Hungarian beginner lesson: What does this say?

Another sign in Hungarian! This one has a crazy long word at the beginning. What does it mean?

“Gépkocsibejáró – Kérjük szabadon hagyni!”

a) “Employee entrance – unauthorized persons not allowed!”

b) “Car entry – please keep free.”

c) “No entry – please use the other entrance.”

Click on “Read More” for the answer and an explanation!

Answer:

b) “Car entry – please keep free.”

*Explanation:

The first word, gépkocsibejáró, is actually a compound word consisting of two words:

• gépkocsi = automobile
• bejáró = entry(way)

Interestingly, the word gépkocsi itself is a kind of compound word:

• gép = machine
• kocsi = carriage (original meaning)

The word kocsi is a horse-drawn type of vehicle that was developed and popularlized in the Hungarian town of Kocs. This is where the English word coach (meaning vehicle) gets its name from. The word gépkocsi (a “machine-drawn carriage”) is used to distinguish this type of vehicle from the horse-drawn version.

Thus gépkocsi = car, automobile. Isn’t Hungarian interesting!

I should point out that in speaking, people rarely use the word gépkocsi, opting instead for the much more common autó or simply kocsi.

The other words are pretty straightforward:

• kérjük = please

As we’ve seen before, this is the definite conjugation of the 1st person plural form of the verb kér = to ask, so it literally means “we ask (you)”. Why is it in the definite conjugation? Because it is formal speech. The informal form of this word (which is rarely written in signs like this) would be kérlek.

• szabadon = free (as in without obstructions)
• hagyni = to leave (infinitive form)

Literally, this means Please leave (this area) free, but in more natural-sounding English, this would be:

Kérjük szabadon hagyni! = Please keep (this area) free.

Taken together, we have:

Gépkocsibejáró – Kérjük szabadon hagyni! = Car entry – please keep free.

*Please note that we don’t provide a very detailed explanation of grammar in these short posts. For a more detailed explanation of grammar, I highly recommend a book like Hungarian Verbs & Essentials of Grammar 2nd ed. by Miklós Törkenczy.

Readers: what do you think of this series? Can you recommend anything else you’d like to see in this blog? Let us know in the comments, thanks!