Learning to count in Hungarian is a practical first step for any beginner.

This guide breaks down exactly how Hungarian numbers work.

You’ll learn how to count, write dates, and tell time.

I’ll provide simple charts and examples to make the rules easy to understand.

Hungarian numbers from 0 to 10

The best place to start is with the basic numbers from zero to ten.

These form the building blocks for all other numbers in Hungarian.

Notice that the number two has two different forms: kettő and két.

You use két when it’s directly followed by a noun.

You use kettő when the number stands alone, such as when you’re counting or reading a phone number.

On the telephone, Hungarians will always say kettő instead of két to avoid confusing it with hét (seven), which sounds very similar.

Counting to 100 and beyond

Once you know the numbers up to ten, counting higher is very straightforward.

To make the numbers from 11 to 19, you take the prefix tizen- (which means “on ten”) and add the basic number.

The twenties follow the exact same pattern, but you use the prefix huszon- instead.

Twenty by itself is húsz.

Twenty-one becomes huszonegy, twenty-two is huszonkettő, and so on.

Here are the rest of the tens up to one hundred.

From thirty onward, you simply combine the tens word directly with the single digit.

There’s no special prefix required like there is for the tens and twenties.

Thirty-five is simply harmincöt.

Fifty-eight is simply ötvennyolc.

Ordinal numbers in Hungarian

Ordinal numbers tell you the position of something in a list (first, second, third).

In Hungarian, these are mostly formed by adding the suffix -dik to the end of a number.

The numbers one and two are irregular, just like in English.

When writing ordinal numbers as digits in Hungarian, you place a period immediately after the number.

For example, “1st” is written as “1.” and “2nd” is written as “2.”.

How to write and say dates

The Hungarian date format goes from the largest unit of time to the smallest.

You always write the year first, followed by the month, and then the day.

A period is placed after the year and after the day.

Months aren’t capitalized in Hungarian.

When speaking the date aloud, you use the ordinal number for the day.

Notice that we added an “-a” to the end of harmadik.

This suffix is required when stating the day of the month.

Telling time in Hungarian

There are a few basic phrases you need to ask about the time.

To give the exact hour, you simply state the number followed by the word óra (hour).

When dealing with half hours and quarter hours, the Hungarian logic is completely different from English.

Hungarian time looks toward the upcoming hour instead of looking back at the past hour.

The word fél means “half”.

In Hungarian, 2:30 is stated as “halfway to three”.

This logic also applies to quarters.

The word negyed means “quarter”, and háromnegyed means “three-quarters”.

For 4:15, a Hungarian says it’s a quarter of the way to five.

For 8:45, a Hungarian says it’s three-quarters of the way to nine.

If you want to specify minutes, you use the word perc (minute) and look at the past hour, which is much closer to English logic.