Page:Simplified grammar of the Hungarian language.djvu/25

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NOUNS SUBSTANTIVE.
13

Declension of the Substantive.

Prefatory Remarks.—To facilitate the acquisition of the most important, and at the same time the most difficult, part of the Hungarian grammar—viz., the rules of inflection, we divide the substantives into six classes (or declensions), the plural endings being taken as the basis. Each class is again divided into two subdivisions, the one being the short and the other the long vowel of each, thus—



I. II. III. IV. V. VI.
(a) (b) (a) (b) (a) & (b) (a) (b) (a) (b) (a) & (b)
plur. endings -ak, -ák -ok, -ók -uk -ek, -ék -ök, -ők -ük

Flats. Sharps.

The suffixes for the cases are therefore:—

I. II. III. IV. V. VI.
Declension. Declension.
Subjective
Cases.
Nominative, The Name itself, or with Pers. Suff.
Attrib. or Possessive, -nak -nek
Genitive,
Dative, -nak -nek
Accusative,[1] -t -t
  1. After a mute letter the accusative takes the suffix with such a vowel (a, o, e, or ö) as it takes in the plural—as bot, plural bot-ok, accus. sing. bot-ot. But if the noun is already suffixed (with plural or personal suffixes) the accusative endings after consonants will be for all flat nouns -at, and for all sharp nouns -et.