Hungarian orthography () consists of rules defining the standard written form of the Hungarian language. It includes the spelling of lexical words, proper nouns and foreign words (loanwords) in themselves, with suffixes, and in compounds, as well as the hyphenation of words, punctuation, abbreviations, collation (alphabetical ordering), and other information (such as how to write dates).
Alphabet
Hungarian is written with the Hungarian alphabet, an extended version of the Latin alphabet. Its letters usually indicate sounds, except when morphemes are to be marked (see below). The extensions include consonants written with digraphs or a trigraph and vowel letters marked with diacritics. Long consonants are marked by a double letter (e.g. > and > ) while long vowels get an acute accent (e.g. > ) or their umlaut is replaced with a double acute accent ( > ). Only the first letter of digraphs and of the trigraph is written in upper case when capitalizing in normal text, but all letters are capitalized in acronyms and all-uppercase inscriptions.
The letters q, w, x, y are only part of the extended Hungarian alphabet and they are rarely used in Hungarian words – they are normally replaced with their usual phonetic equivalents kv, v, ksz, i (only the x is relatively common, e.g. ). Ch is not a part of the alphabet but it still exists in some words (like , 'technology' or 'technique'). In traditional surnames, other digraphs may occur as well, both for vowels and consonants.
Four principles of spelling
Hungarian orthography is based on four main principles: following pronunciation, word analysis (reflecting the constituting morphemes), keeping traditions and simplification.
The first principle is that the Hungarian writing system is phonemic by default, i.e. letters correspond to phonemes (roughly, sounds) and vice versa. In some cases, however, vowel length or consonant length is not the same in writing as in pronunciation (e.g. 'mosquito', 'fight', 'animal', 'one').
Suffixed or compound words usually obey the second main principle, word analysis. This means that the original constituents (morphemes) of a word should be written the same way, regardless of pronunciation assimilations. This, however, applies only when the resulting pronunciation conforms to some regular pattern; irregular assimilations are reflected in writing too. For example, + ("you should leave [some]") is pronounced like "haggy", but written as according to the principle of word analysis. This is because the composition of and gives a long in Hungarian phonology anyway, so spelling out the original morphemes is considered clearer. By contrast + ('you should believe') is pronounced "higgy" and also written as , since this pronunciation cannot be regularly deduced from the morphemes and basic phonological rules. Compound words are generally written so that all constituents retain their spelling, but some compounds have become vague enough not to be considered true compounds any more, especially if one of the elements is obsolete. An example is 'glove', which originally comes from 'hand' and an obsolete and in this case the spelling no longer reflects the derivation.
The third principle, tradition, affects, for example, surnames, where many spellings predate the modern spelling rules of Hungarian. For example, "smith" may be spelt , or as a surname. Another example of tradition is that the digraph is still used despite the fact that it stands for the same sound as in today's standard Hungarian.
The fourth principle, simplification, affects only a handful of cases. If a common noun ending in a double consonant has a suffix beginning with the same consonant, the third instance is dropped, e.g. + > . This rule doesn't apply to given names or surnames, e.g. + > "from Bernadette", "Mrs. Wittmann": all three consecutive identical consonants are preserved, but a hyphen is inserted, just as in compounds and in suffixed proper names ( "chess group", "with Bonn").
The simplification principle is also applied to double digraphs at the border of suffixes, thus + becomes (e.g. + > "with Kovács"). However, there is no simplification in compounds: e.g. "bunch of keys". Also, in cases of suffix-like derivational elements such as and "-like", simplification is not applied to words ending in single digraphs, such as + > "wax-like", similarly to doubled forms: + > "jazz-like".
The rules concerning cases like (Hungarian given names) and cases like changed in 2015, with the 12th edition of the regulations being released. Prior to that, spellings like and were preferred.