Hungarian verbs

This page is about verbs in Hungarian grammar.

There is basically only one pattern for verb endings, with predictable variations dependent on the phonological context.

The lemma or citation form is always the third person singular indefinite present. This usually has a ∅ suffix, e.g. kér ("ask", "have a request").

A slight variation to the standard pattern is with certain verbs which have third person singular indefinite present ending with -ik, e.g. dolgozik ("work"), and 1st singular indefinite present usually with -om/-em/-öm. The stem for this is reached by removing -ik. These verbs explain the reason for this form being the citation form.

The -ik verbs were originally middle voice, reflexive or passive in meaning, which can still be seen e.g. about the pair tör ("s/he breaks something") vs törik ("something breaks" / "something gets broken"). However, most of them have lost this meaning so historically speaking they are like deponent verbs.

With these verbs, the third person singular (present, indefinite, indicative) form (i.e., the lemma) consistently uses the -ik form. What is more, new -ik words are constantly born (e.g. netezik "use the Internet") so their deviation needs to be followed.

However, as far as the first person singular (present, indefinite, indicative) suffix is concerned, it is often assimilated to the "normal" conjugation (as it has practically happened to the other -ik-specific forms) so most verbs usually take the regular form for this person (e.g. hazudok; *hazudom would be taken as hypercorrect or incorrect). Nevertheless, with some basic -ik verbs, the assimilated variant is stigmatized (e.g. eszem is expected in educated speech, rather than *eszek), so with these verbs, the traditional form is advised. At any rate, such non-traditional, assimilated variants are not rare in colloquial spoken language.

Since this (3rd person singular indefinite) -ik ending coincides with the -ik ending of the 3rd person plural definite form, only the type of the object makes it possible to identify the subject:

In fact, most -ik verbs are intransitive, and the context may clarify the question even if the subject is not made explicit.

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