Él or lakik: how do you say "to live" in Hungarian?

Use lakik for where your home is: Szegeden lakom, "I live in Szeged". Use él for being alive, and, with a place, for the setting of a life: Tíz évig Bécsben éltek, "They lived in Vienna for ten years". With a city both verbs are correct. Everywhere else the choice is fixed, and this page shows where.

The two verbs, defined

Lakik means "to reside, to have one's home" somewhere. The elon.io verb reference puts it precisely: it "answers where somebody's home or regular living place is, not merely where that person happens to be now". Its root is the noun lak, "dwelling", per Wiktionary, and the same root gives lakás (flat, dwelling), lakó (resident) and lakos (inhabitant).

Él means "to live" in the sense of being alive. Wiktionary lists that as its first sense, "remain alive, be alive". It traces the verb back to a Proto-Uralic root meaning "to live", the same one behind Finnish elää. From there it spreads: living through a time, living in a state, living on something, living for someone.

So the two are not synonyms that happen to overlap. One is about a home. The other is about a life. Wiktionary marks each as a coordinate term of the other: related words, side by side, not one word with two spellings.

• Debrecenben lakom. I live in Debrecen. (my home is there)
• A teknős még él. The tortoise is still alive.

The second sentence cannot take lakik. As elon.io notes, él on its own means "be alive", "a meaning unavailable to lakik".

One person, five sentences

Take a woman called Anna. Suppose she grew up in Vienna, now has a flat in Szeged, earns her money translating, and is at the library when you ring her. Here is how each fact sorts.

1. Her address. That is a home, so lakik: Anna Szegeden lakik. Szeged takes -en, like most Hungarian towns (see -ban or -on with city names).
2. Her years in Vienna. You are describing a stretch of her life, so él fits: Tíz évig Bécsben élt. Bécsben lakott would also be correct. It would just state where her home was, not frame those years as a part of her life.
3. Where she is right now. Neither verb. A library is not a home, so this is plain "to be": Most a könyvtárban van. elon.io's own example has the same shape: Bence most a könyvtárban van, de a folyó túloldalán lakik, "Bence is at the library now, but he lives across the river". A visit that is over takes yet another verb, jár, as explained on megy or jár.
4. Her grandfather, who is ninety. Being alive is él only: A nagyapja még él.
5. Her income. "Live from" is él + -ból/-ből: A fordításaiból él, "She lives from her translations". Lakik has no such use.

Only the first two sentences offer a real choice, and even there the choice is about what you want to say. That is the whole pattern. The rest of this page fills in the details.

With a place: home or setting

elon.io calls the distinction "contextual rather than absolute", and with a city that is true. Its own pair is Berlinben lakik and Berlinben él. In the first, Berlin is the person's residence. In the second, it is "the setting of someone's life". Both are good Hungarian.

But "contextual" stops there. The narrower the place gets, the more it is an address, and an address is lakik. elon.io says lakik "more narrowly identifies residence or address", while él "presents the environment of somebody's life". Its case notes for lakik run down from the town to the door:

The last row is the one English speakers miss. "With my parents" is not -val/-vel here. It is the -nál/-nél "at someone's place" case, explained on the proximity cases page, and Wiktionary gives exactly this sentence for lakik. With él, as the next section shows, -val/-vel means something quite different.

What only él can do: its case frames

A verb's case frame is the case ending it puts on the word that goes with it. "Rely on" in English always takes "on". Hungarian verbs work the same way, but with endings, and él changes meaning with each one. Wiktionary gives the "dwell" lakik only two senses, both about dwelling. Every row below is therefore a job for él alone. The senses and examples are Wiktionary's.

Three of these rows need a closer look.

The two -val/-vel rows. The ending is the one on the -val/-vel page, but with él it does not mean "together with". elon.io glosses él valamivel as "make use of, avail oneself of". So the frame names something you use, such as a right, an offer or a chance.

The -nak/-nek row. Wiktionary's gloss is "to spend most of one's time benefiting something or someone". The thing or person goes in the dative. English uses "for": live for your country, your children, your work.

The -n row against the -ból/-ből row. elon.io splits them cleanly. -ból/-ből "often names an income source". -n "names food, resources, or a narrow basis". Both come out as "live on" in English, so check what the thing is: money you earn takes -ból, what you eat takes -n.

