Hungarian cases: the complete guide

Where English uses a preposition (in the house, with a friend), Hungarian adds a suffix to the end of the noun: a házban, egy baráttal. These suffixes are the Hungarian cases. This page lists all of them in one table, shows how they fit into a surprisingly logical system, and gives you a procedure for picking the right one from an English sentence.

What a case is in Hungarian

A case is a suffix that tells you what job a noun is doing in the sentence: subject, object, recipient, location, instrument and so on. Hungarian is agglutinative (see how Hungarian words are built), so a case suffix sits at the very end of the word, after any plural or possessive suffix:

• ház + ak + ban → házakban in houses
• ház + am + ban → házamban in my house
• ház + aim + ban → házaimban in my houses

Three facts make the system far easier than the number "18" suggests:

• There are no noun classes. Unlike Latin, Russian or German, Hungarian has one set of endings for all nouns. Learning a case means learning one suffix (in two or three vowel-harmony variants), not a declension table per gender.
• Endings are regular and transparent. The inessive is always -ban/-ben. Stem changes exist (ló → lovat, kéz → kezet), but the suffixes themselves stay recognisable.
• Nine of the cases form a grid. Learn the logic of the local cases once and you have half the system.

Adjectives before a noun do not take the case suffix (a nagy házban, "in the big house"), but demonstratives do agree: ebben a házban ("in this house"), azzal a tollal ("with that pen").

Master table of the 18 cases

This is the count used by most textbooks. The examples use ház (house, a back-vowel word) and kert (garden, a front-vowel word), so you can see both harmony variants. Try any other noun in the suffix builder.

Note the doubled consonants in házzal, kerttel, házzá, kertté: the v of -val/-vel and -vá/-vé turns into a copy of the last consonant. This is explained in full in the instrumental article.

Three groups: grammatical, local and the rest

Grammatical cases

The nominative (subject), accusative (object) and dative (indirect object and possessor) express the core roles of a sentence. The accusative matters twice over, because a definite object also changes the verb ending (see definite and indefinite conjugation).

The nine local cases

The heart of the system is a 3x3 grid. The rows say what kind of place it is (inside, surface, proximity); the columns say whether you are there, moving to it or moving away from it.

A memory trick: every "from" suffix ends in -l (-ból, -ról, -tól). The full logic, including metaphorical uses, is on the local cases page.

The remaining cases

The causal-final -ért, translative -vá/-vé, terminative -ig, essive-formal -ként and temporal -kor have narrower jobs. They are covered together with rarer suffixes such as -ul/-ül (magyarul) and -nként (fejenként) in the minor cases. The instrumental is used constantly and deserves its own study.

How case suffixes follow vowel harmony

Most case suffixes change their vowel to match the word (see vowel harmony). There are three types:

Four practical rules cover almost everything:

1. Back vowels anywhere usually win. A word with a, á, o, ó, u, ú normally takes back suffixes even if it also contains i, í, e, é: papírban, kávéval, taxiban.
2. For three-form suffixes, look at the last vowel. If it is ö, ő, ü, ű, choose -ön/-höz: földön, bőrhöz. But üveg ends in e, so üvegen, üveghez.
3. Final a and e lengthen before a suffix: alma → almában, almával; kefe → kefében, kefével.
4. A few neutral-vowel words are back: híd (bridge) gives hídon, hídra, hídhoz. These must be memorised.

Check any word with the vowel harmony checker.

Why sources say 17, 18 or more than 20 cases

You will see different numbers because grammarians draw the line between "case" and "derivational suffix" in different places. The reasons:

• The nominative. It has no suffix, so some lists leave it out and get 17.
• Limited suffixes. -kor attaches only to time words, so some lists drop it; others keep it and drop something else.
• Semi-productive suffixes. -ul/-ül (magyarul), -stul/-stül (családostul), -nként (fejenként), -nta/-nte (hetente), -képp(en) (ajándékképpen) and the old locative -t/-tt (Pécsett) behave partly like cases. Counting them takes the total well past 20.
• The possessive -é. Péteré ("Peter's") is sometimes treated as a case, sometimes as a possessive form (see possession with -nak and -é).

Case suffix or postposition?

Hungarian also has postpositions: separate words placed after the noun, such as előtt (in front of) or nélkül (without). They do the same semantic work as cases but behave differently:

Several postpositions require a case on the noun: a házzal szemben (opposite the house), a városon kívül (outside the city). See Hungarian postpositions for the full list.

Which case do I need? A procedure from English prepositions

English prepositions do not map one-to-one onto Hungarian cases, but you can get the right answer most of the time by asking three questions in order.

1. Is the noun the subject or the direct object? Subject: no suffix. Object: -t. (Careful: "have" sentences use the nominative, Van egy kutyám.)
2. Is it a place or a person you are at, going to or coming from? Then use the local grid: decide the row (inside, surface, near) and then the column (where, to, from).
3. Otherwise, look up the preposition in the table below. If the noun is governed by a verb (vár valakire, "wait for someone"), the verb decides, and you must learn the pair.

Test yourself on these choices with the case quiz.

Typical learner errors

• Using "in" for every city. Budapestben is wrong; Hungarian towns mostly take -on. See -ban or -on with place names.
• Mixing up location and direction. Hol vagy? A boltban. ("Where are you? In the shop.") versus Hová mész? A boltba. ("Where are you going? To the shop.")
• Translating "to" as -hoz for places. You go a boltba (into the shop), not a bolthoz (up to the shop's door), unless that is what you mean.
• Forgetting the accusative after numbers and egy. Kérek egy kávét, not egy kávé.
• Using the verb's English preposition. "Think of" is gondol valamire (onto), "be afraid of" is fél valamitől (from). Learn verbs with their case.

Sources and further reading

• Carol H. Rounds, Hungarian: An Essential Grammar (2nd ed., Routledge, 2009), chapters on nouns and case suffixes
• István Kenesei, Robert M. Vago and Anna Fenyvesi, Hungarian (Descriptive Grammars series, Routledge, 1998), section on case morphology
• Miklós Törkenczy, Hungarian Verbs and Essentials of Grammar (2nd ed., McGraw-Hill, 2008)
• Magyar Tudományos Akadémia, A magyar helyesírás szabályai (12th ed., Akadémiai Kiadó, 2015), on spelling suffixed forms

Frequently asked questions