"Egy diákot keres a bíró."

Translation: The judge is looking for a student.

[akshan]

is it a natural word order? or "a bíró egy diákot keres" is much more natural?

[hatcher]

Your sentence is the neutral way to say it. "Egy diákot keres a bíró." puts the emphasis on "diákot".

[alantrousers]

What, like in English phrasing it: "It's a student that the judge is looking for."
?

[Shamarth]

Yes, it's emphasised like that.

[Coyox]

My husband is Hungarian and he says this is is first choice way to say it

[nikolaricci]

I have wanted to ask the same question.

[AniB82]

Why is it diákot and not diák please?

[Shamarth]

This is the accusative case, which shows who or what is it that's directly affected by the action.

In English you mainly use the word order to express this: The dog bites Peter isn't the same as Peter bites the dog.

Hungarian on the other hand uses a -t suffix to express this, so the word order doesn't matter. So using the same example: A kutya megharapja Pétert and Pétert megharapja a kutya both express that it's Peter who gets bitten.

And it just happens that keres is a verb that requires the accusative case, unlike its English counterpart which requires the preposition for. Differences like this simply have to be memorised.

[RoyHitch]

Thanks for this explanation. It's like some lights have just been switched on for me.

[OmerRub]

Exelent explenation

[JohnWeber786406]

Thank you for this information - in particular the kerni requirement of accusative case.