Re: Hungarian tense, aspect, mood...

I've never studied Hungarian, so I don't know and that's why I ask.

But it seems to me that Hungarian verbs were, in a past form, much more
complex than thet are now.

Quickly off the top of my head I can think of only a few verb forms that I
use regularly:

olvasok/olvasom - I read (present)
olvastam - I read (past)
olvasnák/olvasnám - I would read (conditional?)
olvashatnák/olvashatnám - I could read (in the present or future)
olvashatok/olvashatom - I can read
olvashattam - I could read (in the past)
olvastam volna - I would have read
olvashattam volna - I could have read

I'm tempted to add 'olvasni fogok', but in reflection, I don't use that
very often; more often I do as Tamás described, using an adverb of the
future with the present tense.

I'm aware of such forms as 'olvasandó' (to be read), 'olvasta vala' (or
however it's formed, some complex past), 'olvasva lesz' ([it] will be
read), etc, but I never use these. Then of course I know the 'hodu utu rea
mene' form...

My question: what forms do/did exist, ever?



> On 24 Apr 2004 Trebor Young wrote:
>
>> future tense with an auxiliary verb fogni(?)
>
>   Stricly speaking there's no future tense in Hungarian. The form
> _fog_ + infinitive -- which is referensed in grammars as future
> tense -- is highly optional: some authors found that in a literary
> corpus future actions were expressed by present tense forms in
> 90.5% and only 9,5% of the instances was explicite future (_fog_ +
> inf.). This is true also for my usage.
>
>   You needn't use future forms when there's an adverb of time in
> the sentence. Even you may use a semantically dummy adverb of
> future _majd_ 'then, later on'. Or, you may use a perfect verb
> (useally formed by verbal prefixes _meg-_, _el-_ etc. from
> imperfect ones): the present of a perfect verb expresses a
> resultative future action as in Slavic languages. But a simple
> present form  of an inperfect verb (without any adverb) can refer
> to the future, if the action can't be perceived as present action:
> e.g. when I'm sitting at my desk, and my colleague asks me:
> _Jo:ssz?_ 'lit. Do you come?', it's clear that I'm not coming at
> present, thus this can happen only in the future.
>
>   Thus, the phrase 'I will come' can be translated by the following
> forms (without significant difference in sense): _jo:nni fogok_ 'I
> will come', _holnap jo:vo:k_ 'I *come tomorrow', _majd jo:vo:k_ 'I
> *come later', _megjo:vo:k_ 'I *arrive', _jo:v:ok_ 'I *come'...
>
>   Until the end of the 18th century there was an additional,
> synthetic future form in Hungarian formed by the marker _-and-/end-
> _ (plus personal suffixes), e.g. _jo:vendek_ 'I will come'. It's
> lost because of its superfluity. But its participe -ando'/endo_ is
> still used, even substantivized, as _halando'_ 'deathling, mortal
> man; lit. who will die', _jo:vendo"_ 'future; lit. what will come'.
>
>   (Etymological notes: _fog_ + infinitive was originally an
> inchoative construction, cf. English 'begin to do sth.'. The marker
> _-and-/end-_ is a contracted form of the still existing [but
> improductive] inchoative derivational verbal suffix: _-
> amod(ik)/emed(ik)_.)
>