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15 Nov 2020

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Question about Hungarian

Why is i/í sometimes light, sometimes dark?
It's light in biciklivel and vízen, and it's dark in suliban and írás. Why are there so many words where they're dark if they're counted as light?

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Rev01Yeti

15 Nov 2020

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Hungarian

It's something about i being two sounds in earlier Hungarian. But I've never seen the dark-light terminology before.

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Bazsu

15 Nov 2020

Hungarian

There really isn’t a strict rule for choosing the right suffix, that you’ll have to learn through listening and reading native texts. For suliban, I could give as an explaination, that suli is a shorter version of iskola, which has dark vowels all over it, so therefore the two (iskolában and suliban) must rhyme.
To illustrate why there isn’t really a rule, I’ll give you probably the stupidest thing in the Hungarian language. Inni in the first person singular is iszok/iszom, however, vinni is viszek/viszem. Why, I’ll never know.

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Rev01Yeti

15 Nov 2020

Hungarian

It's something about i being two sounds in earlier Hungarian. But I've never seen the dark-light terminology before.

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Emile-_-

16 Nov 2020

English (UK) Near fluent
French (France)

@Rev01Yeti Thanks for the explanation :)
Actually I just literally translated how we call them in French

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Rev01Yeti

16 Nov 2020

Hungarian

@Emile-_-
In Hungarian, they are called "high" and "low", although in linguistics it's generally "front" and "back".

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hunihon

24 Nov 2020

Hungarian

@Emile-_- Suliban is mixed. U is dark, i is light, as you said it. When a word is mixed, it usually have dark suffixes.

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hunihon

24 Nov 2020

Hungarian

In Hungarian we call them mély, magas and vegyes hangrendű. You can learn them by mnemonics: kék teniszütő (é, e, i/í, ü/ű, ö/ő - light/magas) and nagy háború (a, á, o/ó, u/ú - dark/mély).

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Rev01Yeti

24 Nov 2020

Hungarian

@hortenzia Shouldn't they be teniszütő and autópálya?

Btw i/í doesn't have a clear place exactly because it used to represent both a high and a low vowel.

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hunihon

24 Nov 2020

Hungarian

@Rev01Yeti At school our teacher said these examples. Of course you can find others.

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Why is i/í sometimes light, sometimes dark? It's light in biciklivel and vízen, and it's dark in suliban and írás. Why are there so many words where they're dark if they're counted as light? See a translation

It's something about i being two sounds in earlier Hungarian. But I've never seen the dark-light terminology before.

It's something about i being two sounds in earlier Hungarian. But I've never seen the dark-light terminology before.

@Emile-_-In Hungarian, they are called "high" and "low", although in linguistics it's generally "front" and "back".

@Emile-_- Suliban is mixed. U is dark, i is light, as you said it. When a word is mixed, it usually have dark suffixes.

In Hungarian we call them mély, magas and vegyes hangrendű. You can learn them by mnemonics: kék teniszütő (é, e, i/í, ü/ű, ö/ő - light/magas) and nagy háború (a, á, o/ó, u/ú - dark/mély).

@hortenzia Shouldn't they be teniszütő and autópálya?Btw i/í doesn't have a clear place exactly because it used to represent both a high and a low vowel.

@Rev01Yeti At school our teacher said these examples. Of course you can find others.

Why is i/í sometimes light, sometimes dark?
It's light in biciklivel and vízen, and it's dark in suliban and írás. Why are there so many words where they're dark if they're counted as light?

See a translation

@Emile-_-
In Hungarian, they are called "high" and "low", although in linguistics it's generally "front" and "back".

@hortenzia Shouldn't they be teniszütő and autópálya?

Btw i/í doesn't have a clear place exactly because it used to represent both a high and a low vowel.