With prefixes: átél, megél, túlél, visszaél

Verbal prefixes turn él into new verbs, and these are the four elon.io picks out for learners. Wiktionary lists five more (beleél, elél, felél, kiél, leél), which this page does not cover.

Megél is the one to learn first, because it overlaps with plain él. Wiktionary gives it the sense "to live on" an amount of money, with -ból/-ből: Nem lehet megélni 47 000 forintból, "You can't live on 47,000 forints". For income it accepts both a munkájából él and a munkájából él meg.

Visszaél keeps the "make use of" frame of él and turns it bad. You élsz a chance when you use it. You visszaélsz with it when you exploit it: A vendég visszaélt a házigazda jóindulatával, "The guest took advantage of the host's goodwill" (Wiktionary).

When these verbs take a definite object, they take the definite conjugation: túlélte a balesetet, megélte a háború borzalmait, "he lived through the horrors of the war".

Conjugation: lakom or lakok, and the éltek trap

Lakik is an -ik verb: a verb whose dictionary form ends in -ik. That ending appears only in the "he, she" present. Everywhere else the stem is lak-: lakott (lived), lakni (to live), lakj (live!), lakna (would live).

The "I" form has two versions. Wiktionary lists lakom and lakok side by side. elon.io calls lakom the "traditional neutral" form and lakok the form of "contemporary speech". In writing, exams and careful speech, say lakom. You will hear lakok all the time, and the register section of the -ik verbs page explains how it is judged.

Él is an ordinary front-vowel verb, as on the present tense page. Here are both verbs together, with the él forms from elon.io's tables:

Look at the two bold cells. Éltek is both "you (plural) live" and "they lived". Only the context tells them apart. Hol éltek most? is "Where do you live now?", said to two or more people. Tíz évig Bécsben éltek is "They lived in Vienna for ten years". A time word such as most or tíz évig usually settles it. Lakik has no such clash: laktok against laktak.

An older lakik: jóllakik

Wiktionary lists a second lakik, marked "folksy, archaic", meaning "to eat and drink until full". It survives mainly in jóllakik, "to eat one's fill", and in lakoma, "feast". So Jóllaktam is about dinner, not about a house.

Five mistakes learners make

1. *A nagyapám még lakik. for "My grandfather is still alive". Being alive is él only: A nagyapám még él.
2. *A szüleimmel lakom. for "I live with my parents". Use the household case: A szüleimnél lakom.
3. *Most a könyvtárban lakom. for "I'm at the library now". A place you are visiting is van: Most a könyvtárban vagyok.
4. *Visszaélt a hatalmát. for "He abused his power". Visszaél takes no object; the thing misused goes in -val/-vel: Visszaélt a hatalmával.
5. *Szegeden lak. The "he, she" form keeps its -ik: Szegeden lakik.

What this page does not settle

The rule covers the verbs English speakers need for "live". It does not cover everything English "live" does. A live broadcast, "live up to" and "live it up" are separate questions with their own Hungarian words, and they are not answered here.

With a city or a country, the line between home and setting is soft. elon.io is right that it is contextual there: the same sentence can take either verb, and the choice is about what you want to stress. The firm rulings on this page are the ones the sources make. Only él means "be alive", only él has the case frames in the table, an address or a household is lakik, and a place you are only visiting is van.

Finally, lakom against lakok is a matter of register, not of a wrong form. This page gives the safe default; how the everyday form is judged is on the -ik verbs page.

Summary: which verb for which English "live"

Sources and further reading

• elon.io, "lakik" (Hungarian verb reference): the definition as home or regular living place, the "contextual rather than absolute" comparison with él, Berlinben lakik and Berlinben él, A teknős még él, the library example, the cases for towns, buildings and households, and lakom against lakok
• elon.io, "él" (Hungarian verb reference): "be alive" as a meaning unavailable to lakik, setting against address, the -ból/-ből, -n and -val/-vel frames, the prefixed verbs átél, túlél, megél, visszaél, and the present and past conjugation
• Wiktionary, "él": the nine senses with their case frames and examples, the etymology, and the list of prefixed verbs
• Wiktionary, "lakik": the two dwelling senses, Debrecenben lakom and A szüleimnél lakom, both "I" forms, the derived nouns, and the archaic "feast" sense behind jóllakik
• Wiktionary, "megél", "túlél" and "visszaél": senses, frames and examples for the prefixed verbs

Frequently asked questions