Editing Hungarian language (section)

==Writing system==
{{Main|Hungarian alphabet|Hungarian orthography|Hungarian Braille}}
{{Unreferenced section|date=June 2018}}
[[File:Tihany 1055.PNG|thumb|The oldest surviving words written in Hungarian, from the founding declaration of the [[Tihany|Benedictine Abbey of Tihany]], 1055. {{br}} It reads "''feheruuaru rea meneh hodu utu rea''" (in modern Hungarian "''Fehérvárra menő hadi útra''", meaning "''to the military road going to [[Székesfehérvár|Fehérvár]]''").]]
[[File:A 4-es táblája.jpg|thumb|Hungarian-language road sign]]
[[File:Codex of munchen - bible in hungarian.jpg|thumb|Medieval Hungarian book (a copy of the [[Hussite Bible]]), 1466]]
[[File:2013.09.09 Balaton (3).JPG|thumb|Street sign with a transcription to the [[Old Hungarian script|runic writing system]], used before [[Stephen I of Hungary|Saint Stephen's]] State formation]]
The Hungarian language was originally written in right-to-left [[Old Hungarian script|Old Hungarian runes]], superficially similar in appearance to the better-known [[futhark]] runes but unrelated. After [[Stephen I of Hungary]] established the [[Kingdom of Hungary]] in the year 1000, the old system was gradually discarded in favour of the Latin alphabet and left-to-right order. Although now not used at all in everyday life, the old script is still known and practised by some enthusiasts.

Modern Hungarian is written using an expanded [[Latin script|Latin alphabet]] and has a [[phoneme|phonemic]] orthography, i.e. pronunciation can generally be predicted from the written language. In addition to the standard letters of the Latin alphabet, Hungarian uses several modified Latin characters to represent the additional vowel sounds of the language. These include letters with acute accents ''(á, é, í, ó, ú)'' to represent long vowels, and umlauts (''ö'' and ''ü'') and their long counterparts [[Double acute accent|''ő'' and ''ű'']] to represent front vowels. Sometimes (usually as a result of a technical glitch on a computer) {{angle bracket|ô}} or {{angle bracket|õ}} is used for {{angle bracket|ő}}, and {{angle bracket|û}} for {{angle bracket|ű}}. This is often due to the limitations of the [[ISO/IEC 8859-1|Latin-1 / ISO-8859-1 code page]]. These letters are not part of the Hungarian language and are considered misprints. Hungarian can be properly represented with the [[ISO/IEC 8859-2|Latin-2 / ISO-8859-2 code page]], but this [[code page]] is not always available. (Hungarian is the only language using both {{angle bracket|ő}} and {{angle bracket|ű}}.) [[Unicode]] includes them, and so they can be used on the Internet.

Additionally, the digraphs (letter pairs) [[Hungarian ny|{{angle bracket|ny}}]], [[Hungarian ty|{{angle bracket|ty}}]], and [[Hungarian gy|{{angle bracket|gy}}]] are used to represent the palatal consonants {{IPA|/ɲ/}}, {{IPA|/c/}}, and {{IPA|/ɟ/}} (roughly analogous to the "d+y" sounds in British "''du''ke" or American "woul''d y''ou")—produced using a similar mechanism as the letter "d" when pronounced with the tongue pointing to the [[palate]].

Hungarian uses {{angle bracket|s}} for {{IPA|/ʃ/}} and [[Hungarian sz|{{angle bracket|sz}}]] for {{IPA|/s/}}, which is the reverse of [[Polish language|Polish]] usage. The letter [[Hungarian zs|{{angle bracket|zs}}]] is {{IPA|/ʒ/}} and [[Hungarian cs|{{angle bracket|cs}}]] is {{IPA|/t͡ʃ/}}. These digraphs are considered single letters in the alphabet. The letter [[Hungarian ly|{{angle bracket|ly}}]] is also a "single letter digraph", but is pronounced like {{IPA|/j/}} (English {{angle bracket|y}}) and appears mostly in old words. The letters [[Hungarian dz|{{angle bracket|dz}}]] and [[Hungarian dzs|{{angle bracket|dzs}}]] {{IPA|/d͡ʒ/}} are exotic remnants and are hard to find even in longer texts. Some examples still in common use are ''madzag'' ("string"), ''edzeni'' ("to train (athletically)") and ''dzsungel'' ("jungle").

Sometimes additional information is required for partitioning words with digraphs: házszám ("street number") = ''ház'' ("house") + ''szám'' ("number"), not an unintelligible ''házs'' + ''zám''.

Hungarian distinguishes between long and short vowels, with long vowels written with acutes. It also distinguishes between long and short consonants, with long consonants being doubled. For example, ''lenni'' ("to be"), ''hozzászólás'' ("comment"). The digraphs, when pronounced as long consonants, are written as trigraphs: {{angle bracket|sz}} + {{angle bracket|sz}} = {{angle bracket|ssz}}, e.g. ''művésszel'' ("with an artist"). But when a word is hyphenated at such a doubled digraph, the digraph is written out in full both before and after the hyphen. For example, ("with a bus"):
: ... ''busz-''
: ''szal''...

When the first lexeme of a compound ends in a digraph and the second lexeme starts with the same digraph, both digraphs are written out: {{lang|hu|jegy}} + {{lang|hu|gyűrű}} = {{lang|hu|jegygyűrű}} ("engagement/wedding ring", {{lang|hu|jegy}} means "sign", "mark". The term {{lang|hu|jegyben lenni/járni}} means "to be engaged"; {{lang|hu|gyűrű}} means "ring").

Almost all trigraphs found in Hungarian text are the result of doubled digraphs, but there are a few exceptions: {{lang|hu|tizennyolc}} ("eighteen") is a concatenation of {{Lang|hu|tizen}} + {{Lang|hu|nyolc}}. Hungarian has [[minimal pair]]s of single vs. double consonants, for example {{Lang|hu|tol}} ("push") vs. {{Lang|hu|toll}} ("feather" or "pen").

While to English speakers they may seem unusual at first, once the new orthography and pronunciation are learned, written Hungarian is almost completely phonemic (except for etymological spellings and "ly, j" representing {{IPA|/j/}}).