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Page:Simplified grammar of the Hungarian language.djvu/15

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THE ALPHABET.
3
ő as u in fur, or the German
ö in Höhle; as—
bőr, skin, leather.
ö is the short sound of the
foregoing, as is heard in the
German word Götter; as—
föld, earth.
ü
and
ű
are the short and long
sounds heard in the German
words Hütte and Hühner,
or the French u in reculé
and plus; as—
fül, ear.
tűz, fire.


The consonants are called single (b, d, g, &c.) or combined (cs, gy, ly, &c.).

The combined letters have been adopted to supply the deficiency of the Latin alphabet in symbols for representing the forty sounds or articulations which the Hungarian language comprises. They must be looked upon as one single letter only, representing one single and distinct sound or articulation, and cannot be divided in spelling or pronunciation.

Note.—If in a word the sound of a combined consonant is heard with greater stress, that is, where these letters are to be written double, they are thus abbreviated: for cscs, ccs; for gygy, ggy; &c. But if these consonants meet only by means of suffixes or putting together of words (compounds), they must be written out in full. Also when a word is broken off at the