Jön or megy, hoz or visz: how do you say come, go, bring and take in Hungarian?

Use jön and hoz for movement toward "here" and megy and visz for movement away from it, where "here" is normally the place you are standing as you speak. That sounds like English come, go, bring and take, and most of the time it is. The difference is the moment you head toward the person you are talking to: English switches to their point of view and says "I'm coming" and "I'll bring", while Hungarian keeps yours and says megyek and viszek.

The rule: four verbs, one centre

Hungarian has two pairs of motion verbs with a built-in direction. One pair is for moving yourself, the other for moving something or someone else. Elon.io's verb reference describes the pairs in the same terms: jön "profiles motion toward the speaker, addressee, or another active reference center", its partner megy "marks motion away from the reference center", and hoz is "bring toward here/the reference point" with visz as its "usual deictic opposite". Wiktionary lists hoz and visz as each other's antonyms.

The grid is worth learning as a unit, because each verb is half of a pair. Hoz is to jön what visz is to megy: Jön a pincér, "The waiter is coming", and Hozza a számlát, "He's bringing the bill". Once he has left your table with the plates, megy and viszi.

• Én már a moziban vagyok; te mikor jössz ide? I'm already at the cinema; when are you coming here?
• Még otthon vagyok, de tíz perc múlva megyek oda. I'm still at home, but I'll go there in ten minutes.
• Hoznál nekem egy pohár vizet? Would you bring me a glass of water?
• Viszek egy üveg ásványvizet a kirándulásra. I'm taking a bottle of mineral water on the hike.

"I'm coming!": why Hungarian says megyek

This is the sentence that gives the topic away. Someone calls you from the next room, or friends ask whether you are joining them. English answers from the caller's position: "I'm coming!" Hungarian answers from where you are, and from where you are, you are leaving:

• Jössz velünk? Igen, megyek veletek! Are you coming with us? Yes, I'm coming with you!
• Megyek! Coming! (said as you set off toward the person calling you)

HungarianPod101 explains the first exchange the same way: "In Hungarian, when talking from our point of view, literally we say 'Yes, I'm going.'" Notice that both people are right. The friends ask with jössz because they are the centre of their question, and you answer with megyek because you are the centre of your answer. English allows only one of those viewpoints for "come"; Hungarian lets each speaker use their own.

The explanation learners often meet first is "jön = come, megy = go", full stop. It persists because it works in every sentence where English and Hungarian happen to share a centre: "Come here!" is Gyere ide! and "Go away!" is Menj el! It breaks precisely when you move toward your listener, which is exactly the situation in which English says "come".

Where is "here"? Choosing the centre

The centre is usually the speaker, but not always. Elon.io puts it plainly: "The same traveler can megy or jön depending on where the conversational center is", and its hoz entry adds that the reference point "can also be the addressee or a place treated as the conversational center". In practice three situations cover nearly everything.

1. You are moving, and you speak from where you are now. Use megy and visz, whoever is waiting at the other end: Megyek!, Viszek bort. This is the safe default for anything you are about to do.
2. Someone else is moving toward you, or toward a place you are both treating as "here". Use jön and hoz. A colleague already at the office asks Mikor jössz be?; someone still at home asks Mikor mész be? about the same trip to the same office.
3. You frame your trip from the other person's end. Here jön is possible for your own movement toward your listener, typically when you are collecting or visiting them: Négyre jövök érted az edzés után, "I'll come and pick you up at four after practice."

The third case is why "Hungarian never says jövök to the listener" is too strong. But it is a choice you make about how to present an arrangement, not a reply. When you answer a call or an invitation in the moment, the centre is where you stand, and the verb is megy.

Hoz or visz: bring and take

The carrying verbs follow the same centre as the motion verbs, and this is where English speakers make the most mistakes, because English "bring" is even more listener-friendly than "come". "I'll bring a salad to your party" is natural English; in Hungarian the salad is leaving your kitchen, so it is visz.

The first two rows are the whole topic in miniature: one bottle, one trip, and the guest and the host use opposite verbs, each from their own place. A guest talking to the host can also move the centre to the host's home, as in the third case above, but visz is the default from where you stand, and it is the form that never clashes with oda or with a trip that starts at your door. Elon.io's hoz entry also gives Hazahozlak, "I'll bring you home", which is how the same offer sounds when the speaker is at home and talking about the return journey.

Both verbs are transitive, so they take an accusative object and follow the definite and indefinite conjugation: Hozok egy széket, "I'll bring a chair", but Hozom a széket, "I'll bring the chair". The person you carry something for goes into the dative: Hozok neked egy tiszta törölközőt, "I'll bring you a clean towel". The destination takes the same "where to" cases as megy: -ba/-be into a place, -ra/-re onto a place or to an event, and -hoz/-hez/-höz to a person, as set out on the local cases page.

