Definite and Indefinite Articles

Before jumping into ‘How to make nouns plural?’, we should talk about the articles. But first things first. Let’s see the solutions to the exercises in last blog entry.

ablakon, repülőtől, bankban, egyetemen, állomáson

– ablak contains deep vowel, so it takes the suffix -ban
– repülő is high vowel, so it takes -től
– bank is deep vowel, it takes -ban
– egyetem is unequivocally a high-vowel word, so it takes -en
– állomás is definitely a deep-vowel word, so it takes -on

Were you answers good? I hope so . If not, practice, practice, practice. And now the articles!

Hungarian articles can be definite and indefinite like in English. There are two definite articles: a, az (the). There’s only one indefinite article: egy (a, an).

The definite article a is used with words beginning with a consonant: a tábla (the board), a férfi (the man).
The definite article az is used with words beginning with a vowel: az állat (the animal), az erdő (the forest).

The indefinite article egy is used both with words beginning with a vowel or consonant: egy tábla (a board), egy férfi (a man), egy állat (an animal), egy erdő (a forest). The thing about the indefinite article is that it is a weak/not stressed form of the number egy (one). If you say ‘egy tábla’, the stress is on tábla. If you talk about ONE board and no more than that, the stress is on egy.

EGY as INDEFINITE ARTICLE: EGY TÁBLA (verbal emphasis on tábla)
EGY as NUMERAL: EGY TÁBLA (verbal emphasis on egy)

Exercises: choose the proper form. The English examples will help you.

a / az ? ablak – the window

a / az ? konyha – the kitchen

egy / a ? ajtó – a door

az / egy ? kalap – a hat

a / egy / az ? élet – a life, the life

After learning how to put nouns in the plural, I’ll write an entry about the use of Hungarian articles which many times differs from English. And most importantly, all you have to deal with is A, AZ, EGY. Hungarian articles are NOT PUT IN ANY CASE OR NUMBER, much like in English.