r/hungarian • u/Best_Detail7060 • 4d ago
Rhyming in Hungarian must be easy
A lot of words have the same ending. What do you think?
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u/vmpzs 4d ago
If you mean that because of agglutination it's easy to find rhymes, I doubt that it's easier to find rhymes to a meaningful poem or lyrics. Actually there's a word for bad rhyming called kecskerím meaning goat rhymes, where the rhyming is as skillful as if you're listening to goats who are very good at the most basic rhyming, because they only use the vowel e.
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u/pempoczky Native Speaker / Anyanyelvi Beszélő 4d ago
Technically, you could make an entire poem with every line ending in -nak or -nek. It wouldn't be a very good poem. It's easy to make a couple rhymes like that but it becomes very repetitive quickly, so Hungarian songs and poems usually do end up going for more creative rhymes
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u/szpaceSZ Native Speaker / Anyanyelvi Beszélő 2d ago
That's some peak 16th c. poetry!
Balassi did several "poems" where all but a few lines ended on "-ban". :D
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u/BedNo4299 Native Speaker / Anyanyelvi Beszélő 3d ago
Rhyming based on suffixes usually sounds bland and repetitive.
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u/ENDerke_ 3d ago
Histortically suffix rhyme (ragrím in Hungarian) is one of the base of our oldest folk folk poetry, which only exists as lyrics of folk songs. A prime example of this is the folk song "Röpülj, páva, röpülj". But if you want to see "ragrím" in its prime form I recommend for you to take a look at EGRI HISTÓRIÁNAK SUMMÁJA, written by Tinódi Lantos Sebestyén. This was also meant to be performed with music, and it is one of the most useful historical recording of the 1548 siege on the fortress of Eger (worth a visit if ever in Hungary), which was successfully defended against the ottoman invaders. It can be a very a interetsting experience to take a look at the text, since it is from the 16th century, yet it is quite intelligible (there are some archaic words, but those can be looked up).
As time went on by the time of classicism (18th century) such style of poetry was taken over by more complex and internatially recognized genres. For the Hungarian ear, a full rhyme (when the letters are exactly the same or majorly similar) are the ones that sound the most pleasant. Assonants are a type of rhyming where only the vowel of the last syllable is matching, but that can sometimes sound a bit silly...
Another important part of poetry (as it originates from folk music) is the number syllables in a given line. A typical Hungarian scheme is páros rímű felező tizenkettes paired rhyme in split twelve-syllable lines, where each line has 12 syllables, adjacent lines rhyme in pairs of two, and there is pause in the middle of the lines (the pause stuff is complicated, so I won't get into it in detail, generally if there would a mid-line comma, it would go after the 6th syllable). This also aften called Hungarian scheme, example here.
As a bonus, Hungarian has a very rhithmical structure, thus capable to emulate classical greek/latin metric poetry. Unlike in English where the meters are created by the stressed and unstressed syllables, in Hungarian you can differenciate between long and short syllables by the literal time it takes to say them. This way our translation of such classics as Odyssey have actual metric rythm to it as opposed to being a weird novel. To give another pair of examples this is a poem of the latin poet Catullus, and this a Hungarian contemporary poets' work going with the same music (sadly this one is only on Spotify, so it might be cumbersome to listen to without a premium).
Talented poets can combine metric and rhymes creating complex schemes with very beautiful and meaningful poems.
TL,DR: ragrím is when the two words and in the same suffix. It is what our folk poetry is based on, but it has fallen out of fashion over time, as more and more complex styles and schemes were used by poets.
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u/bluelightspecial3 4d ago
What exactly do you mean? English has grammar and words that lend themselves to easy rhyming, too.
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u/DazzlingDifficulty70 4d ago
He means that Hungarian uses suffixes or post-positions instead of prepositions
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u/bluelightspecial3 3d ago
How is that different from any other language though? I could make a pretty long rhyming poem with -ing, -ed, etc. it would t be good though, probably.
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u/Xiaodisan 3d ago
In Hungarian literature, or "belles-lettres" - according to wiktionary, repeating the same word nearby in a text usually doesn't sound "right", and is discouraged, unless there is explicit reason from the writer's viewpoint to use it as a way to convey their meaning better.
The same sort of applies to parts of words too to a lesser degree, especially in a poem. Using the same suffix to force a rhyme is not too elegant, and will often sound as if a primary schooler wrote it. (And poems often don't actually need to rhyme anyway.)
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u/Petike_15 Native Speaker / Anyanyelvi Beszélő 3d ago
Ryhming is easy. The hard part is to give it a meaning and not just put some random word after each other.
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u/Humorpalanta 3d ago
Seriously, noone? If Rhyming is the topic, Rapülők is like the go to :D
Egy hete, hogy szenvedek... és te tudod, hogy itt valaki vár.
"Figyeli az utakat, gyere már!"
Kösz, hogy jössz, és mindened kiteszed,
Ledobom a gátlásaimat és kimegyek
Az erkélyre. Magamat kizárom, szívemet kitárom,
És ma is odakiáltom,
Hogy nincs a helyzetemben semmi, - de semmi! -
Amit ne lehetne kissé jobbá tenni.
https://m.zeneszoveg.hu/m_dalszoveg/649/rapulok/aj-lav-ju-zeneszoveg.html
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u/third-acc 4d ago
Well yeah, I feel like it is. Vocal harmony and all that. At least easier than other languages
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u/Megtalallak Native Speaker / Anyanyelvi Beszélő 4d ago
"Sok rapsztár lenne benn ebben a blázban,
Három ragrím után már vágod, hogy gáz van" /Saiid/
I don't think that the rhymes formed this way are elegant, or that it's particularly easy to do it. Why don't you give it a try?