"Péter is cooking the dinner today."

Translation: Ma Péter főzi a vacsorát.

[KiritsuguZFC]

Does "ma" always go in front of a sentence? (except for when you want to emphasize it I guess). I always just guess where those small words like this and "ott" and "itt" go, so I hope someone can make it a bit clearer :p

[jsiehler]

Those little words (when or where) are among the more freely placed elements of a sentence. Keeping the other three parts of the sentence in the order they're currently in, I'd say that any of the four possible positions for ma is fine:

Ma Péter főzi a vacsorát.

Péter ma főzi a vacsorát.

Péter főzi ma a vacsorát.

Péter főzi a vacsorát ma.

Only the second one has a different emphasis from the rest. The other three seem nearly identical to me - no more difference among them than there is between "Today, Peter is cooking the dinner" and "Peter is cooking the dinner today" in English.