Hungarian Orthography - Source Materials

Source Materials

Rules of Hungarian orthography are laid down by the Hungarian Language Committee of the Research Institute for Linguistics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (HAS). They are published in a book titled A magyar helyesírás szabályai ’Rules of Hungarian Orthography’, abbreviated in scholarly texts as AkH, i.e. akadémiai helyesírás (‘orthography of the Academy’), commonly referred to as szabályzat (‘regulations’). Apart from the regulations, approximately two thirds of the book is made up by a dictionary of problematic words and phrases, with references to the relevant passages. As of early 2012, the effective version is the 11th edition, published in 1984, which differs only slightly from the previous edition.

The first edition was published in 1832, by HAS, edited by Mihály Vörösmarty, and – excluding versions without any material change – subsequent editions came out in 1877, 1922, 1954, and 1984 (roughly every 30 years recently). The preparation of a new revised edition is currently in progress. This document is not binding, although knowledge of it may be a sign of education or high quality in several fields. Certain mistakes are considered more serious than others, e.g. confusing j and ly (which are pronounced the same) in an everyday word is more likely to be deemed as a touchstone of ignorance than inserting an unjustified hyphen into a lengthy compound.

This volume is supplemented by two orthographic dictionaries, one published by HAS, and one published by Osiris Kiadó. The first is considered more official, and comprises 140,000 words and phrases; the second is more comprehensive, including more than 210,000 words and phrases as well as a more detailed elaboration of the regulations, on 1540 pages altogether.