Hungarian participles

Participles let Hungarian pack a whole relative clause into a single adjective: a könyvet olvasó fiú is "the boy (who is) reading the book". They are everywhere in written Hungarian and in plenty of everyday words, from tanuló ("student") to zárva ("closed"). This page covers every participle, how to build it, and how to arrange the words around it.

The participles at a glance

All of them attach to the verb stem, with -ik dropped, and follow vowel harmony with only a back and a front variant. Like other adjectives, attributive participles never agree with their noun: a futó emberek, not *a futók emberek.

Present participle: -ó/-ő

Add -ó to back-vowel stems and -ő to front-vowel stems. The result describes someone or something doing the action at the time of the main verb.

• a síró gyerek the crying child (sír)
• a dolgozó nők working women (dolgozik)
• a bejövő hívások incoming calls (bejön)
• A pályaudvaron várakozó utasok türelmetlenek voltak. The passengers waiting at the station were impatient.

Irregular verbs use their special stems (see irregular verbs): evő, ivó, tevő, vevő, vivő, hívő ("believer", from hisz), levő/lévő (from van), menő, jövő, alvó, fekvő.

Present participles as nouns

Many present participles have become ordinary nouns, often with a specialized meaning. As nouns they do take plural and case endings.

The "for sale" meaning of eladó is one to know when flat hunting: Eladó lakás is "Flat for sale", Kiadó szoba is "Room to let".

Past participle: -t/-tt

The past participle has the same form as the third person singular indefinite past tense: írt, kért, olvasott, látott, főzött, készített, tanult. Context shows which one you have: before a noun it is a participle.

• Péter olvasott. Péter was reading. (verb)
• a sokat olvasott könyv the much-read book (participle)

Passive or active?

With a transitive verb, the past participle is passive: the noun is what the action was done to. With an intransitive verb, usually one with a prefix, it is active: the noun is who did it.

Hungarian cooking vocabulary is full of past participles: rántott hús ("breaded meat"), töltött káposzta ("stuffed cabbage"), főtt tojás ("boiled egg", from fő), sült krumpli ("chips, fries", from sül).

Naming the agent

To say who did the action, use által ("by"), with personal forms általam, általad, általa:

• a Péter által írt levél the letter written by Péter
• az általam javasolt megoldás the solution I proposed

A more literary alternative uses a possessive-like -ta/-te form with a third-person agent: a Petőfi írta versek ("the poems Petőfi wrote"), a Kodály gyűjtötte népdalok ("the folk songs collected by Kodály").

Future participle: -andó/-endő

This participle expresses necessity: "which is to be done". It is typical of written, official and instructional language.

• Fizetendő összeg: 12 500 Ft Amount payable: 12,500 forints
• a kitöltendő mezők the fields to be filled in
• a megoldandó problémák the problems to be solved
• A díj előre fizetendő. The fee is payable in advance.

Two forms from irregular verbs are everyday words: teendő ("task, thing to do", from tesz; a mai teendők, "today's to-do list") and leendő ("future, to-be", from van; a leendő férjem, "my husband-to-be").

Negative participle: -atlan/-etlen

This suffix means "not (yet) ...-ed" and is added to the verb stem, keeping any prefix: olvasatlan ("unread"), megoldatlan ("unsolved"), befejezetlen ("unfinished"), mosatlan ("unwashed"; a mosatlan edény, "the dirty dishes"), ismeretlen ("unknown"), váratlan ("unexpected"). Some are idiomatic: íratlan szabály ("unwritten rule"), hallatlan ("unheard-of, outrageous"). With -ul/-ül they become adverbs: váratlanul ("unexpectedly").

Adverbial participle: -va/-ve, -ván/-vén and "be van zárva"

Manner: how something is done

-va (back) and -ve (front) turn a verb into an adverb describing the manner or accompanying circumstance of the main action.

• Állva tapsoltak. They gave a standing ovation.
• Nevetve mesélte el. She told the story laughing.
• Sírva fakadt. He burst into tears.
• Őszintén szólva nem tetszett. Frankly speaking, I didn't like it.
• Figyelembe véve az időjárást, maradjunk otthon. Taking the weather into account, let's stay at home.

State: van + -va/-ve

With van, the adverbial participle describes a resulting state, much like the English "is closed", "is done". This is the most common way to express a passive-like state in Hungarian, and no agent is mentioned.

• Az ajtó be van zárva. The door is locked.
• A bolt vasárnap zárva van. The shop is closed on Sundays.
• Le van foglalva ez a hely? Is this seat taken?
• Minden el van intézve. Everything is sorted.
• Nagyon meg vagyok elégedve. I'm very satisfied.
• Mire hazaérsz, meg lesz főzve a vacsora. By the time you get home, dinner will be cooked.

The prefix follows the usual prefix rules, treating van like an auxiliary: neutral be van zárva, but negated nincs bezárva (with nem van becoming nincs, see van and nincs) and questioned Miért van bezárva?

Do not use the -t/-tt form as a predicate for a state: A bolt bezárt means "The shop closed" (an event, past tense), not "The shop is closed".

Formal -ván/-vén

The longer -ván/-vén belongs to formal and literary style. It usually expresses an earlier action or a reason: Hazaérvén azonnal lefeküdt ("Having arrived home, he went straight to bed"), Nem lévén más választásom, elfogadtam ("Having no other choice, I accepted"). In everyday speech a clause with miután ("after") or mivel ("since") is more natural.

Building participial phrases (and avoiding errors)

Hungarian puts everything that depends on the participle in front of it: objects, adverbs, place phrases, even the negation. The participle comes last, right before the noun. English does the opposite.

Read such phrases from the noun backwards, or turn them into relative clauses: a levelet író lány = a lány, aki a levelet írja. With a prefixed participle, nem splits the prefix off, but unlike in a finite clause the prefix stays in front, before nem: a meg nem írt levél ("the unwritten letter"), egy soha el nem küldött üzenet ("a message never sent").

Common learner errors

1. Putting the object after the participle: *az író levelet lány → a levelet író lány.
2. Making the participle agree: *a futók gyerekek → a futó gyerekek.
3. Using the present participle for a completed action: a megérkező vendégek are guests arriving; guests who have arrived are a megérkezett vendégek.
4. Using -t/-tt for a state: "The window is open" is Az ablak nyitva van, not *Az ablak nyitott van.
5. Overusing -andó in speech: in conversation, say amit meg kell csinálni ("what has to be done") or tennivaló instead of elvégzendő feladat.

Sources and further reading

• Carol H. Rounds, Hungarian: An Essential Grammar (2nd ed., Routledge, 2009), chapter on participles
• István Kenesei, Robert M. Vago and Anna Fenyvesi, Hungarian (Descriptive Grammars series, Routledge, 1998), on non-finite verb forms
• Katalin É. Kiss, The Syntax of Hungarian (Cambridge University Press, 2002), on participial phrases
• Magyar Tudományos Akadémia, A magyar helyesírás szabályai (12th ed., Akadémiai Kiadó, 2015), on spelling compounds such as ennivaló

Frequently asked questions