The secret of the Hungarian vocabulary

Before everything else

Writing my first book about the essence of Hungarian words, I suddenly realized that I mostly counteract the sense of my text by using the hyphenation rule learned in the school. What it looks like speaking about the words ‘szár’ or ‘mer’ as independent words and then at line-end I hyphenate them as ordered: ‘szá-raz’ and ‘me-reng’ (dry and muse). Where did the words ‘szár’and ‘mer’ go?

In reality, it is ridiculous to hyphenate the following words that way: ké-pet (picture in acc.), lé-pés (step), sö-pör, kö-röz csó-kol (he sweeps, circles, kisses). This method – ordered by the Scientific Academy – does break the words into unrecognizable pieces.

We call shepherd ‘juh-ász’, he takes care of ‘juh’ (sheeps), the bar tender takes care of tap = csap > he is called ‘csap-os’, ‘kap-us’ (goal-keeper), he is ügy-es-en (skillfully) mer-ész (bold).

And our old spelling rules encouraged us to hyphenate by using sense. Intelligence is a virtue by doing hyphenation by sense.

The in most other languages used automatic hyphenation hides from view of the Hungarian reader the sense, beauty and expression of his from other’s quite differently built and organized language.

Our words’ structure is clear and full of sense up to the last sound. Thus, we are able to hyphenate without hurting our words’ sense. For example: folyamat: > foly > folyam > folyamat , therefore: foly-am-at is the intelligent way of the hyphenation (flow> river> proceeding).

Let’s see more examples: (rob) rab-ol not ra-bol, (words) szav-ak not sza-vak, (fleshy) hús-os not hú-sos, (measure) mér-et not mé-ret, (reading) olv-as not ol-vas, (numerous) szám-os not szá-mos….

If somebody knows that kenőcs <kεnœch>(salb) is for kenés <kεnesh> (smearing) than he can present his/her knowledge and hyphenate ken–et (unction), ken-és (smear-ing), kesz–ken-ő > kéz–ken-ő (hand-ker-chief). This way, people can present their knowledge about their mother language.

We present in this book the word-roots this way: temp, domb, and identities: ‘tumour’ = tömör, ‘grandia’ = görönygy. Basic roots are presented as: HO, RO, MAL….