33 Comments
"Otthon" means home when you are away from home and "itthon" means home when you are at home. "Otthon van" = "He is at home"; "Itthon vagyok" = "I am at home".
Otthon = There at home (indicating you're away) Itthon = Here at home (indicating you're there)
I use the meaning of Itt and Ott to remember which one implies which.
that's a good way to memorize it, as i'm sure that's why they are used (ott - there + hon - home ("archaic"), itt - here + hon - home). Though I think it can be useful to mention that "otthon" is also used when you are speaking about the place where you live. E.g. : this is my home - ez az én otthonom
To me, "back home" sounds like you're talking about a place you consider to be home that you haven't been to in a long time ... like if you're travelling or have moved to another country, your home country is "back home" ... I would never use "back home" to just mean my house where I happen not to be at the time of speaking, but I'll totally accept this as dialectal difference.
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Yes, if it is easier for you, you can memorize this way. It is a bit more correct.
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Not exactly but you're on the right track! "Hon" is "home" indeed, but in its own it is a mostly outdated form of "homeland" or "fatherland" (though we call that "anyaország" or "anyaföld" with faintly different meaning). "Hon" is the closest equivalent of Latin (and romance) "Patria". We almost never use it for home as a house / flat, and it counts as an archaic or outdated, deprecated form for general use or figure of speech. "Itthon" or "otthon" are more common descendants that may show relative distance from "°hon" but not necessarily.
---=== For hardcore learners: ===---
"Lenn az Alföld tengersík vidékin,
Ott vagyok honn, ott az én világom,
Börtönéből szabadúlt sas lelkem,
Ha a rónák végtelenjét látom"
(Petőfi Sándor)
In a hastily improvised, bold translation:
"Dawn on fields of Great Plains, sea-like flatlands,
I feel like home there, that's the true world of mine,
My soul is eagle that escaped its prison
When I see the endless lands of 'rónas'"
The original is a bit archaic, with some vovel changes: "vidékin" is "vidékén" today; "honn" is "itthon/otthon"; "szabadúlt" is "szabadult" now, with short "u" and "róna" is a kind of puszta, or prairie—while "puszta" is more like a wasteland with very low fertility, róna doesn't refer to the agricultural value and means a very flat land, undisturbed from waters, woods, villages. It doesn't mean uninhabited land, it is just scarcely inhabited.
no, I can't think of any case; otthon can be a noun when referring to the place where you live, but when you use it as an adverb, otthon is only used when you are not at home, and itthon is used when you are at home
But I just had a question where the answer was "otthon vagyok"!!! Does that mean "I am there at home"? It doesn't make much sense in English.
it is not grammatically correct to say "otthon vagyok" but still very commonly used.that's how it is.:)
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It is not always incorrect!!! When you are talking at your friend's place about the next day's schedule, and say "holnap hatkor? [Hm, let me think of it...] Otthon vagyok!" is completely okay (Tomorrow at six? ... I am [there, at] home.)
I have an English question here. I translated "No ice at home" and was marked as wrong. Why? In English I could leave out that "There is", couldn't I?
It isn't technically correct in English to leave out "There is". Every sentence needs a subject and a verb. Subjects can be implied, but verbs cannot.
If "nincs=nem van" does that mean that Hungarian has negative forms for some verbs similar to Irish?, if so, which verbs? or is it only van?
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If we have more, they are still very-very few. At this moment I cannot recall any other than "nincs". :)
Nincs = nem van, but if you don't want to use "nincs", you can make a sentence: "Jég nem otthon".
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NO WAY! That is completely wrong!!! Even if you change the word order, it changes the stress, too, and "nem van" should be absolutely avoided! Children up to two must learn that "nincs" is the word they must use instead of "nem van". The latter is just as frequent as "unexists".
Yeah, I didn't add that "nem van" is incorrect and "nincs" should be used instead.
At this point in the Spanish tree, I was learning how to say "The cat eats rice."
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Don't forget that Spanish is almost the same language as English comparing to Hungarian. ;) :D
No, of course, they are but the same language family with really big and painful differences, but as Indo-European languages, they have very common features. In Hungarian there are so different structures and so many thing to learn that the constricted length of the language tree must include bigger steps.
For your further information, the cat eats rice is "a macska rizst eszik" in Hungarian. Silly cat. ;)
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In general use we never call ice cream as "jég". It is either "fagylalt" (the soft one) or "jégkrém" (the harder one), sometimes "parfé" or "parfait" stylized as the French original that we borrowed. Therefore "There is no ice at home" can mean two things:
- We don't have ice cubes at home
- The waters or the roads are not covered with ice (in the winter of course).
For the latter: in our climate it is not rare that the winter temperature drops below 0°C (32°F) at night. In Budapest downtown and the bigger cities it may be warmer. So when you go to the suburbs you may find ice or icy roads, and you may be surprised, stating that "there is no ice at home".
The standalone sentence would inform us about the missing ice cubes. ;)
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You're very welcome, I am happy if my answer was useful and your feedback is very important for me :bow: :)
