Expressing time and dates correctly is an essential part of daily life in Hungary.

You’ll need these basic skills to read train schedules, book appointments, or meet up with friends.

Hungarian uses a very logical system for dates, but telling time has a few unique quirks.

I’ll show you exactly how to read the clock and write the calendar in Hungarian.

Telling the time in Hungarian

To ask for the time, you say hány óra van? (what time is it?).

The word óra means hour, clock, or watch.

The word van means “is”.

When telling the time on the hour, you simply say the number followed by óra.

Hungarian doesn’t use AM and PM.

Instead, people either use the 24-hour clock (military time) or specify the time of day before the hour.

Fractions of an hour work a bit differently than they do in English.

Instead of looking back at the past hour, Hungarians look forward to the upcoming hour.

The word fél means “half”.

Saying fél kettő literally translates to “half of two”, meaning it’s 1:30.

The word negyed means “quarter”.

Saying negyed kettő means “a quarter of two”, which is 1:15.

The word háromnegyed means “three-quarters”.

Saying háromnegyed kettő means “three-quarters of two”, which is 1:45.

Here’s a quick summary table using the upcoming 2 o’clock hour as an example.

Times of the day

To clarify morning or evening, you add the time of day before the hour.

This acts as the Hungarian replacement for English AM and PM suffixes.

Here are the main times of the day in Hungarian.

Here’s how you use these words in a sentence.

Writing dates in Hungarian

Hungarian dates are written in descending order.

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

The format is always YYYY. MM. DD.

You must place a period after the year and after the day.

Notice that months are never capitalized in Hungarian.

When you want to say that something happens “on” a specific date, you must add a suffix to the number.

This usually looks like -án or -én attached to the end of the day.

Months and days of the week

Learning the calendar vocabulary is very straightforward.

Hungarian months are very similar to their English equivalents.

The days of the week are a bit more unique.

Just like the months, the days of the week are never capitalized in Hungarian sentences.

To say you’re doing something “on” a particular day, you also add suffixes to these words.