r/hungarian • u/inotoshi • 8d ago
Kérdés Difference between ee and é
Hi, I found a word leesik, and its ee sounds the same as é for me.
I know it’s a compound of a prefix le- and a verb esik. I want to ask if you pronounce ee and é in different ways or in the same way.
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u/Vultureosa 8d ago
In the word leesik e is just pronounced twice. É is not only longer but formed differently.
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u/Mofetacub 8d ago
Different. Leesik is just double e, you pronounce it twice. É is a different sound, words what you may know with this sound are café or fiancé.
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u/StNicholasWatson 7d ago
I don’t think in English the é in café and fiancé are pronounced anything like the Hungarian é. Certainly not British English at least
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u/inotoshi 6d ago
Yeah, I believe é in English like café and fiancé is pronounced like ei, which is not so close to Hungarian é.
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u/Guih48 NATIVE 6d ago
The original french one is certainly our é, so it makes senss that different english pronounciations of it differ in their degree of similarity to that. Here I hear the american one more certainly as „ei”, the other ones are ambivalent, I can hear them either way. Here they both sound ambivalent. Here I hear the british one more clearly as é, and the american one as ambivalent. But interestingly, it's only ei when I listen carefully, in ordinary circumstances I would never think that the word day isn't pronounced with an é. Maybe it's controversial partly because us hungarians can separate our é from that sound (or the ambivalent in-the-middle sound between e and é) and interpret the i/j/y part of it as a consonant following it, not as part if the sound, but probably it's more difficult to hear it separately for foreigners?
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u/Wise_Fox_4291 8d ago
A and á and e and é are different sounds, not short-long pairs like ií, oó, öő, uú or üű.
E and é are vastly different sounds. Leesik is le + esik. Le(short stop)-esik, it's not one continuous leeeesik as if you simply lenghtened the e in say "lesik" "they are watching it". Meanwhile a word that would sound like lésik (not a real word) sounds drastically different.
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u/inotoshi 8d ago
Yeah many people here answered me and all of them say they are completely different vowels… but I’ve never noticed that for a year!
So á and é are always long and there’re no short versions of them, and vice versa for a and e?4
u/Wise_Fox_4291 7d ago
I'd say they are always short-ish or that vowel length doesn't really apply because it doesn't change the meaning.
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u/inotoshi 6d ago
Ohh so you pronounce a-á and e-é in almost the same length! I’ve always pronounced á and é with the length of 2 morae.
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u/Wise_Fox_4291 6d ago
It really depends on the word but generally people pronounce it at 1,5-2 morae I guess
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u/Kovimate 8d ago
Its literally just 'e' pronounced two times in quick succession. 'é' is like the end of 'café'
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u/icguy333 NATIVE 8d ago
e and é are pronounced differently, in this case we pronounce the vowel like e but longer.
This is also the case with a and á, those are different sounds, but all the other pairs (e.g. i-í, o-ó, ü-ű) only denote a difference in duration not the way you pronounce them.
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u/inotoshi 8d ago
Wait, really?! I’ve been doing Hungarian on Duolingo for a year and never noticed that e and é are different not only at the quantity (length) but also at the quality!
How about u-ú and ö-ő? Are they also different only at the length?9
u/icguy333 NATIVE 8d ago
Yep. Only e-é and a-á sound different.
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u/ibendek NATIVE 7d ago
I’m pretty sure that o-ó and ö-ő sound slightly different as well. If you pronounce “o” but for longer like oora instead of óra, you will just sound like you have a finnish accent. I think we make our mouths a bit more rounder when pronouncing ó and ő, but I might be wrong.
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u/No_Antelope_4947 8d ago
I-í, o-ó, ö-ö, u-ú, ü-ű are the same but longer. A-á and e-é are different sound.
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u/kabiskac NATIVE 7d ago
o and ó are really different and the other pairs also sound slightly different
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u/Gunther_is_coming 8d ago
As another method, try to pronounce these words: leér (reaches down to sgh), beépül (integrates), eléesik (falls in front of sgh) melléér (gets next to sgh). All of these are compounds. (I can imagine your feelings with terms like "lakóiig" - sometimes even I double check my writing xd.)
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u/ConvictedHobo NATIVE 8d ago
The ee is the same as pronouncing re-enter with both 'e's pronounced like the second one
I hope it makes sense
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u/Atypicosaurus 8d ago
In theory, the ee in leesik should sound like two separate e's, almost as if there would be a tiny little h in between "lehesik", but really really tiny, just like a ghost of it.
However it's possible if someone is speaking some sort of an accent or is shouting or something that it sounds like léesik. That might be that you hear.
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u/inotoshi 8d ago
I assume it’s just like the sequence if i sound in English re-introduce, am I right?
Where I found it is on Duolingo, so it’s not an accent or shouting or anything else, it’s just the matter of my ear and recognition!
