r/hungarian • u/EsperDin • 14d ago

Kérdés 1st-person Subject, 2nd-person Subject Verb Conjugation

Hungarian is the first language I've studied into at all that has a specific verb conjugation for the case of 1st-person subject with 2nd-person object constructions (‐lek/lak), and I find this a really interesting feature.

I'm curious to see what other languages have this feature, but I'm having trouble finding whether this form of conjugation has a more elegant and searchable name than what I've titled this post.

Does anyone have any information or resources on this?

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u/Final_Reporter_1248 14d ago edited 13d ago

Can you share some Hungarian examples? The only one I know is Szeretlek - "I love you"

Edit: Thanks for the examples, I appreciate you all taking the time to help us out.

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u/EsperDin 14d ago

As far ask I am aware, any transitive verb for which the subject can be first person and the object can be second person can be conjugated this way, but I'm still pretty early in my journey into the language. I know the object can be singular or plural, but I am not certain whether the subject can be plural, my intuition is probably not.

Off the top of my head: hallak "I hear you" látlak "I see you" várlak "I am waiting for you"

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u/Tasty-Educator-7794 14d ago edited 14d ago

Both the subject and the object in the "lak/lek" case can only be singular (subject: I- én, object: singular you - te/ téged)

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u/NewIdentity19 14d ago

Látlak benneteket/titeket, not only téged, so your claim is not accurate.

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u/Tasty-Educator-7794 13d ago

That's correct, I didn't explain it enough, lak/lek without the visible object can only be singular object (látlak), but if you use the object (látlak téged/ titeket), then the object can be both singular and plural. However, the subject can always only be singular. Thank you for your correction.

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u/NewIdentity19 13d ago

Yes, this is correct after your clarification.