Unlike in English in phrases that refer to existence/availability of entities, rather than their quantity, the singular is used in Hungarian: Hungarian also often uses a singular noun when the possessor is plural but the thing possessed would be plural too, e.g. "fejünk" means "our heads", but told as "our head".
The complete visualization is the following: Note the number of the noun in the following examples: Note: if one wants to emphasize the third case (where both legs of each person involved), the actual plural number ("Tánc közben összegabalyodtak a lábaik" (using "their legs") might also be used, but the above (singular) option can fully suffice in this case, as well.
Examples: Due to Hungarian language completely lacking grammatical gender, there is almost nothing to talk about here.
The indefinite article is egy [pronounced with a long final consonant], an unstressed version of the word for the number "one".
However, in a semi-specific sense (when "some" could be inserted in English) the article is omitted in Hungarian, e.g. Ceruzákat tett az asztalra ("S/he put [some] pencils on the desk").
Sometimes the definite article (specifically the one with zed "az") is used as topic marker even when the next word's first letter is not a vowel.
They are used when English uses a construction such as "bus number 11": a tizenegyes busz, "room 303": a háromszázhármas szoba.
The following suffixes are used for singular nouns: The following suffixes are used for plural nouns: The háza, házai type (i.e., like the one with a singular possessor) is used in the 3rd person plural except when no pronoun or only the ő is present before it, e.g. a szülők háza "the parents' house".
In other words, the plural -k of the 3rd person suffix is left from the noun if there is a lexical possessor preceding it.
The possessor can be emphasized by adding the subject pronoun, e.g. az én házam ("my house").
The -j is also inserted for a plural noun (with a possessor of whichever person and number), e.g. kalapjaim ("my hats"), kalapjaid ("your (sg.
Several endings (c, cs, dzs, sz, z, s, zs, j, ny, ty, gy, h, i.e., affricates, spirants, palatal/ized sounds and h) only allow the variant without -j in both singular and plural, as shown in the charts above.
A similar kind of homonymy may arise with vowel-dropping words (see the dolog/dolg- type under Oblique noun stem).
Examples: Note that the first person singular possessive form of hal (fish) is not the above halom but exceptionally halam, cf.
Examples: Finally, another kind of homonymy may arise between a noun with a possessive suffix and a verb: hasad "your stomach (belly)" or "it tears/rips", árad "your price" or "it floods", fogad "your tooth" or "he/she/it receives/accepts"/"he/she/it bets".
It also enables the possessor to be moved within the sentence, e.g. Ennek a lakásnak sehogy se találom a kulcsát ("I can't possibly find the key of this flat/apartment").
Note the sehogy se találom ("I can't possibly find") wedged in between the parts of the possessive structure.
For town/city names, the rules for selecting the right group are as follows: A few towns within Hungary traditionally use a different ending, -ott/-ett/-ött/-t, for position, see locative case for examples.
Examples: ablakokat ("windows") ablakaimat ("my windows") gyümölcsöket ("fruits") gyümölcseimet ("my fruits") Sometimes the quality of the link vowel of the accusative can differentiate between otherwise homonymous words: The accusative can be expressed without the -t morpheme after the first and second person possessive suffixes (especially in the singular).
For example: The accusative personal pronouns engem ("me") and téged ("you") are also used without the -t suffix (engemet and tégedet are rather infrequent).
The third case where the accusative remains unmarked is the infinitive, e.g. Szeretek kirándulni ("I like hiking", lit.
Examples include eset ("case"), falat ("a bit of food"), hét ("week"), kabát ("coat"), kert ("garden"), kötet ("volume" [of books]), lakat ("padlock"), lapát ("shovel"), part ("shore", "bank", "coast"), párt ("party"), sajt ("cheese") etc.
Telling them apart: Homonymy may also arise between accusative nouns and verbs, e.g. választ may mean "answer" (n, acc.)
The accusative of terem ("room"/"hall") is termet (see vowel-dropping) instead of the regular teremet (which could come from tér with vowel-shortening, meaning "my square", acc.).
– This latter bunch of examples shows eloquently that knowing stem types and recognizing them are essential for interpreting a Hungarian word correctly.
As noted above, when it is added to tíz ("ten") and to húsz ("twenty") to form compound numbers, e.g. tizenegy ("eleven"), huszonegy ("twenty-one"), these vowel-shortening bases use the oblique stem.
For example, benned ("in you") or for emphasis tebenned ("in you") has the stem benn- which is derived from the front variant of the position suffix -ban/-ben ("in").
Note: The personal forms of stand-alone postpositions are paraphrases, e.g. rajtam túl "beyond me", hozzám képest "as compared to me".
On the other hand, to express the affected party of some perception or judgement (good, bad, new, shocking, unacceptable etc.
Examples: As peripheral phenomena, there also exist non-duplicating forms, like e, ezen, eme, azon and ama (the latter two referring to distant objects), but they are poetic or obsolete (cf.