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 (“derivative suffix”, literally “forming, creating”), the present participle of képez (“to form, create”)

  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 (“horticulture; 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 (“marker”, literally “sign, mark”)

  They modify the meaning of the word slightly but 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 (“inflectional suffix”, literally “something glued or attached to another thing”)

  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.

Word-final -a, -e (and the uncommon -o, -ö) become -á, -é (and -ó, -ő, respectively) before suffixes, although few of them are still productive (these are marked in bold). The non-lengthening suffixes are -i (along with -ias/-ies), -beli, -féle, and -szerű, which leave all preceding vowels unchanged.

Word-final -a, -e (and the uncommon -o, -ö) become -á, -é (and -ó, -ő, respectively) before suffixes, although few of them are still productive (these are marked in bold). A non-lengthening suffix is -ság/-ség, which leaves all preceding vowels unchanged.

See also

• Pet forms of Hungarian given names on the Hungarian Wikipedia.Wikipedia ^hu
• 33 Diminutive Suffixes by Balázs Géza (text in Hungarian)

• -asával/-esével/-osával/-ösével

  hármasával

  egyesével

  hatosával

  ötösével

• -ászat/-észet

  vadászat

  nyelvészet

• -hatatlan/-hetetlen

  elvégezhetetlen

  megoldhatatlan

• -ható/-hető

  választható

  élvezhető

• -ias/-ies

  házias

  gépies

• -kás/-kés

  bohókás

  édeskés

• -lagos/-leges

  fajlagos, vagylagos

  semleges

• -ós/-ős

  rágós, pirítós

  csípős, evezős

• -ságos/-séges

  jóságos, túlságos

  bőséges, felséges, gyönyörűséges, szépséges

• -sias/-sies

  falusias

• -sít/-asít/-esít/-osít/-ösít

  állandósít

  sokasít, forradalmasít

  kézbesít, értesít, (?) németesít

  gyarmatosít, államosít, összpontosít, központosít, (?) magyarosít

  (?) törökösít, görögösít

• -skedik/-skodik/-sködik

  hülyéskedik, hatalmaskodik, főnökösködik

• -sul

  állandósul

• -szoros/-szeres/-szörös

  hatszoros

  kétszeres

  ötszörös

• -ta/-te

  tudta

  érkezte

The table below contains typical endings of foreign words.

Word-final -a, -e (and the uncommon -o, -ö) become -á, -é (and -ó, -ő, respectively) before case endings, with the exception of the essive-formal -ként, which leaves all preceding vowels unchanged. (For more information and examples, see Usage notes at the entries of the suffixes.)

For verbs that take separative, locative, or lative suffixes, only the cases and suffixes in the first three rows (inside, surface, proximity) are to be considered. The subsequent rows are merely an addition to the table; they are not part of the original conceptual framework, helpful as they may be.

The following endings are not case endings from a strictly syntactic point of view; most of them create adverbs.

Word-final -a, -e (and the uncommon -o, -ö) become -á, -é (and -ó, -ő, respectively) before these suffixes, with the exception of -képp/-képpen and -kor, which leave all preceding vowels unchanged.

See also Appendix:Hungarian possessive suffixes.

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 (“difficult, 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) (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.

• A képzők csoportjai az alapszó és a származékszó szófaja szempontjából (Groups of suffixes in terms of the POS of the base word and the derived word)
• Attila Mártonfi: The System of the Hungarian Suffixes, Theses of PhD Dissertation, Budapest, 2006
• A leggyakoribb idegen utótagok és képzők (The most common foreign endings and suffixes) From Bakos, Ferenc and Pál Fábián. Idegen szavak és kifejezések szótára (’A Dictionary of Foreign Words and Phrases’). Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1989. →ISBN