Hungarian Orthography - Four Principles of Spelling

Four Principles of Spelling

Spelling as such is based on four principles, competing with each other in scope: writing in accordance with pronunciation (i.e. being phonemic), word analysis (reflecting the constituting morphemes), traditional spelling, and simplification.

The first principle, that of pronunciation, represents the default, as the Hungarian writing system is mostly phonemic (letters and sounds match each other). This means that spelling does not usually pose a great problem.

Another difficult area is the vowel alternation of certain words before certain suffixes. Words with a long í, ú, ű vowel are classified into two main groups: some preserve the long vowel in most of their (inflectional and derivational) suffixes (e.g. zsír > zsírok, zsíros, zsírom ‘fat, fats, fatty, my fat’) while others become short before the same suffixes (e.g. víz > vizek, vizes, vizem ‘water, waters, watery, my water’). This regularity does not apply to all their forms (e.g. zsiradék ‘material mostly made of fat’ and vízben ‘in water’) and sometimes the forms pronounced short are written with a long vowel (e.g. vízi ‘water-related’). In fact, there are more than two groups, so it is not always possible to work out the correct written forms by analogy (e.g. tűz ‘stick/pin sth.’ tűzdel ‘spice/lard sth. into sth.’ but bízik ‘trust sb.’ biztat ‘encourage sb.’). In addition, the form of the factitive suffix causes problems with verbs ending in t, as it varies depending on whether this sound is preceded by another consonant (-at/-et, e.g. bont > bontat ‘have something opened’) or a vowel (-tat/-tet, e.g. műt > műttet ‘have something operated’).

In certain cases, the elements of a compound have become vague enough that people do not consider them as compounds any more, especially if one of the elements is obsolete (e.g. kesztyű ‘glove’ originally comes from kéz ‘hand’ and an obsolete tyű), so that the spelling no longer reflects the derivation.

Otherwise, this part of the AkH. mostly offers rules of thumb for typical endings (e.g. ú and ű are usually long at the end of nouns) and gives the length of sounds in common suffixes.

Where suffixes are added to a word, the second main principle, that of analysis, is applied in many cases. It aims to reflect the original constituents (morphemes) despite pronunciation, and without respect to assimilation, in order to help recognize written words. It also reflects the modified versions of certain word forms.

In general, those assimilations are marked in spelling which cannot be regularly derived from the original two sounds. For example, hagy + j is pronounced like “haggy”, but since the composition of gy and j normally gives a long gy anyway, use of the original morphemes will not mislead the reader, thus it is written as hagyj (’you should leave ’). However, as hisz + j is pronounced “higgy”, it cannot be regularly deduced from the composition of sz and j (as these normally produce ssz, e.g. mász + j > mássz, ’you should climb’) so the spelling has to express this irregular sound, and it is spelled as higgy (’you should believe’). The situation is similar with nouns. Hab + tól is pronounced as “haptól”, but this is completely regular and predictable in Hungarian phonology, so the spelling retains the original elements: habtól (’from the foam’). However, hab + val becomes habbal in speech, which is a more unusual and more radical change, so the spelling reflects the pronunciation: habbal (’with the foam’).

The third principle, reflecting tradition, affects surnames, which often defy today’s letter-to-sound correspondences (kovács ’smith’ may be spelt Kovács, Kováts or Kovách as a surname). Also the digraph ly, which could be written as j, as their pronunciation is identical, is kept for historical reasons.

The fourth principle, that of simplified writing, only affects a handful of cases. If a common noun ending in a double consonant has a suffix beginning with the same consonant, the third instance is dropped, e.g. toll + lal > tollal. The rule extends to Hungarian given names, e.g. Bernadett + től > Bernadettől ‘from Bernadett.’ Simplification also results in the shortening of double digraphs at the border of suffixes, thus sz + sz becomes ssz (e.g. Kovács + csal > Kováccsal ‘with Kovács’). These rules do not hold, however, for compounds: full forms like cscs are kept at the border of their elements (e.g. kulcscsomó ‘bunch of keys’).

On the other hand, suffixed compounds and proper names (excluding Hungarian given names) with altogether three identical consonants preserve the third consonant, but a hyphen is also inserted (e.g. sakk-kör ‘chess group’, Wittmann-né ‘Mrs. Wittmann’, Bonn-nal ‘with Bonn’). In case of suffix-like derivational elements such as -szerű and -féle ‘-like’, simplification can only be applied to words ending in a single digraph, e.g. viasz + szerű > viasszerű ‘wax-like’ but not to their doubled forms: dzsessz + szerű > dzsessz-szerű ‘jazz-like’.