Magánhangzó harmónia

Valami, ami elég hasznosnak bizonyult az első páciensnél, hogy hamar megtanítottam: mire eljutottunk a könyvben - igen hamar - a "-ban -ben"ig, már nagyjából értette, hogy miről is van itt szó

És ez most egy handout lett, angolul magyarázva.

Magánhangzó harmónia

Vowel Harmony

or

The Basic Rule of How to Stick Suffixes to Random Words in Hungarian

We have two big groups of vowels:

-          Front vowels (we call them “high” as in “magas magánhangzók”, but never mind)

they are: E, É, I, Í, Ö, Ő, Ü, Ű

-          Back vowels (we call them “low” – “mély magánhangzók” but you could have guessed so much)

and they are: A, Á, O, Ó, U, Ú

Notice, how they are always in pairs: short and long – they go together J

But here’s the cheatcode. We learn it like this in primary school:

This is a car – Ez egy AUTÓ

Which has the following vowels (and their pairs) in it :

A - Á

U - Ú

O - Ó

They are the back vowels. But I’ll just call them Autó-vowels.

This is a tennis racket – Ez egy TENISZÜTŐ

Which has the following vowels (and their pairs) in it:

E - É

I - Í

Ü - Ű

Ö – Ő

And these are the front vowels. But we’ll just call them Teniszütő-vowels.

Aaand that’s it. If you remember these two words, you will be able to decide if the vowels of a word is autó or teniszütő, and you can pick one of the two endings that you will have to use. (Yeah, the sticky things at the end of the word - suffixes - will almost always come in pairs...)