De or hanem: which "but" do you use in Hungarian?

Use hanem only when you deny one thing and put the correct one in its place: Nem a postára megyek, hanem a boltba, "I'm not going to the post office but to the shop". Use de when both halves of the sentence are true: Finom, de erős, "It's tasty but strong". Three more words cover the other kinds of English "but": pedig for "while, whereas" (or "although"), and viszont and azonban for "however".

The rule: replace, or add?

English "but" does two jobs, and Hungarian gives each its own word. Ask: does the second half replace something you have just denied, or does it add a fact that stands next to the first one?

• Anna nem mérnök, hanem tanár. Anna isn't an engineer but a teacher. (teacher replaces engineer)
• Éva nem szép, de nagyon kedves. Éva isn't pretty, but she's very kind. (she is still not pretty; kind is added)

Both sentences contain nem,, which is why learners mix them up. The shortcut "after nem, use hanem" is wrong: the second sentence is negative and still takes de. What decides is whether the new item takes the place of the negated one. Wiktionary defines hanem as "but (instead)", used when the preceding clause contains a negative statement "and the following clause contains the correction needed to make it positive". The word itself is ha + nem.

The five "but" words in one table

Every contrast word a learner meets early, with its slot in the clause and the closest German word. A comma always comes before the contrasting clause.

In the Universal Dependencies Hungarian-Szeged treebank, a corpus of newspaper text, the ten most frequent coordinating conjunctions are, in order, és, is, s, de, pedig, azonban, hiszen, hanem, vagy, illetve. Four of our five are on that list; viszont is not.

Hanem: "not this, but that"

The shape is fixed: nem + the wrong item, comma, hanem + the right item. The two items match in form (if the first is in the accusative, so is the second), and the verb is normally not repeated.

• Nem a postára megyek, hanem a boltba. I'm not going to the post office but to the shop.
• Nem Péter jött, hanem Anna. It wasn't Péter who came, but Anna.
• Nem magyarul beszélek, hanem németül. It's not Hungarian I'm speaking, it's German.
• Nem dolgozik, hanem tanul. She isn't working, she's studying.

In the first three sentences nem stands directly before the denied element, which fills the slot right before the verb. That slot is the focus position, meaning "this one and not another", so a hanem correction is its natural continuation; *Nem a postára megyek, de a boltba is wrong. How nem negates single elements is covered on the negation page, and the same structure explains A kulcs nem itt van, hanem a táskában on the van and nincs page.

Nemcsak ... hanem ... is: "not only ... but also"

Here nothing is denied; the second item is added on top, and the particle is ("also") goes straight after it. Write nemcsak as one word.

• Nemcsak angolul beszél, hanem németül is. She speaks not only English but also German.
• Nemcsak olcsó, hanem jó is. It's not only cheap, it's good too.

De: both halves are true

De is the everyday "but": the first clause stays true, and the second limits it or runs against expectation.

• Finom, de erős. It's tasty but strong.
• Beteg vagyok, de dolgozom. I'm ill, but I'm working.
• Nem vagyok éhes, de egy kávét megiszom. I'm not hungry, but I'll have a coffee.

In the last sentence the negation stays true, so the word is de, and nem sits before the verb, not before a single element.

Pedig: "while, whereas", and "although"

Pedig changes meaning with its position, which most learner guides leave out. Wiktionary gives two senses, told apart by where the word stands.

After the first element: "while, whereas"

Placed after the first word or phrase of the second clause, like a clitic, pedig sets two parallel facts side by side. Wiktionary calls this "addition or mild contrast", and the closest English is "while" or "whereas". The first element is the new topic of the second clause.

• Péter a házban van, Juli pedig a kertben. Péter is in the house, whereas Juli is in the garden.
• A felnőttek beszélgettek, a gyerekek pedig játszottak. The adults were talking, while the children played.

