When It Comes to Gender Pronouns, Hungary is the Most Progressive Country in the World

1/16/2020

Everyone in the West knows how anti-democratic, authoritarian, repressive, xenophobic, homophobic, fascist, anti-semitic, and generally not nice the nation of Hungary is. In light of this, it will probably surprise many to know that there is one progressive issue in which Magyarország is literally light years ahead of its enlightened Western counterparts - that issue is gender pronouns. One could even go as far as to claim that when it comes to gender pronouns, Hungary stands among the 'wokest' nations on Earth.

Allow me to explain . . .

In Magyar (Hungarian):

the nominative case for third person singular masculine is ő
the nominative case for third person singular feminine is also ő
the dative case for all genders is neki
the accusative case for all genders is őt
the singular possessive pronoun for all genders is övé
the plural possessive pronoun for all genders is övék
the formal nominative case third person for all genders is ön or maga
and so on . . .

Long story cut short, he/she, his/her, him/her - none of these exist in the Hungarian language. Everyone - regardless of the sex or gender 'assigned at birth' - gets the same gender neutral pronouns in Hungary. Everyone.

The gender-gifted, the gender fluid, the two spirits, the butches, the femmes, the gender blenders, the transpeople, the crossdressers and, yes, even good old regular men and women all get the same gender neutral pronouns in Hungary.

It makes no difference if you have a penis, wish you had one, or simply crave one - there's no need for gender specific pronouns like ze xe, per, or, ve because gender simply does not exist in Hungarian pronouns.

The only open question you would need to decide when you addressed someone else is whether or not you should address the person formally or informally.

Now how woke is that?

Note added: The gender confused should not take this as a cue to flock to Hungary in the hope of finding a Shangri-La of inclusivity and human rights. Quite the contrary. As any Western media source will happily inform you, this little landlocked country is hideously backward and bigoted in practically every other field of political correctness. Probably best to stay away and continue the good fight at home.

16 Comments

William James Tychonievich link

1/17/2020 04:32:39

In Chinese, the third-person pronoun is pronounced exactly the same for all genders but can be written five different ways depending on whether it refers to a man, a woman, an animal, a god, or an inanimate object. It's easy to be gender-neutral when speaking, but impossible when writing

Francis Berger

1/17/2020 10:34:07

That's interesting, Wm. With Hungarian, it's impossible to be gender specific with pronouns, either in writing or speaking. You have to begin employing nouns to break out of the gender neutrality the Hungarian language imposes.

EnbyMack

6/24/2022 18:43:08

People have begun using X也 in writing! Though it can't be typed unfortunately, it is still a work in progress-

Laszlo Fazekas

4/27/2023 20:13:36

This is because the Hungarians and the Chinese shared a common ancestor in the Huns and Hans. In other words, the Hungarians and the Chinese are not too distant brother/sister nations. The only reason the Hungarians don't look like the Chinese is because they constantly updated their blood with the surrounding peoples during their migration to west.

K. Weiss

11/12/2020 10:55:17

Just commenting on your first sentence: punchy as it might seem, for some readers such overgeneralisation can be a complete turn off. You are condemning a whole nation as racist, fascist, etc. What does bringing cc. 10 million people under this blanket statement say about you? Please take a moment to contemplate this.

11/12/2020 11:09:15

@ K. Weiss - Thanks for your concern, but the first sentence, along with the rest of the post, is meant to be ironic.

I don't think Hungary is any of the things listed in the first sentence; I was merely repeating the words, phrases, and blanket statements the Western media generally employs when it reports on Hungary- and I did this for for humorous effect.

Apparently, the joke went over your head. What does this say about you?

11/12/2020 15:54:02

Not sure if it is my comprehension skills/sense of humour... But with the added note at the end it definitely seems too much of the same 'joke'. Perhaps that is why it is easy to misunderstand. Less is more, so to say:)
Anyway, what I wanted to find out whether you have any info on the linguistic history/etymology of the gender neutral personal pronoun. Thanks in anticipation.

11/12/2020 18:48:58

@ K. Weiss - Unlike most other European languages, Hungarian is Uralic in origin, and does not assign feminine and masculine cases to nouns and pronouns. This development has nothing to do with social considerations, but are instead merely grammatical in origin. The suffixes of nouns in Hungarian are determined by the words themselves rather than by any consideration for the feminine or masculine.

The more recent developments in gender neutral pronouns in languages like English are purely politically driven and tend to stem from the same line of thinking which now determines that black should be capitalized while white should remain in the lower case. Not sure if that answers your question, but that's about all I can say on the topic without being provided more specifics.

11/12/2020 20:30:10

That makes sense, thank you. However I was more interested in the historical development, I mean whether there used to be (e.g. in ancient Hungarian) other forms of the pronoun in the 3rd person singular, which possibly disappeared, like some linguistic features do.

11/12/2020 20:52:51

@ KW - As far as I know, Hungarian went through three major stages - Old Hungarian (now extinct), Middle Hungarian (spoken until about the 17th century, and Modern Hungarian, which was the result of major language reform launched in late nineteenth century. Many forms were shed and transformed over this long period, and many foreign loan words and grammatical structures seeped into the language as well.

The video below presents some interesting (but disputable) theories on the origins of many Magyar words. You may find what you are looking for there:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4ZFfP5xeRw

11/17/2020 09:55:57

Thanks, will watch!

Zsanett V

3/19/2021 13:56:03

as a Hungarian I totally get this irony...especially these days.
I love this! :)

minor spelling correction:
the singular possessive pronoun for all genders is *övé*
the plural possessive pronoun for all genders is *övék*
the formal nominative case third person for all genders is *ön* or maga

3/19/2021 15:11:17

@ Thanks. Correction noted. I hit the wrong key on the computer it seems.

John Lusk

5/17/2021 16:39:46

Mr. Berger:
You might be interested/amused to learn how I came upon your site. In the 1980s, a film titled “Heartburn” One of the characters was Hungarian. The star of the film, Meryl Streep, stated Hungarian doesn’t have pronouns, so the Hungarian fellow couldn’t say “he’s or she’s a piece of cake.” I decided to look it up on the ‘Net, and sure enough, it’s true!

On to the next topic, the condemnation of an entire nation. Not yours, Hungary, but mine, the USA. And in this category, your country and mine have much in common, namely that in the eyes of a small but very vocal and loud minority, the USA has to be one of the worst places in the world to live. All the negative adjectives said about Hungary are said about the US everyday repeatedly. So, your country and mine, despite many dissimilarities, have that in common.

Best Wishes

Sandor

8/29/2022 04:47:37

Hungarian does have pronouns and some of these were correctly listed in the original post. Meryl Streep is wrong. Now, the pronouns in Hungarian can be implied via appropriate conjugation of the relevant parts of speech (e.g., the verb). It is when one wishes to emphasize who exactly is carrying out the action, etc. when one can explicitly state the pronoun. So it functions as a tool to put emphasis on someone.

Mischa

8/19/2022 12:00:30

This is so interesting. I am learning Hungarian again now after a hiatus from when I was a child and thinking about the contemporary issues now of pronouns in English language. If we are all ő then we can not make an issue and everyone can get back to work. It’s totally impersonal, efficient and perhaps even practical?

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When It Comes to Gender Pronouns, Hungary is the Most Progressive Country in the World

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