Phonology
Hungarian has 14 vowel phonemes and 25 consonant phonemes. The vowel phonemes can be grouped as pairs of short and long vowels, e.g. o and ó. Most of these pairs have a similar pronunciation, only varying significantly in their duration. However, the pairs /<á> and
| Bilabial | Labio- dental |
Alveolar | Post- alveolar |
Palatal | Velar | Glottal | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nasal | m | n | ɲ | ||||
| Plosive | p b | t d | k ɡ | ||||
| Affricate | t͡s d͡z | t͡ʃ d͡ʒ | c͡ç ɟ͡ʝ | ||||
| Fricative | f v | s z | ʃ ʒ | h | |||
| Trill | r | ||||||
| Approximant | j | ||||||
| Lateral | l |
Consonant length is also distinctive in Hungarian. Most of the consonant phonemes can occur as geminates.
The sound voiced palatal plosive /ɟ/, written
Primary stress is always on the first syllable of a word, as with its cousin Finnish and neighboring languages, Slovak (standard dialect) and Czech. There is secondary stress on other syllables in compounds, e.g. viszontlátásra ("goodbye") pronounced /ˈvisontˌlaːtaːʃrɒ/. Elongated vowels in non-initial syllables may seem to be stressed to the ear of an English speaker, since length and stress correlate in English.
Front-back vowel harmony is an important feature of Hungarian phonology.
Single /r/s are tapped, like the Spanish pero; double /r/s are trilled, like the Spanish perro.
Read more about this topic: Hungarian Language