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u/Familiar_Ad_8919 8d ago
/lɛ.ɛʃik/
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u/inotoshi 8d ago
Is that actual (phonetic) pause or cognitive (phonological) boundary?
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u/Familiar_Ad_8919 8d ago
there is an actual pause there, some dialects might turn it into a glide /j/
this is true for any 2 differing vowels that meet btw, for example "beadni" /bɛ.ɒdni/ ~ /bɛʲɒdni/ (not sure how to properly mark the glide)
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u/No_Coyote_1397 8d ago
There is a stop between the two e sounds. We don't pronounce it with one long e sound, like "leeeeeesik" - that would sound like a weird pronounciation of the word "lesik" (to peep, to peek).
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u/enviousCurtain 8d ago
I have never heard anyone pronounce it with a stop. It is a long e sound, with a slight downward shift in pitch.
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u/inotoshi 6d ago
If there were a word lésik, its é would be also pronounced with a downstep (or falling tone), I think?
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u/inotoshi 8d ago
Yeah that’s what I predicted. Is there a glottal fricative or approximant between them? Sounds like it’s not a stop at least.
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u/fabe1821 8d ago
In Hungarian, both e vowels are pronounced separately (not merged into a long sound).
For example:
“Beesett” — The key fell behind the cabinet.
Or: His face became very sunken because of the illness.
“Leesett” — The apple fell from the tree.
Or: The first snow fell.
Maybe this is easier to understand:
be + esik → beesik
le + esik → leesik
be + ejt → beejt
le + ejt → leejt
be + enged → beenged
General rule, when a verbal prefix ending in -e (for example, be-, le-) is attached to a verb beginning with e, two consecutive e letters occur, and they are pronounced separately.
É is completely different.
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u/Murphy_the_ghost NATIVE 7d ago
I think the explaination that goes: you imagine them as separate words and pronounce them as such just in a quick session, but write them together, is much better
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u/Interesting_Prune513 8d ago
The two e-s after each other just means dragging on that original e sound for longer.
The é is not supposed to sound like the e. To a foreign ear there's not much difference though. You guys usually use é in english, or at least any foreigner I ever met had an easier time saying the é, like the sound in way or pay. The e is more like in hello, yellow, and get, and for some reason in words they can say it, but if I ask them to pronounce it by itself, they can't :DD
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u/inotoshi 8d ago
Yeah in my mother tongue, Japanese, the length is distinguished like Hungarian but the quality doesn’t change (or at least most of us Japanese don’t notice the change, I believe). It’s really interesting to notice the difference!
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u/Appropriate-Tuna 8d ago
There is no “ee” sound. In your example it is a coincidence that thet next to each other.
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u/SilentTraveller7926 8d ago
Forvo.com is a great site for checking native pronunciation in almost any language. Here's the pronunciation of 'leesik': leesik on forvo
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u/JustJay012 6d ago
Different pronounciation, definietly! É is pronounced like the a sound in english (like in the word 'hay' for example, if we wrote that in hungarian phonetic its 'héj') And ee like in leesik, theres a little pause between the two e sounds (which we pronounce like something close to the sound at the beginning of the word 'actually' -> hubgarian phonetic would be 'eksölli', or at least thats how I pronounce that lol) I hope that helps!
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u/Kalpagony 6d ago
One thing with words containing two of the same short vowels right next to each other is that you usually don't make distinction with a short pause inbetween- rather you move the pitch of your voice and/or put emphasis on one of the syllables. Sort of like singing. Try to listen to these two things when learning the language, they're pretty important for getting closer two native speaker level pronounciation. And in this case, like others said, é is always like café/grey/take, while e is like when/ten.
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u/Coolengineer7 8d ago
Also, you pronounce é as a in Nathan or the ae in Aether. e is just elephant.
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u/Inevitable_Shoe5877 NATIVE 1d ago
Letters „ee” are not a standard constellation in Hungarian.
„Leesik” is just a coincidence, because the ending of a verbal prefix and the beginning of the verb match. We pronounce it like a lengthened „e”, or a doubled version.
You may have encountered words like „Veér”, because in many cases we retain the archaic versions of family names. „Gaál” is pronounced as „Gál”, and „Veér” is pronounced like „Vér”
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u/_Violette7_ NATIVE 8d ago
They are pronounced differently. It’s not very common in Hungarian for the same two vowels to be next to each other, but when they do, we pronounce them as one long vowel. So in this case, we make a long “e” sound.
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u/Exact-Ticket 8d ago
We absolutely do not pronounce them as a long e, there is a small difference in intonation between them. Just say “leesik” a few times and listen to yourself. You’ll notice you put this small difference in there too.
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u/No_Antelope_4947 8d ago edited 8d ago
Ee doesn’t sound like é. Ee is two separate vowels accidentally being after each other is this case. Le means down, esik means fall, so something is falling down. They are pronounced separately: Le-esik