Lát or néz, hall or hallgat: see or look, hear or listen in Hungarian?

Use lát for what your eyes take in and néz for where you point them: Nézem a táblát, de nem látom a számokat, "I'm looking at the sign, but I can't see the numbers". Hearing splits the same way: hall is "hear", hallgat is "listen". English has the same pairs, so the meaning is rarely the problem. The problems are the cases each verb takes, the prefixes, and the third thing English also calls "look" and "sound".

The rule: what reaches you, or what you do

Wiktionary's table of Hungarian sense verbs sorts them into rows, and two of the rows behave, in its words, "similarly to English": the action verbs, which you do on purpose, and the perception verbs, which happen to you. A third row, the stative verbs, says how something comes across to others. Laid out for sight and sound, the whole system fits in one grid.

The test for the first two rows is control. You can decide to look and you can decide to listen, so néz and hallgat work as commands: Nézd! "Look!", Hallgasd! "Listen to it!". You cannot decide to see or hear something that is not there, which is why nem látom and nem hallom are about what failed to reach you:

• Nézem a távoli táblát, de szemüveg nélkül nem látom a számokat. I'm looking at the distant sign, but without my glasses I can't see the numbers.
• Hallom a zenét a kávézóban, de nem hallgatom, mert beszélgetünk. I can hear the music in the café, but I'm not listening, because we're talking.

Notice that Hungarian needs no "can" here. English says "I can see" and "I can hear" for ongoing perception; Hungarian says látom and hallom. Adding tud (nem tudom elolvasni, "I can't read it") is for ability, as on the page about tud and ismer.

Decision table: which verb for which English word

Every common English use of see, look, watch, hear and listen, with the Hungarian verb and the frame it takes.

Néz: two objects, two cases

Néz takes either an accusative or -ra/-re, and Wiktionary gives both as frames for "look at". The two are not quite interchangeable. Things you watch, such as films, television, matches and performances, are normally plain objects: filmet néz, meccset néz. The -ra/-re frame is a glance aimed at a target, the "onto" of the surface cases, and with a pronoun it is the only natural choice:

• Nézd ezt a különleges fát! Look at this special tree!
• Erre a képre nézz, ne arra! Look at this picture, not that one!
• Nézz rám! Look at me!
• A hotelszobánk ablaka a tóra néz. Our hotel room overlooks the lake.

The last example is a sense with no person in it at all: a window or a room "looks onto" something.

Valakit valaminek néz: take someone for something

With an accusative and -nak/-nek, néz means "take (or mistake) someone for": Minek nézel engem?, "What do you take me for?" This is the same "considered as" -nak/-nek you see in Okos embernek tartom, described under the dative. The best-known idiom built on it is levegőnek néz, literally "look at someone as air": to ignore them on purpose.

Lát: seeing, and a few things that are not seeing

Lát is an ordinary transitive verb, so its conjugation follows the object, as described under definite and indefinite conjugation: Látok egy madarat but Látom a madarat. A hogy clause counts as a definite object: Látom, hogy fáradt vagy, "I can see you're tired". "I see you" is Látlak, with the -lak/-lek ending.

For a film, a play or a city you have experienced, Hungarian uses lát just as English uses "see": Láttad már ezt a filmet?, "Have you seen this film yet?"

Wiktionary records two senses of lát that have nothing to do with eyes, both in fixed phrases. Munkához lát means "set about work": Reggeli után azonnal munkához láttunk, "After breakfast we got to work immediately". Vendégül lát means "host, have someone over": Szeretnénk titeket vendégül látni vacsorára, "We'd like to have you over for dinner".

Hall and hallgat: the same split, three extra meanings

Hallgat is hall plus the frequentative suffix -gat, which Wiktionary describes as forming verbs "denoting repetitive action" and adds "It may also change the meaning". Hearing that goes on and is attended to is listening:

• Hallottam egy hangot a szobából. I heard a sound from the room.
• Zenét hallgatunk. We're listening to music.
• Hallgatom a rádiót. I'm listening to the radio.

