travel – UTAZNI
to see – LÁTNI
to hear – HALLANI
to listen/listen to – HALLGATNI
to feel – ÉREZNI

Featured image: Alpár Kató – Daily News Hungary

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