Appendix:Hungarian suffixes

This is a list of Hungarian suffixes (and case endings) categorized by the part of speech they form.

There are three major groups of suffixes in Hungarian. Although there are no strict definitions and crisp borders between the categories, they are traditionally categorized as follows.

• képző

  They come immediately after the stem. They substantially change the meaning of the word, many times even the part of speech (only this type can change the part of speech). Multiple such suffixes can be appended after each other. Not all of them are productive.

  kert (“garden”) → kertész (“gardener”) → kertészet (“gardening establishment”)

  forral (“to boil”) → forralt (“boiled (past participle)”)

  Exceptions to the standard order: kisebbít (“to diminish”): The -ít képző-type suffix does not come immediately after the stem. It is preceded by the jel-type suffix -ebb.

• jel

  They do not change the meaning of the word, the word still refers to the same concept. They stand between the képző-type suffixes, and the rag-type suffixes.

  kert (“garden”) → kertek (“gardens”)

  fiatal (“young”) → fiatalabb (“younger”) (Exception: képző-type suffixes can be attached after this one)

  hajó (“boat”) → a hajóm (“my boat”)

  áll (“to stand”) → állt (“stood”)

• rag

  They embed the word into the sentence according to the role of the word. For nouns these are the case endings, for verbs the conjugational endings. No other morpheme can be added after a rag-type suffix so there can be only one of them in a word, at the end.

  kertem (“my garden”) → kertemben (“in my garden”)

  beszél (“to speak”) → beszélek (“I speak, I am speaking”)

  Exceptions to the standard order: kétszeres (“twofold”): két-szer-es - the rag-type suffix -szer is not the closing element of the word. The képző-type suffix -es is placed after it.

See also

• Pet forms of Hungarian given names on the Hungarian Wikipedia.hu.Wikipedia:Magyar keresztnevek becézése

Frequentative suffixesEdit

• -ható/-hető

  választható

  élvezhető

• -hatatlan/-hetetlen

  elvégezhetetlen

  megoldhatatlan

• -ságos/-séges

  jóságos, túlságos

  bőséges, felséges, gyönyörűséges, szépséges

• -ias/-ies

  gépies

• -sias/-sies

  falusias

• -kás/-kés

  bohókás

  édeskés

• -sít

  államosít, állandósít

• -sul

  állandósul

The table below contains typical endings of foreign words.

See also Appendix:Hungarian possessive suffixes.

Single possessionEdit

Plural possessionEdit

The conjugated infinitive denotes action connected to the person. The non-conjugated infinitive has a general meaning. The following example illustrates how a sentence can be misinterpreted if the infinitive is not conjugated.

Egy gyereknek nehéz ezt megmagyarázni. - It is hard to explain this to (or for?) a child.

egy (a), gyerek (child), -nek (to, for), nehéz (hard), ezt (this), megmagyarázni (to explain)

In the above example it is not clear who gives and receives the explanation. It is possible that the child has a hard time to explain something, but it's also possible that someone has a hard time to explain something to the child. Using the appropriate conjugation, the meaning becomes clear:

Egy gyereknek nehéz ezt megmagyaráznia. - It's hard for a child to explain this.

Egy gyereknek nehéz ezt megmagyaráznunk. - It's hard for us to explain this to a child.

• Keszler Borbála: A szóképzés (Derivation) [1] (a study in Hungarian)

  English abstract: Keszler, Borbála: Derivation. The author characterises derivational affixes in terms of several criteria used in the international literature and gives a specific interpretation of the most important concepts related to derivation. These are: (i) productivity, (ii) frequency of occurrence, (iii) the function of derivation, and (iv) synonymy. She then devotes separate sections to general problems connected with derived words (like ‘How can you decide if a word is derived or not?’ or ‘In what cases does the segmentation of a form into stem and suffix constitute a problem?’), to morphological problems of derivational suffixes (like the issue of simple vs. complex derivational suffixes or that of non-alternating vs. alternating suffixes), to the classification of derivational suffixes in terms of the part-of-speech character of the base and of the derived form (verbalising, nominalising, participalising suffixes), as well as to the ordering regularities among derivational suffixes. Finally, she gives an overview of all productive derivational suffixes of present-day Hungarian.

• Attila Mártonfi: The System of the Hungarian Suffixes, Theses of PhD Dissertation, Budapest, 2006
• A leggyakoribb idegen utótagok és képzők (The most important foreign endings and suffixes) From Bakos Ferenc & Fábián Pál, Idegen szavak és kifejezések szótára. Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, 1989, ISBN 963 05 5307 4