Learn Hardcore Hungarian: Hétfőn találkozom a barátnőmmel az étteremben. - On Monday I meet my girlfriend in the restaurant.

Hungarian uses -n as a temporal suffix to mean “on” when referring to days of the week. You take the base noun hétfő (Monday) and add -n, giving hétfőn = “on Monday.” It’s not affected by vowel harmony since this case-ending is always just -n for days.

Why is találkozom in the present tense when the meeting is in the future?

Hungarian doesn’t have a separate future-tense form for most verbs. Instead, you use the present tense to talk about planned or scheduled future events. If you wanted to emphasize “will,” you could add the auxiliary fog, as in hétfőn fogok találkozni…, but it’s perfectly natural and much more common to say találkozom for “I will meet.”

I don’t see any subject like “I” in the sentence. How do we know who is meeting?

In Hungarian, verb endings tell you the subject. The -om in találkozom marks 1st person singular. So “I” is built into the verb, and you typically omit the pronoun én (I) unless you need extra emphasis.

Why is it barátnőmmel and not just barátnőm?

The verb találkozni (“to meet”) requires the comitative/instrumental case for its partner: “meet with someone.” In Hungarian, that is formed with -val/vel. Since barátnőm ends in a vowel and has two m’s together after adding -vel, it assimilates into barátnőmmel = “with my girlfriend.”

What exactly does the -mmel in barátnőmmel indicate?

It’s the comitative or instrumental suffix, showing “with.”
• The first m is from the possessed noun barátnőm (“my girlfriend”).
• The second -mel (with voicing harmony → -mmel) marks “together/with.”
Together they express “with my girlfriend.”

Why are there articles a and az before barátnőmmel and étteremben?

Hungarian generally uses definite articles (a/az) before nouns when you’re talking about a specific, known entity. Here you’re meeting a barátnőmmel (“the/my girlfriend”) at az étteremben (“the restaurant”). Without the article it would sound less natural or imply a non-specific restaurant or girlfriend.

What case is étteremben, and why the -ben ending?

-ban/ben is the inessive case, meaning “in” or “inside.”
• You choose -ban after back-vowel words (e.g. házban “in the house”)
• You choose -ben after front-vowel words (e.g. étterem has front vowels, so étteremben = “in the restaurant”).

The word order is Hétfőn találkozom a barátnőmmel az étteremben. Can I switch it around?

Hungarian has relatively free word order, but you use fronting to highlight what’s most important. The neutral/default order is Time–Verb–Object–Place. You could emphasize “the restaurant” by saying Az étteremben találkozom a barátnőmmel hétfőn, but then you’re stressing where you’ll meet more than when or with whom.