English often translates this pedig as plain "and", and Wiktionary lists és as a synonym when it comes before the element. Two set phrases use it too: Péter van a házban, nem pedig Juli ("Péter is in the house, and not Juli"), the positive-first mirror image of a hanem sentence, and Sem Péter, sem pedig Juli nincs a házban ("Neither Péter nor Juli is in the house").

At the start of a clause: "although, and yet"

Move pedig to the front of its clause and it becomes concessive: the fact holds although something speaks against it.

• Eljött, pedig mondtam neki, hogy ne jöjjön. He came, although I told him not to.
• Nem eszi meg a kenyeret, pedig jó. He won't eat the bread, and yet it's good.
• Nem hiszem el. Pedig ez az igazság. I don't believe it. But it's the truth.

Viszont and azonban: "however"

Both mean "however, but" and, like pedig, can stand after the first element of their clause. The Hungarian Wikipedia article on conjunctions names pedig and viszont among the conjunctions that can or must stand inside the clause, with the example Én dolgoztam, te viszont csak henyéltél, "I worked, but you just lazed around".

• Drága, viszont nagyon jó. It's expensive, but on the other hand it's very good.
• Az ötlet jó. A megvalósítás azonban drága. The idea is good. The execution, however, is expensive.

Wiktionary glosses viszont as "however, but, still, on the other hand" and azonban as "but, however, nevertheless", with each listed as a synonym of de. The treebank ranking above shows azonban as the one you meet in newspaper prose; its German match is jedoch.

Viszont has a second life as an adverb meaning "likewise, the same to you": Minden jót kívánok! Én is viszont! ("All the best! Likewise!"). The same root is in Viszontlátásra, the formal goodbye covered on the formal and informal "you" page.

For German speakers: aber and sondern

German speakers already have the main rule: hanem is sondern, de is aber, and the split falls in the same place. Wiktionary's note on aber gives a pair that maps one-to-one onto Hungarian, and it is the best minimal pair for anyone:

• Nem pizzát vettünk, hanem hozzávalókat. Wir haben keine Pizza gekauft, sondern Zutaten.
• Nem vettünk pizzát, de vettünk hozzávalókat. Wir haben keine Pizza gekauft, aber Zutaten.

With hanem, nem sits before pizzát: ingredients instead. With de, nem negates the verb and a second fact is added. The same note points out that aber need not open its clause and can follow the word it contrasts: Ich bin dafür, er aber lehnt es ab. That mid-clause aber is the slot Hungarian fills with pedig or viszont: Én támogatom, ő viszont elutasítja. Hungarian de, however, cannot move: it always opens its clause.

Where these rules stop

• De is not always "but". Answering a negative question, de means "yes, I am", like German doch: Nem jössz? De, jövök. (see asking questions). Before an adjective it means "how!": De szép ez a ház!
• Subordinate "although" is a different family. Bár, noha and habár open a dependent clause (Bár fáradt volt, eljött). Concessive pedig instead links two main clauses.

Common learner errors

1. *Nem kávét kérek, de teát. Tea replaces coffee: Nem kávét kérek, hanem teát.
2. *Nemcsak olcsó, hanem jó. The is is needed: Nemcsak olcsó, hanem jó is.
3. *Péter a házban van, pedig Juli a kertben. For "whereas", pedig goes after Juli.
4. *Az ötlet jó, a megvalósítás de drága. Only pedig, viszont and azonban can move inside the clause. With de: Az ötlet jó, de a megvalósítás drága.

More wrong-to-right pairs are collected on the common mistakes page.

Sources and further reading

• Wiktionary, "hanem"; "nemcsak"
• Wiktionary, "pedig": the two senses by position
• Wiktionary, "de", "viszont" and "azonban"; German "aber"
• Wikipedia (Hungarian), "Kötőszó"
• Universal Dependencies, "UD_Hungarian-Szeged: CCONJ"
• Hungarian Kati, "Hanem és de"

Frequently asked questions