The trap is that hallgat has three further meanings that English gives to other words entirely, and learners meet them before they meet the dictionary entry:

1. Keep quiet. With no object, hallgat means "say nothing": A tanú néhány másodpercig hallgatott, aztán válaszolt, "The witness stayed silent for a few seconds, then answered". With -ról/-ről it is "keep quiet about": Csak hallgat az esetről. The command Hallgass! is therefore "Be quiet!", while Hallgasd!, with an object understood, is "Listen to it!"
2. Heed. With -ra/-re the person is someone whose advice you follow: Hallgass az orvosodra!, "Listen to your doctor!" Because -ra is not an object, the verb stays indefinite even though az orvosod is definite.
3. Attend lectures. Egyetemi előadásokat hallgat is "he is taking university courses", which is why a university student is an egyetemi hallgató.

Meghallgat is listening "attentively, from the beginning till the end", in Wiktionary's gloss, and also means to interview or audition someone, and, in medicine, to listen to a patient's chest.

With prefixes: megnéz, meglát, kinéz

As with most verbal prefixes, meg- turns an activity into a completed event, but it lands differently on the two rows of the grid.

On an action verb, meg- means "and finish": megnéz is the whole look, the whole check, the whole film. On a perception verb there is nothing to finish, so meg- marks the moment perception starts: meglát is "catch sight of", the instant something comes into view. Kinéz sits across rows: "look out" is an action, but jól néz ki, "looks good", is how something comes across.

"It looks", "it sounds": the third row

English uses "look" and "sound" for impressions, with the thing as subject: "you look tired", "that sounds good". Hungarian never uses néz or lát alone for this. It has separate verbs.

• Jól nézel ki. You look good. (appearance: kinéz + adverb)
• Úgy néz ki, hogy ma esni fog. It looks like it's going to rain today.
• Jónak látszik. It seems to be good. (látszik + -nak/-nek)
• Fáradtnak tűnsz. You look tired. (tűnik + -nak/-nek)
• Jól hangzik. Sounds good.
• A távolban fegyverropogás hallatszott. Gunfire sounded in the distance.

Látszik also has a literal sense, "be visible": A hegyről az egész város látszik, "The whole city can be seen from the mountain". Hallatszik is the matching "be heard". Tűnik is the general "seem" for any sense, while Wiktionary marks látszik as the synonym "for visual impressions or in a figurative sense".

The forms you will use most

All four verbs are regular. Néz ends in z, so its "you" form is -el and j assimilates in the imperative.

The commands follow the imperative rules: a vowel plus t merges with the j into ss (láss, hallgass), and z + j gives zz (nézz).

Six mistakes learners make

1. *Látunk tévét este. Watching is deliberate: Este tévét nézünk.
2. *Nézem téged. With a pronoun, aim the look: Rád nézek. If you mean "I'm watching you", Nézlek is the -lak/-lek form.
3. *Hallok zenét for "I listen to music". That says music reaches you. Say Zenét hallgatok.
4. Hallgass! for "Listen to this!" On its own it means "Be quiet!" Say Figyelj! or Hallgasd!
5. *Jó nézel. for "You look good". Appearance is kinéz with an adverb: Jól nézel ki.
6. *Nem hallgatja rám. The -ra frame takes no object, so the verb is indefinite: Nem hallgat rám.

Where the rule stops working

Attention without a sense attached is neither verb. To pay attention, or to watch closely by seeing, hearing or both, Hungarian uses figyel, with -ra/-re: Figyelj rám!, "Listen to me!", in the sense of "pay attention to what I'm saying". Neither néz nor hallgat covers it, and a teacher saying "Listen!" to a class says Figyeljetek!. And not every "see" is lát: "visit" is látogat, built from lát but its own verb (A fiam gyakran látogat minket, "My son often visits us").

Sources and further reading

• Wiktionary, "Hungarian sense verbs" usage note (shown on látszik, kinéz and meghallgat): the action, perception and stative rows for each sense, érez, and the -ízű and íze van constructions
• Wiktionary, "lát", "néz", "hall" and "hallgat": senses, case frames and examples
• Wiktionary, "megnéz", "meglát", "hallatszik", "tűnik", "figyel", "látogat" and "-gat"; the idioms levegőnek néz and vendégül lát
• Elon.io verb reference, "néz" and "hallgat": the néz and lát contrast, valakit valaminek néz, and the café, doctor and witness examples

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