Counting in Hungarian

Language overview

Hungarian (magyar nyelv) is a Uralic language that belongs to the Finno-Ugric language group. Spoken in Hungary and in parts of neighbouring countries (namely Austria, Croatia, Romania, northern Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, and western Ukraine), Hungarian counts about 13 million speakers.

Hungarian numbering rules

Now that you’ve had a gist of the most useful numbers, let’s move to the writing rules for the tens, the compound numbers, and why not the hundreds, the thousands and beyond (if possible).

• Digits from zero to nine are rendered by specific words, namely nulla [0], egy [1], kettő [2], három [3], négy [4], öt [5], hat [6], hét [7], nyolc [8], and kilenc [9].
• Ten, twenty and thirthy are irregular. From forty to ninety, tens are formed starting with the multiplier digit, suffixed by either ven (front affix) or van (back affix). Thus, we have: tíz [10], húsz [20], harminc [30], negyven [40], ötven [50], hatvan [60], hetven [70], nyolcvan [80], and kilencven [90].
• Compound numbers are formed starting with the ten, directly followed by the unit, but compound numbers from eleven to twenty-nine are slightly different. When compound, tíz [10] turns into tizen, and húsz [20], into huszon (e.g.: tizennégy [14], huszonhat [26]).
• Compound numbers above thirty are formed starting with the ten, directly followed by the unit, with no space (e.g.: harminckilenc [39], kilencvennyolc [98]).
• Hundreds are formed starting with the multiplier, directly followed by the word for hundred (száz), with no space, except for one hundred: száz [100], kétszáz or kettőszáz (formal) [200], háromszáz [300], négyszáz [400], ötszáz [500], hatszáz [600], hétszáz [700], nyolcszáz [800], and kilencszáz [900].
• Thousands are formed starting with the multiplier, directly followed by the word for thousand (ezer), with no space, except for one thousand: ezer [1,000], kétezer or kettőezer (formal) [2,000], háromezer [3,000], négyezer [4,000], ötezer [5,000], hatezer [6,000], hétezer [7,000], nyolcezer [8,000], and kilencezer [9,000].
• The Hungarian language follows the long scale naming convention for large numbers, where every new word greater than a million is one million times bigger than the previous term. Thus, we have millió [million, 10⁶], milliárd [billion, 10⁹], billió [trillion, 10¹²], billiárd [quadrillion, 10¹⁵], trillió [quintillion, 10¹⁸]…

Write a number in full in Hungarian

Let’s move now to the practice of the numbering rules in Hungarian. Will you guess how to write a number in full? Enter a number and try to write it down in your head, or maybe on a piece of paper, before displaying the result.

Books

Finno-Ugrian languages

Erzya, Estonian, Finnish, Hungarian, Ingrian, Karelian, Kven, Livonian, Mansi, Udmurt, Veps, and Votic.

Other supported languages

As the other currently supported languages are too numerous to list extensively here, please select a language from the full list of supported languages.