# How do you pronounce the letters e and é?



## thunderbirz

Sometimes the letter e sounds exaclty like Finnish ä and sometime like Finnish e.
Sometimes the letter é sounds like Finnish ii and sometimes like Finnish ee. 

These letters confuse me so much. It's like everyone pronounces them differently.


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## francisgranada

In some dialects still survive both the open and the closed short "e", which are simply two distinct vowels like in Finnish. In other dialects and in the _standard Hungarian_ this difference doesn't exist any more. The result is that the short "e" corresponds approximately to the Finnish "ä" and the long "é" to the Finnish "ee".  

The "practical quality" of these vowels may vary, i.e. the vowels _e, é_ may be pronounced a bit more or less open or closed (depending on region, person etc.), but the difference between them is always clearly notable. The "é" is never pronounced like the long "í" (except of some few dialects). 

My personal observation: comparing with the Spanish or common Slavic "neutral _e_", the Hungarian "e" is a bit more open and "é" is more closed (and long, of course).


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## AndrasBP

In standard Hungarian, which is spoken by most people in cities including Budapest, the letters "e" and "é" are pronounced in a uniform manner. 
I disagree with your statement about their pronunciation being varied. The *perception *of these vowels by foreigners is another matter.

"e" is a short vowel which is somewhere between Finnish "ä" and "e" - the phonetic symbol is /ɛ/, a sound also used in French and Swedish.
"é" is a long vowel, which is supposed to be of the same quality as Finnish "ee", but a bit shorter.

I hope that helps.


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## thunderbirz

Yeah it might just be the combination of e and ä. Sometimes I hear it as e and vice versa. I think it's the same for é. It is the combination of ii and ee.


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## Olivier0

The letter e in standard Hungarian is as open as Finnish ä (IPA [æ]) in the modern kind of Hungarian spoken by the youth and in cities, else it is a bit less open, but still far from being as closed as Finnish e (IPA [e̞]).
On the other hand, many Hungarian dialects make use of the distinction between Finnish ä and Finnish e, which means it does not depend on the person or the phonetic context but it a property of the given word, for instance értettek "they understood (me)", in standard Hungarian like Finnish eertättäk, would be értëttek (ë being the linguistic notation for the closed kind of Hungarian e), that is, like Finnish eertettäk, and nothing else, that is no possibility of changing the Finnish e sound to ä or the other way round.

The letter é in standard Hungarian is Finnish ee (IPA [e̞ː], not quite as closed as French é [eː]).
Some people or some dialects indeed say for instance pínz (Finnish ii) instead of pénz (Finnish ee) "money", but this is not considered standard and proper Hungarian.

-- Olivier


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## AndrasBP

Standard Hungarian "e" is certainly *not *the same as Finnish ä (IPA [æ]).
In all the sources I've checked, the vowel is transcribed as /ɛ/, the same as in the French words *chaise *or *f**ê**te *(according to the Le Robert dictionary).


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## Olivier0

It can be both /ɛ/ and [æ], since a  phoneme /.../ is a range of sounds [...] that the language speakers  feel as separate from other phonemes, and the way a phoneme is written  is a matter of convention.
On Wikipedia the vowel diagrams copied from _Journal __of the __IPA_ articles in the series "Illustrations of the IPA", for Hungarian (by Szende who teaches Hungarian in Paris) and for French, indicate that
- in standard French, the phoneme /e/ (the letter é) is a sound very close to [e],
- in standard French, the phoneme /ɛ/ (the letter è) is a sound very close to [ɛ],
- in standard Hungarian, the phoneme /eː/ (the letter é) is a [e̞ː] sound, a long [e̞] more open than [e], that is, between [e] and [ɛ],
- in standard Hungarian, the phoneme /ɛ/ (the letter e) is a sound very close to [æ].
But as I mentioned, I have a feeling that this is based on sound analyses of people speaking a rather "modern/Budapest" kind of Hungarian where e and é are more open than the more traditional kind of Hungarian where simply e /ɛ/ is [ɛ] and é /eː/ is [eː]. Do native Hungarians feel this modern tendency of more open e and é sounds?
-- Olivier


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## AndrasBP

I am aware of the possible different pronunciations of one single phoneme in different circumstances. 
However, as a native speaker of standard Hungarian, from Budapest, aged 37, I can assure you that whenever a speaker's /ɛ/ phonemes are realized as [æ]s (in some, not all positions), then this speaker's language is perceived as dialectal. [æ] is typical in many parts of Western Hungary (Dunántúl).

I am not sure the "modern tendency of more open e and é sounds" exists at all. Is there a source you could specify describing this phenomenon?

András


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## Encolpius

Olivier0 said:


> - in standard Hungarian, the phoneme /ɛ/ (the letter e) is a sound very close to [æ].



Yes, that's the way how Boborján is speaking in Vastyúk is talál szeget TV show...


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## Olivier0

In favour of [æ] there is the article above by Szende Tamás, who taught for quite a few years at Langues'O (Inalco) in Paris and so should be aware of whether or not there is a difference between Hungarian _e_ and French _è_.

I also could find online a vowel diagram from Bolla Kálmán: _Magyar fonetikai atlasz_, where if I understand formants correctly:
- _i í ü ű u ú á_ /i iː y yː u uː/ are as expected _ [y]  [ä] with the long ones a bit more closed,
- ö ő /ø øː/ are as expected [ø̞] mid-way between closed [ø] and open [œ],
- o /o/ is as expected [o̞] mid-way between closed [o] and open [ɔ], but ó /oː/ is more closed and almost [oː],
and the somewhat unexpected and more relevant part is:
- a, written /ɔ/, is almost [ɔ], so quite closed,
- é /eː/ is [eː], so quite closed,
- the dialectal ë, written /e/, is [ɛ], so quite open,
- e /ɛ/is [ɛ̞] mid-way between [ɛ] and [æ], and a bit centralised too.
Of course it might be the description of a Transdanubian (Dunántúl) dialect with ë, though what we see from the book does not mention this but has titles about the sound system in general, so the e /ɛ/ might be meant for the standard and the ë /e/ for the dialect only, but we cannot know for sure without seeing how the book describes it.

-- Olivier
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