A fakanál és a szűrő a lábas mellett van.

A is the Hungarian definite article, like English the.

In this sentence, all three nouns are definite: we are talking about a specific wooden spoon, a specific strainer, and a specific pot. Hungarian normally repeats the article before each noun where English would also use the.

A useful extra point: Hungarian articles do not show gender. There is no separate masculine/feminine/neuter article.

• a is used before a consonant
• az is used before a vowel

So you get a fakanál, a szűrő, a lábas, but az asztal.

Yes. Fakanál is a compound noun written as one word.

It is made from:

• fa = wood
• kanál = spoon

So literally it is wood-spoon, i.e. wooden spoon. Hungarian forms compounds very often, much more readily than English.

Because each noun refers to one item:

• one wooden spoon
• one strainer

The phrase becomes plural in meaning because the two singular nouns are joined by és = and. English works similarly: the spoon and the strainer does not make either noun plural by itself.

If you meant several wooden spoons and several strainers, you would use plural forms such as a fakanalak és a szűrők.

Because mellett is a postposition.

English usually uses prepositions, which come before the noun:

• next to the pot

Hungarian often uses postpositions, which come after the noun phrase:

• a lábas mellett

So mellett means next to / beside, but its position is the reverse of English.

This is the important Hungarian difference between location and direction.

• mellett = next to / beside → static location
• mellé = to next to / to beside → movement toward that position

In your sentence, nothing is moving; it just says where the objects are. So mellett is correct.

Compare:

• A fakanál a lábas mellett van. = The wooden spoon is next to the pot.
• A fakanalat a lábas mellé teszem. = I put the wooden spoon next to the pot.

Hungarian often omits van in the present tense only with noun or adjective predicates:

• A lábas nagy. = The pot is big.
• A szűrő tiszta. = The strainer is clean.

But with location, Hungarian normally keeps van:

• A lábas az asztalon van. = The pot is on the table.
• A fakanál a lábas mellett van. = The wooden spoon is next to the pot.

So here van appears because the sentence is about where something is.

This is a very natural question.

Many learners expect vannak, and in careful standard Hungarian many speakers would indeed prefer:

A fakanál és a szűrő a lábas mellett vannak.

That matches the fact that the subject contains two coordinated nouns. However, singular van can also be heard in everyday Hungarian, especially when the two items are treated as one set or in looser colloquial usage.

So for a learner, vannak is often the safest fully-agreeing version, but van in the sentence you were given is still understandable and not strange enough to block communication.

Yes, the word order can change.

Hungarian word order is much more flexible than English word order, and it often depends on topic and focus rather than fixed subject-verb-object order.

Your sentence:

A fakanál és a szűrő a lábas mellett van.

puts the wooden spoon and the strainer first, so it sounds like you are already talking about those objects and now saying where they are.

You could also say:

A lábas mellett van a fakanál és a szűrő.

This shifts the attention more toward the location, roughly like Next to the pot is the wooden spoon and the strainer or There is a wooden spoon and a strainer next to the pot.

So the basic meaning stays similar, but the information structure changes.

A few key points help a lot:

• sz is pronounced like English s in see
• Hungarian s by itself is pronounced like English sh
• ű is a long front rounded vowel, similar to German ü but longer
• ő is a long vowel similar to German ö, also held longer
• á is not just stress marking; it is a different vowel from a

So:

• szűrő begins with an s sound, not a z sound
• fakanál has a long á
• lábas also has á

Hungarian word stress is usually on the first syllable of each word:

• FAkanál
• SZŰrő
• LÁbas
• MELlett

The accents in Hungarian are part of the spelling and meaning, not optional pronunciation hints.