The most beautiful Hungarian words

Whether someone likes the Hungarian language or not, they have to acknowledge that there are some fascinating words and phrases. We have collected some of the most beautiful Hungarian words and what they mean.

Dezső Kosztolányi and his favourite words

Dezső Kosztolányi was a famous Hungarian writer and poet and lived between 1885 and 1936. According to him, the 10 most beautiful Hungarian words are láng [flame], gyöngy [pearl], anya [mother], ősz [Autumn], szűz [virgin], kard [sword], csók [kiss], vér [blood], szív [heart], sír [grave, cry]. In addition, he also pointed out that the list compiled by Paul Valéry sounds good in Hungarian, too, writes hungarianlesson.blog.hu. Paul Valéry’s list was the following: pur, jour, or, lac, pic, seul, onde, feuille, mouille, flûte. The Hungarian equivalents of these words are tiszta [pure, clean], nap [day, sun], arany [gold], tó [lake], hegyfok [promonitory, headland], egyedül [alone], hullám [wave], levél [leaf, letter], csermely [rivulet], fuvola [flute].

• Read also: English words that are derived from the Hungarian language — Part II

What do foreigners think?

According to femina.hu, in the early 2000s, an international speech contest was held. At this event, volunteers who did not speak the given language selected the most beautiful-sounding words of different languages. The participants proclaimed cipőfűző [shoelace] as the most beautiful Hungarian word. In another competitition, they searched for the funniest Hungarian words, and based on the opinion of tourists, cipőfűző [shoelace] was popular in this category as well. Futhermore, foreigners selected the Hungarian word bocsi [sorry] as one of the funniest words.

• Read also: Could this Hungarian king be Sir Lancelot?

In which language does I love you sound best?

According to a story (that may or may not be true), a famous Hungarian poet and linguist tricked people at an international speech contest. As népszava.hu writes, the contest focused on the question “In which language does I love you sound best?” Since it was not easy to compete with the French “je t’aime” or the English “I love you”, Frigyes Karinthy decided to avoid saying “szeretlek”, the Hungarian aquivalent of “I love you”. Instead, he thought fülolaj sounds better and tricked the foreigners by saying this means “I love you”. In reality, fülolaj means ear oil. However, as the company did not understad the word, they voted for the Hungarian word as the most beautiful one.

Source: hungarianlesson.blog.hu, femina.hu, népszava.hu