Learn Hardcore Hungarian: Nyáron gyakran megyünk az erdőbe.

When you add -on (a superessive ending) you get Nyáron, which literally means “on summer”, but in practice it means “in (the) summer / during summer”.

Hungarian often uses this -on / -en / -ön ending with time expressions (especially seasons) to mean “in/at that time”, so:

télen – in (the) winter
nyáron – in (the) summer
ősszel – in (the) autumn
tavasszal – in (the) spring

Why does the sentence start with Nyáron? Could the order be different?

Hungarian word order is quite flexible, but it usually follows an information-structure pattern: time – manner – verb – place is very common in neutral sentences.

So:

Nyáron gyakran megyünk az erdőbe.
→ In summer, we often go to the forest.

This puts the time (Nyáron) at the front, as a kind of topic or frame: “As for summer, during that time…”

You can move things around, but the nuance changes:

Gyakran nyáron megyünk az erdőbe.
Emphasizes that it is often in summer (as opposed to other seasons) that we go.
Az erdőbe gyakran megyünk nyáron.
Emphasizes the forest as the place we often go to in summer.

The original sentence is the most neutral if you simply want to say what you usually do in summer.

What exactly does gyakran mean, and where can it go in the sentence?

Gyakran means often / frequently. It is an adverb of frequency.

In a neutral sentence, it usually stands before the verb:

Nyáron gyakran megyünk az erdőbe.

You can move it for emphasis, though:

Gyakran nyáron megyünk az erdőbe. – It’s often in summer that we go.
Nyáron az erdőbe gyakran megyünk. – It’s to the forest that we often go in summer.

A common alternative to gyakran is sokszor (“many times, often”). In everyday speech, they are very close in meaning here:

Nyáron sokszor megyünk az erdőbe. – In summer we often go to the forest.

Why is the verb megyünk and not something like megy? What does the -ünk ending mean?

The verb stem is megy-, meaning to go.

Hungarian verbs change their ending depending on person and number. Here we have:

megyek – I go
mész – you (singular) go
megy – he/she/it goes
megyünk – we go
mentek – you (plural) go
mennek – they go

So megyünk = “we go”.

The -ünk ending tells you 1st person plural (we), which is why Hungarian doesn’t need to say mi (we) explicitly.

Why is there no mi (we) in the sentence? Would it be wrong to say Mi nyáron gyakran megyünk az erdőbe?

Hungarian is a “pro-drop” language: the verb ending already shows who is doing the action, so the subject pronoun is usually omitted unless you want to emphasize it.

Nyáron gyakran megyünk az erdőbe. – normal, neutral
Mi nyáron gyakran megyünk az erdőbe. – “We often go to the forest in summer (as opposed to others).”

So Mi … is not wrong, but it adds emphasis to “we” (contrasting with you, they, etc.). In neutral statements, the pronoun is usually left out.

Why is it az erdőbe and not a erdőbe? What’s the rule for a vs az?

Hungarian has one definite article with two forms:

a – used before words that start with a consonant
- a ház – the house
- a bolt – the shop
az – used before words that start with a vowel
- az alma – the apple
- az erdő – the forest

Since erdő starts with the vowel e, you must say az erdő (and therefore az erdőbe).

So a erdőbe is incorrect; it must be az erdőbe.

What does the -be ending in erdőbe mean? How is it different from erdőben?

The ending -ba / -be is the illative case, which usually means “into” (movement towards the inside of something).

erdő – forest
erdőbe – into the forest

By contrast:

-ban / -ben is the inessive case, meaning “in, inside” (no movement).
- erdőben – in the forest

So:

megyünk az erdőbe – we go into the forest (movement).
vagyunk az erdőben – we are in the forest (location).

Why do we use -be and not -ba in erdőbe?

This is due to vowel harmony, a key feature in Hungarian.

Words with front vowels (e, é, i, í, ö, ő, ü, ű) take front-vowel endings, such as -be.
Words with back vowels (a, á, o, ó, u, ú) take back-vowel endings, such as -ba.

Erdő has the vowels e and ö, which are front vowels, so it must take -be:

erdő + -be → erdőbe – into the forest

If the noun had back vowels, you’d see -ba instead, for example:

ház + -ba → házba – into the house

Is erdő singular or plural here? How would I say “into the forests”?

Erdő is singular: the forest.

Hungarian uses the singular very often where English might use a plural in a general sense. Az erdőbe megyünk can refer to “the woods / the forest” generically.

To say “into the forests”, you’d use the plural noun and then add the case ending:

erdők – forests
erdőkbe – into the forests
Nyáron gyakran megyünk az erdőkbe. – In summer we often go into the forests.

But in everyday speech, az erdőbe usually covers both “the forest” and “the woods” in a general way.

Can this Hungarian present tense also mean “we often go” as a repeated habit, not right now?

Yes. Hungarian present tense is used very broadly. It covers:

General truths / habits
- Nyáron gyakran megyünk az erdőbe.
  → We often go to the forest in summer. (habit)
Actions happening now (with context markers like now, today etc.)

There is no special “habitual tense” in Hungarian; the simple present plus adverbs of time/frequency (like gyakran, mindig, néha) expresses that idea.

How would I say “Last summer we often went to the forest” or “Next summer we will often go to the forest”?

To put the sentence into past:

Tavaly nyáron gyakran mentünk az erdőbe.
- tavaly – last year
- mentünk – we went (past of megyünk)

To talk about next summer and the future:

Hungarian usually still uses the present with a future time word:

Jövő nyáron gyakran megyünk az erdőbe.
Literally: “Next summer we often go to the forest,” but understood as future.

If you want to be very explicitly future, you can use fogunk menni:

Jövő nyáron gyakran fogunk az erdőbe menni.
→ Next summer we will often go to the forest.

How do you pronounce Nyáron gyakran megyünk az erdőbe? Any tricky sounds?

Key points:

Stress: Always on the first syllable of each word: NYÁ-ron GYAK-ran MEG-yünk AZ ER-dő-be.
ny: like “ñ” in Spanish “señor”, or like “ny” in “canyon” said slowly.
gy: similar to the English “d” in “duke” when pronounced with a “dy” sound (like dy in “duty” in many accents).
á: a long “a” sound, similar to the a in “father” but longer.
ö / ő: rounded front vowels, like the “eu” in French “peur”, or German “ö”; ő is the long version.
Final -be: pronounced like “beh”, not “bee”.

Rough English-like approximation:
[NYAH-ron DYAHK-ron MEDJ-ünk oz ER-dø-beh] (very approximate, just to guide your ear).