How to be polite in Hungarian? Chapter II

 Imperative sentences

The Hungarian language is beautiful. After using it every day for more than 20 years and even though it’s my mother tongue and I had a Hungarian faculty in my high school and took linguistic classes in the university, I’ve only realised yesterday that there are quite a few imperative cases in Hungarian. And I’m not talking about the difference between the two basic levels, tegeződés and magázódás – the variants exist within these levels.

Source: https://www.cartoonstock.com/vintage/directory/p/politeness.asp

Let’s take a basic verb and see the examples!

I chose “olvas” (to read), because it’s a regular verb and can be easily conjugated. All of the verbs below are as if addressed to a second person in singular form.

Tegeződés (informal speech)

Variant no.1: Olvass!

Read! It’s the simplest form of the imperative case – informal, not too polite and more like an order than a request.

Variant no.2: Olvassál!

Read! (again) Despite “olvass” is the grammatically correct expression in terms of conjugation, “olvassál” is not wrong either. The “-ál” (or, in some cases, “-él”) addendum has no meaning, but by putting it at the end of an imperative verb the whole expression becomes more emphatic. (Some verbs already include “-ál” in their basic imperative form, such as “egyél” (eat), “igyál” (drink), but these are irregular verbs.) Saying something with “ál” is not the nicest way of asking, it’s stronger than variant no.1 and in some circumstances it may sound countrified.

Variant no.3: Olvass, kérlek!

Read, please! By adding “kérlek” (please), it’s no more an order but a simple and polite request. Technically “olvassál, kérlek” also exists – it’s still polite, but more emphatic than the former.

Variant no.4: Olvass, légy szíves! / Olvass, légy kedves!

Please kindly read! (Or be so kind to read!). A polite way of asking, a little bit more formal than variant no.3. Technically “légy szíves” and “légy kedves” are the same, it’s only a matter of preference which one you use. Personally I say “légy kedves” more often, but I guess it’s due to the fact that I don’t like the “sz” sound in general.

And, if it weren’t enough, you can put it in another way, saying “légy kedves olvasni! / légy szíves olvasni!”, which is almost the same as “olvass, légy szíves/kedves!”. Sometimes, depending on the circumstances, the emphasis differs.

Variant no.4.5: Olvassál, legyél szíves / Olvassál, legyél kedves!

Please kindly read. Again, more emphatic than variant no.4. You may notice that both “olvas” and “lenni” (be) can take the “-ál/él” addendum and it’s also possible that only one of them takes it (e.g. olvass, legyél kedves; olvassál, légy kedves). After thinking about it a lot, I myself am not sure whether there’s any difference between “légy” and “legyél” – maybe this is the only exception to the “verb + ál/él = less polite” rule.

And that’s all for the informal level – let’s take a look at the formal imperative cases! Essentially, based on the conjugation, there’re two speech levels in Hungarian. It’s the various personal pronouns that further divide these two main levels into sublevels. However, in most of the cases there’s no personal pronoun in an imperative sentence, which means that we have to form the numerous sublevels not by using different pronouns but by conjugation.

Please note that in Hungarian, magázódó, second-person imperative cases are basically the third-person forms of a verb (both in the singular or plural cases) – however, just and only variant no.5 can be used as a third person singular imperative verb (i.e. for expressing ‘she/he read!’; the other forms are solely for second person singular cases).

Magázódás (formal speech)

Variant no.5: Olvasson!

Read! Same as variant no.1 – the basic, impolite form of the verb that is rather an order. It can be matched with the magázás sub-level. Interestingly, “-ál/él” cannot be added to a magázodó imperative verb (that is, to be precise, other than to a second person singular form), so there is no such thing as “olvassonál”.

Variant no.6: Olvasson, kérem!
Please read! This version corresponds to variant no.3 by being its magázódó version – and also to variant no.7, as these two variants have the same meaning and tone. Grammar point: not only the basic verb needs to be conjugated (olvas → olvasson), but also the “kérem” part, this is the singular imperative magázódó form of the verb. 

Variant no.7: Legyen kedves olvasni! / Legyen szíves olvasni!

Please kindly read! (Or be so kind to read!) A polite and semi-formal phrase, it can be said to almost anyone, regardless of age, social status, the speaking parties’ relationship, etc. As such it correlates to the önözés level. It also has its own sub-variant – namely “olvasson, legyen kedves/szíves!” –, similarly to variant no.4, but while in its tegeződő form there are no big differences between the sub-variants, in magázódás it’s more polite if you conjugate the “legyen...” part, not the “olvas” one.

Variant no.8: Tessék olvasni!

A polite and formal request, ‘tessék olvasni’ is the imperative case of the tetszikezés sublevel. Elder people or someone who has higher social status are addressed this way. Only the “tetszik” part can be conjugated – “tetszik” itself is an irregular verb, therefore its imperative form is “tessék” in singular and “tessenek” or “tetsszenek” in plural (the former is a little bit archaic).

Variant no.9: Szíveskedjék olvasni!

“Szíveskedjék” is the formal version of variant no.7 – and it only can be “szíveskedjék”, so there’s no such thing as “kedveskedjék olvasni!”. (To my fellow Hungarians: no, it’s not “szíveskedjen”. It’s an “ikes ige”!) It is rarely used in everyday verbal conversation, however, this is the standard form of imperative signs calling you to wait in the queue or close the door. It does have a little archaic touch, but this exactly is what gives its politeness. (And again, “szíveskedjék” takes the role of the auxiliary verb, similarly to variants no. 7 and 8.)

Variant no.10: Kegyeskedjék olvasni! / Méltóztassék olvasni!

Though “kegyeskedjék” is basically the pair of “szíveskedjék”, I decided to put them into different categories since they’re not freely interchangeable with each other (unlike “legyen kedves” and “legyen szíves”). However, “méltóztassék” has a very similar meaning and can be used instead of “kegyeskedjék”. Both of them means ‘to deign’ and while they can have both a negative and a positive overtone, using them in an imperative case has the connotation that you consider yourself as being way more inferior to the person whom you are speaking to. Therefore “kegyeskedjék/méltóztassék olvasni” is an extremely polite and formal way to ask somebody to read, the most polite way the Hungarian language can produce. We don’t use it, or only once or twice in a lifetime – simply because we don’t have anybody to address in such a polite manner. If Hungary was still a kingdom and we had a king or if there still were a Prince Primate we would use “kegyeskedjék” and “méltóztassék”.

Thank you for reading and I hope you find it interesting to learn about these aspects of the Hungarian language – despite being my mother tongue, it still can surprise me with these kind of nuances :)

Alla