If you’re just starting to learn Hungarian, you’ve probably noticed something pretty quickly: the words can get really, really long. You might see a monster of a word like megszentségteleníthetetlenségeskedéseitekért and think, “How could anyone possibly learn this language?”

Don’t worry! While that word is an extreme example used to show off, it perfectly illustrates a key feature of Hungarian grammar.

What’s the secret?

Hungarian is what linguists call an “agglutinative” language. That’s a fancy term, but the idea is simple. It comes from a Latin word that means “to glue together.”

And that’s exactly what we do in Hungarian. We take a main word (a “root”) and glue different endings, called suffixes, onto it to build meaning.

This is very different from English, where you use lots of separate little words like “in,” “on,” “to,” “with,” “my,” and “for.” In Hungarian, those ideas are often just a few letters glued to the end of a noun or verb.

Let’s break down how this works.

What does ‘agglutinative’ really mean?

Think of it like building with LEGOs.

In English, to say “in my house,” you use three separate blocks: in + my + house.

In Hungarian, we have one main block, ház (house), and we attach smaller blocks (suffixes) directly to it to create a single, longer word.

Here, ház is the root word for “house,” -am is a suffix for “my,” and -ban is a suffix for “in.”

Root Word + Suffix + Suffix = One Long Word ház + am + ban = házamban

Once you learn to spot the root word and recognize the suffixes, these long words stop being scary. Instead, they become little puzzles that you can easily take apart to understand their meaning. This system is actually very logical and consistent.

Let’s build a Hungarian word, step-by-step

Let’s take that same root word, ház (house), and see how we can build different meanings by adding suffixes. This is one of the first things you’ll get used to when learning Hungarian vocabulary.

Here’s how it works in practice:

See the pattern? We just keep “gluing” new pieces of information onto the end. Instead of learning a bunch of separate prepositions, you learn a set of suffixes that you can attach to almost any noun.

Here are a few sentences to see it in context:

Vowel harmony: The ‘glue’ that holds it all together

Now, you might be wondering if the suffix is always the same. For example, is the ending for “in” always -ban?

Almost! This is where another core concept of Hungarian comes in: vowel harmony.

The basic idea is that the vowels in the suffixes have to “harmonize” or match the vowels in the root word. Hungarian vowels are split into two main groups:

• Back vowels: a, á, o, ó, u, ú
• Front vowels: e, é, i, í, ö, ő, ü, ű

If a word contains mostly back vowels, its suffixes will also use back vowels. If it has front vowels, the suffixes use front vowels.

Let’s look at our suffix for “in,” which has two forms: -ban (with a back vowel) and -ben (with a front vowel).

The word ház has a back vowel (á), so we use the back-vowel suffix:

But what about the word kert (garden)? It has a front vowel (e), so we use the front-vowel suffix:

This might seem complicated at first, but it makes the language sound more melodic and, with practice, becomes completely natural. You’ll develop an ear for what “sounds right.”

Does this make Hungarian hard to learn?

Not necessarily. It just makes it different from English.

Think about the positives:

• It’s logical. Once you learn the suffixes and the rules of vowel harmony, the system is very predictable. There are far fewer exceptions than you find in English grammar.
• Fewer “small words”. You don’t have to worry as much about which preposition to use (e.g., in, on, at). The suffix choice is usually clear.
• Clear meaning. All the information is packed neatly into one word, which can make sentences feel very precise.

The biggest challenge for beginners is getting used to thinking this way. You have to train your brain to look for the root word inside a longer word and then decode the endings.

My advice is to not be intimidated by the long words. When you see one, don’t panic! Just try to find the root you recognize and look at the letters on the end. You’ll be surprised how quickly you start to recognize the patterns.

Learning Hungarian is about learning a new way to build a language, one piece at a time. So embrace the glue, and have fun building words