# The case of 'ablakain'



## Ригель

Szervusztok, first time poster here so thanks in advance!

I'm fairly new to hungarian and decided to tackle the language by reading a children's book where I encountered the following phrase:

"Az iskolafolyosó keskeny ablakain ferdén ömlött be a fény, ..."

I cannot find anywhere the correct case for "ablakain" and thought it might be a colloquial form or even misspelled. From the context I'm left to deduce that it means something along the lines of "through the window(s?)". Could someone who's better of with hungarian share his/her wisdom?


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## Ateesh6800

Ригель said:


> I'm fairly new to *H*ungarian <...>
> 
> "Az iskolafolyosó keskeny ablakain ferdén ömlött be a fény, ..."
> 
> I cannot find anywhere the correct case for "ablakain"...



Privet!

*Short answer:*

Yes, it's _"through the narrow windows of the school hallway/corridor"_.

* * *

*Explanation:*

The form *"ablakain"* is regular and correct. However, it is not simply a "case" like *okno, okna, oknom, okne* would be in Russian... -- I hope the Cyrillic script in your nick means that you have _some_ knowledge of Slavic languages. If not... Well, you asked for it. 

Here's how it works in a few steps:

*(I)* *ablak*: single nominative (RU _okno_; EN _window_).

*(II) Possessive structures:*

In English, a possessive is built up like this:
*Mom* has a *house*, so it's Mom*'s* + house
In Russian, it's the same: the _'owner'_ is marked and the _'owned'_ is not; if culture (_kultura_) has a house (_dom_), its _dom kultur*y*_ or something to that effect.

In Hungarian, it's the _opposite_:
*Anya* has a *ház*, so it's anya + ház*a*.
The _'owner'_ is _not_ marked; instead, the _'owned'_ is marked (as long as the sentence has both the owner and the owned in it).

So:

*ablaka* is single nominative, but meaning "somebody's window" or "the window of something".

*(III) Plural*

Normally, the plural is marked by *-k*.

Singular *ablak* => plural *ablak + o + k* (where 'o' is just there to make it easy to pronounce).

However, if the noun has the case/suffix of the "thing owned", then:
Singular *ablaka* (the _window_ of something) => plural *ablakai* (the _window*s* _of something).

*(IV) Case*
Finally, the *-on, -en, -ön* suffix means *"on"*, or, in this case *"through"*.
*ablak + a + i + n*
_"through the windows of (something)"_

I'm sure this works in a very similar way in Finnish.

Has this been useful? Feel free to ask.

*A.*


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## Ригель

Thanks a million for a perfect answer! This was way beyond my expectations and cleared absolutely everything.  And yes, I know Russian pretty well so you didn't waste any effort there. TY


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## Ateesh6800

Feel free to ask if you have any further questions. Because of the agglutinative nature of Hungarian (and Finnish and Turkish and Aymara and Inuit etc.), childrens' books in these languages are not much simpler in terms of _grammar_ than books for adults--but they are still an excellent entry to the language and culture. They show what kids have to put up with.


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## Zsanna

More about possessives in Hungarian: here.


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