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Learn Hardcore Hungarian: Az oltás fontos. - The vaccination is important.

Hardcore Hungarian
/Looking after a friend's pet
/Az oltás fontos.

Az oltás fontos.

Word

Az oltás fontos.

Meaning

The vaccination is important.

Part of speech

sentence

Pronunciation

Course

Hardcore Hungarian

Lesson

Looking after a friend's pet

Breakdown of Az oltás fontos.

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Questions & Answers about Az oltás fontos.

What does az mean, and why is it az here instead of a?

Az is the Hungarian definite article, equivalent to the.

Hungarian has two forms of the definite article:

a before a consonant sound: a ház
az before a vowel sound: az oltás

Because oltás starts with o, you use az.

What does oltás mean exactly?

Oltás most commonly refers to vaccination, inoculation, or a shot in medical contexts.

Depending on the situation, English may translate it differently:

vaccination when talking about the process or concept
shot in everyday speech
sometimes vaccine in looser usage, though that is not always a perfect one-to-one match

So the exact English word depends on context, but the Hungarian noun here is oltás.

Why is there no word for is in this sentence?

In Hungarian, the verb to be is often left out in the present tense, third person when the sentence is of the type X is Y.

So:

Az oltás fontos. = The vaccination is important.

This is completely normal Hungarian.

But in other tenses, or with other persons, the verb appears:

Az oltás fontos volt. = The vaccination was important.
Az oltás fontos lesz. = The vaccination will be important.
Fontos vagyok. = I am important.

Why is fontos after oltás instead of before it?

Because here fontos is not directly modifying the noun inside a noun phrase. It is the predicate of the sentence.

Compare:

az oltás fontos = the vaccination is important
a fontos oltás = the important vaccination

So:

before the noun: adjective directly describes the noun
after the noun: adjective is part of the statement about the noun

Can I also say Fontos az oltás?

Yes. Hungarian word order is flexible, and changing the order changes the focus or emphasis.

Az oltás fontos. = neutral statement
Fontos az oltás. = stronger emphasis on important

So both are grammatical, but they do not sound exactly the same in terms of emphasis.

Does az oltás mean one specific vaccination, or can it mean vaccination in general?

It can be either, depending on context.

A useful thing to know is that Hungarian often uses the definite article in general statements, more than English does.

So Az oltás fontos. can mean:

The vaccination is important in a specific context
or Vaccination is important as a general statement

Context tells you which meaning is intended.

How do I pronounce Az oltás fontos?

A rough pronunciation guide:

az ≈ oz
oltás ≈ OL-taash
fontos ≈ FON-tosh

A few important pronunciation points:

Stress is on the first syllable of every Hungarian word.
s in Hungarian is pronounced like English sh.
á is a long vowel, somewhat like the a in father, but held longer.

So oltás ends with a sh sound, not an English s sound.

What case is oltás in here?

It is in the nominative form, which is the basic dictionary form.

That is because oltás is the subject of the sentence.

There is no extra case ending here. The final -s is just part of the word itself, not a separate suffix meaning anything grammatical in this sentence.

Does fontos agree with oltás in gender or number?

There is no grammatical gender in Hungarian, so fontos does not change for masculine, feminine, or neuter.

In this singular sentence, fontos stays just fontos.

With a plural subject, Hungarian usually makes the predicate adjective plural too:

Az oltások fontosak. = The vaccinations are important.

So:

singular: fontos
plural: fontosak

How would I make this sentence negative?

You add nem before the predicate:

Az oltás nem fontos.

That means The vaccination is not important.

In simple sentences like this, nem usually goes before the part being negated, which here is fontos.

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