Hungarian grammar (noun phrases)

This page is about noun phrases in Hungarian grammar.

The order of elements in the noun phrase is always determiner, adjective, noun.

With a few important exceptions, Hungarian does not have grammatical gender or a grammatical distinction between animate and inanimate.

Hungarian nouns are marked for number: singular or plural.

However, Hungarian uses the plural form sparsely for nouns, i.e. only if quantity is not otherwise marked. Therefore, the plural is not used with numerals or quantity expressions. Examples: öt fiú ("five boys"); sok fiú ("many boys"); fiúk ("boys").

In phrases that refer to existence/availability of entities, rather than their quantity, the singular is used in Hungarian (unlike in English): Van szék a szobában "There are chairs in the room", Nincs szék a szobában "There aren't chairs in the room". (The singular may be considered as partitive here.) Also, product names are usually written out in the singular, e.g. Lámpa "Lamps".

Hungarian also uses a singular noun when the possessor is plural but the thing possessed is singular, e.g. a fejünk ("our heads", where each person has one head).

The plural noun marker is the suffix -ok/(-ak)/-ek/-ök/-k.

Before possessive suffixes, the plural k appears as ai or ei, e.g.:

When used predicatively, adjectives are also marked for number (see adjective marking). The suffix is -ak/-ek/-k.

Hungarian uses paired body parts in the singular, even if the pair is meant together, and even if several people's pairs of body parts are meant. One piece of a pair is described as: "egyik lába" ("one of his legs"). As can be seen, pairs of body parts are considered as one in Hungarian.

Note the number of the noun in the following examples:

Note: if one wants to emphasize the third case (where both legs of each person involved), the actual plural number (Tánc közben összegabalyodtak a lábaik, lit. "their legs") might also be used, but the above (singular) option can fully suffice in this case, as well.

The letter k also occurs at the end of certain words, which thus may appear plural. Examples include emlék ("a [piece of] memory"), farok ("tail"), köldök ("navel"), könyök ("elbow"), sarok ("corner"/"heel"), pocok ("vole"), püspök ("bishop"), érsek ("archbishop"), szemöldök ("eyebrow"), zsák ("sack") etc. – the name of the mole used to be vakondok but this form took on a plural meaning and the word is mostly used today as vakond.

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