Hungarian grammar relies heavily on noun cases to show how words relate to each other in a sentence.

Instead of using separate words like prepositions, Hungarian attaches small endings directly to the nouns.

This system consists of 18 different noun cases.

You only need to master a handful of these cases to start having meaningful conversations.

I’ll break down exactly how these cases work and show you the most important ones to learn first.

How Hungarian noun cases work

English uses prepositions like “in”, “on”, or “at” before a noun.

Hungarian is an agglutinative language, which means it glues suffixes to the end of a noun instead.

If you want to say “in the house” in English, you use three separate words.

In Hungarian, you take the word for house and add the suffix for “in” directly to the end of it.

You also need to be aware of a rule called vowel harmony.

Vowel harmony means that suffixes in Hungarian change their spelling to match the vowels inside the root word.

If a word has deep sounding vowels (like a, o, u), it takes a back-vowel suffix.

If a word has high sounding vowels (like e, i, ö, ü), it takes a front-vowel suffix.

Because of this, most Hungarian noun cases have two or three slightly different versions.

The nominative case (the base form)

The nominative case is the dictionary form of a word.

This case has no suffix at all.

You use the nominative case when a noun is the main subject performing the action in a sentence.

In this sentence, the apple (alma) is the subject, so its ending doesn’t change.

The accusative case (the direct object)

The accusative case is used to mark the direct object of a sentence.

The direct object is the noun that receives the action of the verb.

If you read a book, the book is receiving the action, so it gets the accusative suffix.

The ending for the accusative case is the letter -t.

Sometimes you need to add a connecting vowel before the -t to make the word easier to pronounce.

These connecting vowels are usually -ot, -et, -öt, or -at.

Here, könyv (book) becomes könyvet because it’s the object being read.

The location cases (where things are)

Hungarian uses highly specific cases to describe physical locations.

Instead of one generic word for “at”, Hungarian divides location into being inside something, on the surface of something, or right next to something.

Here are the three main location cases you need to know.

If you’re inside a restaurant, you use the -ban/-ben case.

The motion cases (moving to and from)

Just like location, Hungarian uses specific noun cases to describe movement.

The case you choose depends on whether you’re moving towards something, into something, or away from it.

Here are the most common motion cases.

Notice how similar the suffix for moving into something (-ba/-be) is to being inside something (-ban/-ben).

It’s crucial to pronounce the final “n” clearly when talking about static locations.

The dative case (giving to someone)

The dative case expresses to whom or for whom an action is being done.

This translates to “to” or “for” in English.

The suffixes for the dative case are -nak and -nek.

You use this case when you give a gift to a friend or send an email to a colleague.

In this example, the dog (kutya) is receiving the water, so we add -nak to make it kutyának.

Practicing these six foundational cases will make understanding Hungarian much easier.