Breakdown of Reggel a fürdőszobában a tükör előtt állok.
Questions & Answers about Reggel a fürdőszobában a tükör előtt állok.
In this sentence reggel works as an adverbial of time and basically means in the morning rather than the morning as a noun.
Hungarian often uses bare nouns (without an article) for general time expressions:
- reggel – in the morning
- délután – in the afternoon
- este – in the evening
- éjjel – at night
If you say a reggel, you are talking about a specific morning, for example:
- A reggel nagyon hideg volt. – That particular morning was very cold.
In your sentence, we mean a habitual or general time (in the morning), so the bare form reggel is used, without a.
The sentence is:
Reggel a fürdőszobában a tükör előtt állok.
The neutral, common pattern in Hungarian is: time – place – (other details) – verb.
- Reggel – time (when?)
- a fürdőszobában – place (where? in the bathroom)
- a tükör előtt – more precise place (where exactly? in front of the mirror)
- állok – verb (I stand / I am standing)
You can move elements around, because Hungarian word order is quite flexible, but the element right before the verb is typically in focus (emphasized). For example:
- A tükör előtt állok reggel a fürdőszobában.
Grammatically fine, but now a tükör előtt gets strong focus: it suggests “It is in front of the mirror that I stand (not somewhere else)”.
Your original sentence has a neutral, descriptive word order, and is the most typical way to say it.
The suffix -ban / -ben is the inessive case, meaning in something.
- szoba – room
- fürdőszoba – bathroom (literally: bath-room)
- fürdőszobában – in the bathroom
The choice between -ban and -ben depends on vowel harmony: words with back vowels usually take -ban, those with front vowels take -ben. Because of the compound structure, fürdőszoba ends up with -ban.
So a fürdőszobában literally means in the bathroom.
a fürdőszobában: Here fürdőszoba is a concrete place, a thing (a specific bathroom in the context), so Hungarian normally uses the definite article a / az.
reggel: Here it functions as a general time expression, not as a specific “morning” as an object. Time adverbials like reggel, este, délben usually appear without an article when talking in general.
So:
- Reggel a fürdőszobában… – In the morning, in the bathroom…
- If you said A reggel a fürdőszobában…, it would sound like “The morning, in the bathroom…” which is not the usual way to say it.
fürdőszoba is a compound:
- fürdő – bath, bathing place, spa, bathroom (context-dependent)
- szoba – room
Together fürdőszoba = bathroom (a room in a home where you wash).
If you say:
- a fürdőben – in the bath / in the spa / in the bathroom (depending on context)
This can be ambiguous; it might sound like you are in a spa or a public bath, not necessarily your home bathroom.
So a fürdőszobában is the clearest and most natural way to say in the bathroom (the room in a house).
- tükör – mirror
- előtt – in front of, before (a postposition)
So a tükör előtt literally means in front of the mirror.
In Hungarian, many things that correspond to English prepositions are actually postpositions – they come after the noun they relate to, not before it:
- az asztal alatt – under the table
- a ház mellett – next to the house
- a tükör előtt – in front of the mirror
So előtt naturally follows tükör.
With simple postpositions like előtt, mögött, mellett, alatt, fölött, the noun usually appears in its basic (nominative) form plus the definite article:
- a tükör előtt – in front of the mirror
- a ház mögött – behind the house
- az autó mellett – next to the car
You don’t add another case ending to tükör itself in this structure. The postposition előtt already expresses the spatial relation, so you don’t need -ban / -ben, -on / -en / -ön, etc. on the noun here.
tükörben by itself would mean in the mirror, which is a different meaning.
állok is the 1st person singular present indefinite form of the verb áll (to stand).
- verb stem: áll
- personal ending: -ok → first person singular, indefinite conjugation
So állok means I stand / I am standing.
Because the subject is already part of the verb ending, the pronoun én (I) is normally dropped:
- (Én) állok. – I stand / I am standing.
You only add én for emphasis or contrast.
Hungarian does not use an auxiliary verb like am / is / are to form the present continuous.
The simple present form állok covers both:
- I stand.
- I am standing.
Aspect (simple vs continuous) is usually understood from context. You do not say something like vagyok állva for I am standing in normal Hungarian.
So the whole idea of I am standing is expressed just by állok in this sentence.
No. állom would be the definite conjugation (1st person singular, definite), which you use when the verb has a definite direct object (something like “I stand it” – and even that is not natural with áll).
The verb áll here is intransitive: there is no direct object. For intransitive verbs, and for verbs with an indefinite object, Hungarian uses the indefinite conjugation:
- állok – I stand
- várok – I wait
- ülök – I sit
So in this sentence you must use állok, not állom.
Yes, Reggel a fürdőszobában állok a tükör előtt is also grammatical and natural.
The difference is subtle:
Reggel a fürdőszobában a tükör előtt állok.
Neutral description; the whole location a fürdőszobában a tükör előtt comes before the verb.Reggel a fürdőszobában állok a tükör előtt.
Slightly more emphasis on állok (the action) and less on a tükör előtt as focus. It can sound a bit more narrative: “In the morning, in the bathroom, I’m standing in front of the mirror.”
Both are acceptable; your original version is the more straightforward, fully neutral one.
Yes:
- reggel – in the morning (can be for a specific morning or just a general time)
- reggelente – in the mornings, every morning (habitual, repeated action)
So:
Reggel a fürdőszobában a tükör előtt állok.
In the morning I stand in front of the mirror. (Could be habitual, but not explicitly so.)Reggelente a fürdőszobában a tükör előtt állok.
I stand in front of the mirror every morning (clearly habitual).
To emphasize I, you move én into the focus position (just before the verb):
- Reggel a fürdőszobában a tükör előtt én állok.
This strongly implies:
- It’s me who stands in front of the mirror in the bathroom in the morning (not someone else).
The pronoun én is normally omitted, so actually saying it already adds emphasis. Putting it immediately before the verb adds even more focus.
Hungarian suffixes follow vowel harmony: they have a front-vowel form and a back-vowel form.
- -ban is the back-vowel variant.
- -ben is the front-vowel variant.
fürdőszoba is a compound:
- fürdő – front vowel (ő)
- szoba – back vowels (o, a)
In compounds, it is usually the last element that determines vowel harmony for suffixes, so szoba (with back vowels) pulls the word into the back-vowel group.
Therefore you get:
- fürdőszobában (with -ban, back-vowel form), meaning in the bathroom.