Hungarian Heritage Review, 1987 (16. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)

1987-01-01 / 1. szám

■Jlungartan Classroom

EDITOR’S NOTE: This series of lessons in Hungarian are reprinted from the unpublished manuscript —An Introduction to Hungarian-authored by András Boros-Kazai, Mary Boros-Kazai, and Peter Szafko with the assistance of the William Penn Association, the American-Hungarian Foundation, and the Hungarian Chair at Indiana University. We will tell you more about the source of these lessons in a later issue.

LESSON I

THE ALPHABET

1. Written Hungarian uses the Latin alphabet.

2. One of the major differences between the English and Hungarian alphabets is the use in Hungarian of diacritical marks (ékezet) above some of the vowels:

it

s'

„

//

a

e

l

o

Ö

o

u

u

u

3. Also, there are some Hungarian consonant combinations, consisting of more than one letter and pronounced as a unit, which are not found in English:

cs dz dzs gy ly ny sz ty zs

L.

5 .

6.

The Hungarian alphabet:

In some foreign

words

and names the following lett

may also occur:

q

w

X

y

[kú] [dupla ve

] [iksz]

[ips z ilon]

Certain archaic

letters

occur in some family names:

Széchenyi

(=cs)

Rác z

(=c)

Dess ewffy

(=5)

Soos

(=6)

Weöres

(=ö)

Pálf fy

(=i)

Wes s elényi

(=v)

Gaál

(=á)

Batthyányi

(=t)

JANUARY 1987

HUNGARIAN HERITAGE REVIEW

21