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.