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This page deals with the Vowel Harmony in Hungarian, It is essential in order to properly suffix particles and endings to Hungarian words. It uses Hungarian example words, and discusses vowels by frontness and roundness and as such knowing how to read Hungarian letters and being familiar with vowel height are essential.
Meet vowel assimilation a.k.a vowel harmony (magánhangzóhasonulás)
Hungarian exhibits a third type of assimilation known as vowel assimilation, or more commonly “vowel harmony”. What this means is that suffixes which contain vowels will usually have different versions so that the vowel of the suffix can “agree” with the vowels of the word itself.
Suffixes come in four broad types depending on how they are affected by vowel harmony. To demonstrate, here are four words: ember, dög, ház, and állat meaning person, beast, house, and animal.
-ig meaning “until, as far as”
emberig, dögig, házig, and állatig
Such endings are few and far between. In Hungarian, vowels are first categorised into two main groups by a parameter called “frontness”. All vowels are either front (in Hungarian magas hangrend or high sound class) or back (in Hungarian mély hangrend or deep sound class). This distinction can be felt on the vocal chords while making the sound. (Try putting your hand over your throat, back vowels will generally vibrate further down than front vowels). The back vowels are u, o, and a (and their long counterparts) which you can remember with the word uborka (pickle). The other vowels e, i, ö, and ü and their long counterparts are the front vowels. Most words in Hungarian will contain only front or back vowels. Words which contain both are more rare but are generally considered as words containing only back vowels for the purposes of harmony. Such words usually involve e, é, i, í, which are often called (as in Finnish) “neutral vowels” (semleges magánhangzók) although they are by default front vowels. Incidently, neutral vowels usually do not affect a word's vowel class. Rather they are “transparent”, and let the other vowels determine the vowel class of the word. It makes sense then, that endings which are not subject to vowel harmony, like -ig, -ik, and -ni will contain a neutral vowel (specifically “i/í”). An important exception is often e, which, as was discussed before, is not in fact the short form of é. E was at one point a front vowel, despite not being rounded and this does occasionally shine through. specifically when it is vowel of the final syllable in a word with back vowels. E.g. Október (October) which is a front vowel word despite two back vowels. However, when e represents what was historically an ë, the true short form of é, it acts as a neutral vowel.
-nak/nek meaning “to, for”
-tól/től meaning “from”
embernek, dögnek, háznak, and állatnak
embertől, dögtől, háztól, and állattól
Note that such endings are referred to as [back vowel form]/[front vowel form] e.g. nak/nek, val/vel. It should be apparent that a word containing only neutral vowels is by default a front vowel word. For this reason in Hungary, most people consider neutral vowels to be front vowels just like true front vowels. This leads to a lot of confusion since in a notable minority of cases, a neutral vowel word (usually containing i or í) will take back vowel endings. For instance the nouns híd (brindge) and férfi (gentleman), or the verbs írni (to write) or hívni (to call). In the example above, the first two words (containing e and ö) are front vowel words, and take an ending with a front vowel, while the other two contain a and á and hence take the ending with a back vowel. The default vowels for front and back agreement are e and a or ö and o respectively. The reason for the two sets of default vowels is that, in Hungarian, the vowels o, ó, ö, ő, u, ú, ü, and ű are rounded vowels (a straddles the fence but is historically round), meaning your mouth should make a round shape while pronouncing them. Hungarian therefore further categorises vowels and words by whether or not they are rounded.
e.g. -hoz/hez/höz meaning “to/towards”
emberhez, döghöz, házhoz, and állathoz
Note that in this case, the front vowels are divided according to rounding, so that ö, ő, ü, and ű fall into one category, while e, é, i, and í fall into another. Note that these are the “neutral vowels”. Only the neutral vowels and á and a are not rounded in Hungarian, and these are the ones most likely to cause trouble, or sit on the vowel harmonic fence. This seems to be true of Hungarian's cousins too, so always be wary of unrounded vowels. While front unrounded vowels are the neutral vowels, á and a are back vowels just like the rounded back vowels. Although á is technically unrounded, and a is halfway between rounded and unrounded, they both act like unrounded vowels phonologically, but often like rounded vowels grammatically. In either case these are the back vowel equivalents of the neutral vowels, or back unrounded vowels.
e.g. -k (plural)
emberek, dögök, házak, and állatok
Endings in the 4th category are solitary consonants which don't always take a preceding vowel, but will when it is deemed helpful to pronunciation. Compare emberek with “emberk”, or dögök with “dögk”. These endings can take any combination of front/back and rounded/unrounded vowel, the defaults for these being a, o, e, and ö. Alas, unlike front/backness the presence or absence of rounded vowels is not enough to ensure that endings which can take rounded forms do or do not in fact take them. E.g. karok (forearms) versus falak (walls), where both words contained the same vowel, but took different endings. Similarly szám (number) becoming számok is a good example of an unrounded vowel taking a rounded ending. The problems largely stem from back vowels whose nature is often dificult to determine. Since back vowels are not seaparated as strictly into subgroups by their rounding the way true front vowels and neutral vowels are, it is hard to determine the rounding harmony.
Now observe what happens to two solitary consonant suffixes (both of which can therefore agree in both frontness and roundness) when they act on the same word simultaneously. Note that when a word takes a series of suffixes, only the first suffix will (can) take a rounded form, all others agree only in frontness.
It should be stressed however, that Hungarian has evolved over many millennia and there are of course exceptions. For the most part however, (especially when there are no neutral vowels involved) front/back vowel harmony can be trusted.
Side note: Vowel harmony can be very tricky, but it should be noted that while correct use of vowel harmony is absolutely essential to speaking Hungarian well, it is possible to understand, and be understood through, spoken and written language without a good grasp on vowel harmony. Vowels for the most part have no grammatical roles, with all the meaning being essentially denoted by consonants. As long as you know where there can or cannot be a vowel, then, even without knowing which vowel is appropriate, you can make get meaning out of a word. For instance any word ending in -n*k will be understood as dative regardless of the vowel.
It's important to note that there are one or two words distinguished only by the vowels in their suffixes, e.g. szám (number) and szám (my mouth). Szám (number) becomes számot with a rounded ending, while szám (my mouth) becomes számat because the -t ending is the second one (the first ending being -m for possession) and therefore it cannot take a rounded vowel.
