A gyerek pulóvere a széken van.

Hungarian usually marks possession on the possessed noun, not with a separate 's like English.

• pulóver = sweater
• pulóvere = his/her/its sweater

When you put the possessor before it, you get:

• a gyerek pulóvere = the child’s sweater

So the structure is roughly:

• a gyerek = the child
• pulóver-e = sweater-his/her

Very literally, it is something like the child sweater-of-his/hers, but in natural English it is simply the child’s sweater.

Because Hungarian does possession differently. English uses a separate possessive marker:

• the child’s sweater

Hungarian usually uses:

1. the possessor noun first: a gyerek
2. a possessive ending on the possessed thing: pulóvere

So instead of adding something like 's to gyerek, Hungarian adds a suffix to pulóver.

Both patterns exist in Hungarian, but they are used differently.

In this sentence, a gyerek pulóvere is the normal, simple way to say the child’s sweater.

The form with -nak/-nek:

• a gyereknek a pulóvere

is also correct, but it often sounds more explicit, contrastive, or emphatic, depending on context.

So for a basic neutral sentence, a gyerek pulóvere is exactly what you would expect.

a is the definite article, meaning the.

In this sentence:

• A gyerek = the child
• a széken = on the chair / on the specific chair

So it appears twice because both nouns are definite:

• the child
• the chair

Hungarian uses articles more similarly to English here than learners sometimes expect.

széken comes from szék, meaning chair.

The ending -en is a case ending meaning on in the sense of on the surface of something.

So:

• szék = chair
• széken = on the chair

This is called the superessive case.

Hungarian often uses case endings where English uses prepositions. Instead of a separate word for on, Hungarian attaches the meaning to the noun.

Because Hungarian case endings follow vowel harmony and established stem patterns.

For the superessive case, the ending can appear as:

• -on
• -en
• -ön

With szék, the correct form is:

• széken

This is something you partly learn through vowel harmony and partly by learning the noun’s actual form in use. So the important thing to remember is:

• szék → széken

van means is.

Hungarian often drops is in sentences like:

• A gyerek magas. = The child is tall.
• Ez pulóver. = This is a sweater.
  (Though in practice this one often needs a pronoun or different structure depending on context.)

But when talking about location, Hungarian normally uses van:

• A gyerek pulóvere a széken van. = The child’s sweater is on the chair.

So van is needed because the sentence tells us where something is.

The sentence starts with what it is about, then gives the information about it.

• A gyerek pulóvere = topic: the child’s sweater
• a széken van = comment: is on the chair

So the basic meaning is:

• As for the child’s sweater, it is on the chair.

This is a very natural neutral word order in Hungarian.

You could also change the word order for emphasis, for example:

• A széken van a gyerek pulóvere.

That would put more focus on where it is.

Because the possessive ending already carries that information.

In pulóvere, the ending shows a third-person singular possessor:

• his sweater
• her sweater
• its sweater

But since the possessor is already named as a gyerek, the full phrase means:

• the child’s sweater

Hungarian does not need an extra possessive pronoun here.

Yes. gyerek is a very common everyday word and can mean:

• child
• kid

In many contexts, gyermek is a bit more formal or neutral, while gyerek is very common in normal speech.

So depending on tone, the sentence could be understood as:

• The child’s sweater is on the chair.
• The kid’s sweater is on the chair.

Yes: not every Hungarian noun forms the third-person possessive in exactly the same way.

Here:

• pulóver = sweater
• pulóvere = his/her sweater

Some nouns use -a/-e, while others may use -ja/-je. This depends on the noun. So learners should not assume every noun behaves identically.

For this word, the correct form is:

• pulóvere

not a different variant.

A useful word-by-word breakdown is:

• A = the
• gyerek = child / kid
• pulóver-e = sweater-his/her
• a = the
• szék-en = chair-on
• van = is

So the full structure is roughly:

• The child sweater-his/her the chair-on is

That sounds strange in English, of course, but it helps show how Hungarian builds the meaning.