Causatives, Passives, and Impersonal Strategies: Forms and Core Pattern

Hungarian has a compact, productive way to say that one participant causes another action: it adds the causative suffix -(t)at/-(t)et to the verb. The English passive has no equally general Hungarian suffix in present-day neutral language. Instead, Hungarian normally chooses among an active clause, an omitted generic third-person plural subject, and a -va/-ve + van result-state construction. These are not interchangeable mechanical translations; each keeps a different participant or state in the foreground.

The productive causative suffix

The causative suffix follows the verb stem and obeys vowel harmony. Its back-vowel forms are -at and -tat; its front-vowel forms are -et and -tet. Rounded front vowels do not create separate -öt/-töt causative forms. Compare these common formations:

Many one-syllable consonant-final stems take -at/-et, while longer stems generally take -tat/-tet, but that syllable-count shortcut has lexical exceptions. There is a firmer spelling rule for stems ending in t: after a preceding consonant, add -at/-et (bont → bontat, fest → festet); after a preceding vowel, add -tat/-tet, producing a written and pronounced tt (tanít → taníttat, épít → építtet). With an -ik dictionary form, derive from the stem without -ik, as in dolgozik → dolgoztat. Learn frequent causatives as complete forms rather than deleting one of their doubled consonants.

The causative becomes a new verb stem

Once -(t)at/-(t)et has been attached, the result behaves like a verb. Tense, mood, person, number, and the indefinite-versus-definite conjugation are added after it. A verb prefix remains subject to the usual word-order rules. The structure of megjavíttattam is approximately meg-javít-tat-t-am: prefix + lexical stem + causative + past + first-person definite ending.

The first sentence has the indefinite object egy nyugtát, so it uses indefinite íratok. The second has definite a nyugtát, so it uses definite íratom. English speakers often concentrate so hard on the extra causer and causee that they forget that the embedded object still controls Hungarian conjugation.

In the second sentence, contrastive a szerelővel occupies the preverbal focus position, so meg follows the finite verb. This separation does not remove the prefix from the causative verb. See the general prefix and focus pattern and the definiteness choice.

Marking the person who performs the caused action

The participant who causes the event is the ordinary subject: a főnök in “the boss made me write.” The person who actually performs the caused action is the causee. With an intransitive base, an accusative causee is common under direct control, while an instrumental causee can foreground the participant as the agent carrying out the action. In the next example, the accusative measure phrase még két kört also makes instrumental marking of the players especially natural.

Here a játékosokkal presents the players as agents carrying out the running. With some intransitive causatives, especially when the causer controls the participant directly, an accusative is also possible and may suggest less independent agency.

There is a real semantic continuum here, not a perfectly categorical case formula. Lexical convention and the amount of control both matter. With a transitive base whose own patient remains in the sentence, Hungarian very commonly marks the causee with -val/-vel, leaving the patient in the accusative.

The second example is deliberately not causative: an instrumental-marked person can simply be a partner or companion. Do not label every -val/-vel phrase a causee. In the causative example, a szerzővel is the author who carries out the correcting, while a hibás hivatkozásokat is the embedded object. The instrumental forms themselves are reviewed under the instrumental-comitative case.

Hungarian can omit a causee when the service provider is obvious or irrelevant. This is extremely common for repairs, haircuts, printing, and other arranged services.

Why the old passive is not the modern default

Older Hungarian formed passives with -(t)atik/-(t)etik. Such forms survive in set expressions and deliberately old-fashioned official style, but they are not a productive neutral equivalent of English be + past participle.

Both tétetik and adatik meg are recognizable, but using this pattern freely in ordinary conversation sounds archaic, ceremonious, or humorous. A learner should understand it, not build every English passive from it.

The generic third-person plural

An omitted third-person plural subject can mean an unspecified “they”: staff, authorities, workers, people in general, or whoever normally performs the action. Grammatically, the clause is active. Because Hungarian already omits recoverable subjects, it does not sound evasive in the way English they sometimes does.

In the first two examples, fogadják and kézbesítik are definite-conjugation forms because their objects are definite. The third uses the impersonal possibility construction lehet + infinitive, another natural choice when permission or possibility, rather than an agent, is central.

If the agent is known and relevant, a straightforward active clause is usually clearer than an English-shaped passive with által “by.” Hungarian information structure can place the patient first without changing grammatical roles.

Here a jelentést remains accusative, and a független szakértő is the subject. Initial position makes the report the discourse topic; the preverbal position of the subject identifies the expert contrastively. Hungarian therefore gets much of the informational effect of the English passive without changing the verb's voice.

Result states with -va/-ve + van

The suffix -va/-ve forms an adverbial participle, and van supplies tense and agreement. In this construction, the nominative participant is in a state resulting from a completed event. The pattern is very common in neutral speech, but it is not an all-purpose eventive passive.

The suffix attaches directly to the verb stem: zár + va → zárva and nyit + va → nyitva. Vowel harmony chooses -va after back vowels and -ve after front vowels. Verb prefixes normally precede van in this state construction: be van zárva, el van küldve, meg volt terítve.

English speakers often try to add an agent to every such clause. Although an által phrase can occur in formal administrative or academic prose, a neutral sentence about who performed an event is better as an active clause. A jelentés Péter által el van készítve is heavy and bureaucratic; A jelentést Péter készítette el is the natural event report.

A practical form choice

Use this sequence when building a Hungarian sentence:

1. If one participant makes, lets, or arranges for another participant to act, form a causative with -(t)at/-(t)et.
2. If an English passive merely backgrounds unknown human agents, use an active third-person plural with the subject omitted.
3. If the clause describes the state left after completion, use -va/-ve + van.
4. If a known agent matters, use an ordinary active clause and let Hungarian word order make the patient the topic.
5. Reserve -(t)atik/-(t)etik for fixed, formal, literary, archaic, or humorous uses that you have actually encountered.

Common Mistakes

Key Takeaways

• Build productive causatives with harmonic -(t)at/-(t)et, then add ordinary verbal tense and agreement endings.
• Keep the doubled tt where stem-final and suffix-initial consonants meet: épít → építtet.
• Causees are commonly accusative under direct control or instrumental when represented as agents of an embedded action; the choice also depends on the verb and meaning.
• Modern Hungarian usually translates English eventive passives with an active clause, an omitted generic plural subject, or another impersonal construction.
• -va/-ve + van presents a result state, while -(t)atik/-(t)etik is restricted to marked registers and fixed uses.