Ide or oda: the adverb must agree with the verb

Because the direction is already inside the verb, the pointing words ide ("to here") and oda ("to there") have to point the same way. They combine with the verbs like prefixes: idejön, idehoz, odamegy, odavisz. Mixing them produces a sentence that moves in two directions at once.

• Gyere ide! Come here!
• Hozd ide a táskámat! Bring my bag here!
• Odamegyek hozzá. I'll go over to him.
• Odaviszem neki. I'll take it over to her.

Elon.io lists *Ide viszem neked a kabátodat as a mistake for "I'm bringing your coat here", because "visz points away from the reference point"; the correct form is Idehozom neked a kabátodat. If you hear yourself say ide, the verb is jön or hoz; if oda, it is megy or visz. The question words follow suit: Hova mész?, "Where are you going?", but Honnan jössz?, "Where are you coming from?"

With prefixes: elmegy, eljön, elvisz, elhoz

Most directional verbal prefixes combine with all four verbs, and the pair keeps its direction: bejön "come in" and bemegy "go in", behoz "bring in" and bevisz "take in", and likewise with ki-, fel-, le-, vissza- and haza. The prefix el- needs a closer look, because it means "away" on one side of the grid and something else on the other.

With megy and visz, el- adds "away from here", which they already imply, so it mostly marks the trip as a completed event. With jön and hoz it cannot mean "away", since they point the other way, and it marks the starting point as somewhere else: elon.io glosses elhoz as "bring/fetch from elsewhere to the reference point". So Elviszem a kabátot is "I'll take the coat (away)", and Elhozom a kabátot is "I'll go and get the coat (and bring it back here)".

Elviszlek and Hazaviszlek use the -lak/-lek ending for "I ... you": "I'll take you", "I'll take you home".

Beyond movement: what jön and hoz also mean

Wiktionary pairs hoz and jön once more outside physical movement. Hoz can mean "to set someone or something into a state (e.g. motion, excitement)", and jön is its counterpart for getting into that state yourself. So zavarba hoz valakit is "embarrass someone", and zavarba jön is "become embarrassed". The rest of the non-motion senses are worth knowing as phrases.

• Ki jön? Who's next? Whose turn is it? (jön = be next)
• Ez most jól jön. This comes in handy now.
• Jól kijön a szomszédaival. She gets on well with her neighbours.
• Rájöttem, hogy elfelejtettem a kulcsot. I realized I'd forgotten the key.
• Szóba hozta a fizetését. He brought up his salary.
• A bizottság holnap hozza meg a döntést. The committee will make the decision tomorrow.

Wiktionary also records a colloquial jön valakinek, "owe someone": Jössz nekem egy sörrel, "You owe me a beer". The non-motion senses of megy, such as a machine working, a programme being on or something going well for you, are on the page about megy and jár.

The forms you will use most

Jön and megy are two of the three fully irregular verbs, visz belongs to the v-stem family with tesz and vesz, and hoz is regular apart from the doubling of z before j.

The commands are covered in full on the imperative page. Gyere replaces the regular jöjj in everyday speech; Wiktionary notes that the regular forms survive only in "formal, archaic style".

Five mistakes learners make

1. Elhozlak az állomásra for "I'll give you a lift to the station". Elhoz is fetching something back here; driving someone away from here is Elviszlek az állomásra.
2. *Ide viszem a kabátodat. Ide means "toward here", so the verb must be hoz: Idehozom a kabátodat.
3. *Hozz ide a táskámat! A definite object needs the definite command: Hozd ide a táskámat!
4. *Nem behozta a postát. After nem the prefix moves behind the verb: Nem hozta be a postát.
5. Iskolába megyek for "I'm a pupil". Regular attendance is not a trip: Iskolába járok.

Where the rule stops working

The centre is a choice, not a fact about geography, so two speakers describing the same trip can correctly use opposite verbs, and a single speaker can shift the centre to the listener when presenting an arrangement (Négyre jövök érted). What does not shift is the agreement inside a sentence: once you have chosen ide or oda, the verb must match it. And the four verbs only cover the direction of a single movement. Going somewhere regularly, attending, or having been somewhere is jár, with its own rules on the megy or jár page, and the plain "to a person" destination case -hoz/-hez/-höz (orvoshoz megyek) is explained under the proximity cases.

Sources and further reading

• Wiktionary, "hoz", "visz", "jön" and "megy": senses, the hoz and visz antonym pair, hoz "set into a state" with jön as counterpart, jön "be next" and colloquial "owe", conjugation
• Wiktionary, "gyere": the replacement of the regular subjunctive of jön, and gyerünk, "let's go"
• Elon.io verb reference, "jön", "megy", "hoz" and "visz": the reference centre, the cinema, office, towel, hike and pick-up examples, elhoz, and the ide visz mistake
• HungarianPod101, "Taking a trip with friends": Jössz velünk? Igen, megyek veletek! and the speaker's point of view

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