A betűkód hibás.

A is the definite article, equivalent to the in English.

Hungarian has two forms of the definite article:

• a before a consonant sound
• az before a vowel sound

Since betűkód starts with b, Hungarian uses a: A betűkód.

Examples:

• a ház = the house
• az autó = the car

In Hungarian, the verb to be is usually left out in the present tense when the sentence is:

• third person
• singular or plural
• and the predicate is a noun or adjective

So:

• A betűkód hibás. = The letter code is incorrect.

Hungarian does not normally say A betűkód hibás van. That would be wrong.

Compare:

• Én fáradt vagyok. = I am tired.
• Te fáradt vagy. = You are tired.
• Ő fáradt. = He/She is tired.

So in third person, the present-tense is disappears.

Yes, betűkód is one word. Hungarian very often forms compound nouns by joining words together.

Here:

• betű = letter
• kód = code

Together:

• betűkód = letter code

This is very normal in Hungarian. English sometimes uses two words where Hungarian prefers one compound word.

Hibás is an adjective. In this sentence, it describes betűkód.

It means something like:

• faulty
• incorrect
• wrong
• defective

It comes from hiba = error, mistake, fault, with the adjective-forming ending -s.

So:

• hiba = error
• hibás = erroneous / faulty

In this sentence, hibás is not directly before the noun because it is part of the predicate, not an attributive modifier.

Compare:

• A betűkód hibás. = The letter code is incorrect.

  • Here hibás is the main statement about the subject.

• a hibás betűkód = the incorrect letter code

  • Here hibás directly modifies the noun inside the noun phrase.

So Hungarian works much like English here:

• the code is wrong
• the wrong code

Yes. Hibás a betűkód is also possible.

Both mean essentially the same thing, but the emphasis changes:

• A betűkód hibás. = neutral statement; the topic is the letter code
• Hibás a betűkód. = stronger focus on hibás; roughly It’s the letter code that is incorrect / The letter code is incorrect

Hungarian word order is flexible and often shows topic and focus rather than just grammar.

A rough pronunciation guide:

• betű ≈ beh-too but with ű, which is a long front rounded vowel
• kód ≈ kohd, with a long ó

Important points:

• ű is a long vowel, different from u and ü
• ó is also long
• Hungarian stress is normally on the first syllable of the word

So betűkód is stressed at the beginning: BE-tű-kód.

Also, the accents in Hungarian are real spelling differences, not optional marks.

No. Hungarian does not have grammatical gender like he/she agreement in adjectives.

So hibás stays the same regardless of whether the noun refers to something that would be masculine, feminine, or neuter in another language.

Hungarian adjectives also do not have to agree in gender with nouns, because Hungarian has no grammatical gender system of that kind.

Because betűkód is the subject of the sentence, and the basic subject form in Hungarian usually has no ending.

This is the nominative form, which is typically unmarked.

So:

• A betűkód hibás. = subject form

If the noun had another role, it might take a case ending. For example:

• A betűkódot látom. = I see the letter code.
  • here -t marks the object

Yes, you often could, but the nuance changes.

• hibás = faulty, incorrect, erroneous
• rossz = bad, wrong

So:

• A betűkód hibás. suggests the code itself is incorrect or contains an error.
• A betűkód rossz. is more general and can sound a bit less precise.

In technical, administrative, or error-message contexts, hibás is often the better choice.