Lesson 36 of 74 · A1, Unit 2: Basic structures
The present tense
Every Hungarian verb you've used so far — vagyok, szeretek, kérek — has been present tense, but this lesson lays out the whole system: one ending per person, chosen by vowel harmony, stacked straight onto the verb stem.
A handful of verbs (the 'ik-verbs', named for their dictionary form: lakik 'to live', dolgozik 'to work') take slightly different endings — lakom, not lakok — and stems ending in s/sz/z swap the 'you' ending -sz for -ol/-el/-öl to avoid an awkward double sound.
By the end you can:
- conjugate a regular verb in the present tense across all six persons
- recognise the special -ik verb pattern: lakom, not lakok
- know when 'you' takes -ol/-el/-öl instead of -sz, after s/sz/z stems
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