5 Rare Spelling Exceptions Only the Best Writers Nail: Are You One of Them?

Why? In some cases, suffixes attach to foreign common nouns and proper names with a hyphen. If a foreign proper name consists of two or more separate parts, the suffixes like -i (-s, -ista, -izmus) are always connected with a hyphen to the last element, just like with multi-part Hungarian proper names. We keep the original capital letters: Victor Hugó-i, Walter Scott-os, Leonardo da Vinci-s, Anatole France-i, New York-i, Karlovy Vary-i, Frankfurt am Main-i, etc.

Why? In literary works, the press, and educational materials, names and words from non-Latin alphabets are transcribed using Hungarian letters, ideally directly from the source language without intermediaries. During transcription, foreign sounds or letter-sound combinations (like Chinese, Russian, Arabic, Greek, etc.) are replaced with Hungarian sounds and letters according to language-specific rules.

Why? Suffixes attach to acronyms with a hyphen. Common noun acronyms are all lowercase because they replace lowercase words, and their final a, e, o vowels are lengthened in writing when suffixes are added, e.g., áfa, áfás (invoice). But for uppercase proper name acronyms, the final a, e, o is not lengthened in writing when suffixes are added: az MTA-nak, az ELTE-n, az ETO-hoz, etc.

The correct spelling: Julianus barát szobor.

Why? When a proper name combines with a common noun or an adjective (usually formed with -i, -s, -ú, ű, -jú, jű) to form an indefinite compound, they connect with a hyphen: Afrika-kutató, Ady-szobor, etc. But if a proper name acts as a qualifier for a common noun, the two words are written separately: Dezső bácsi, the Kovács family, Julianus barát szobor, Kászim pasa bástya, etc.

Suffixes attach without a period but with a hyphen to numbers indicating years and days: az 1838-i árvíz, Magyarország 1514-ben, etc. The period can be omitted after years in parentheses: The past year (1933) was extremely dry. Also, no period is added after a year or year group in two cases. No period follows a year or year group if it is followed by a postposition or an adjective formed from a postposition, or if the year (year group) is a possessive modifier of another word: 1848 előtt, 1526 augusztusában, 1867 és 1896 között, 1914 késő őszén, etc. No period follows the year (year group) if it is the subject of the sentence: 1492 was a turning point in human history. 1941-45 caused immeasurable damage to the country. These spelling explanations are based on the 11th edition of the Hungarian Academy Publishing House’s book, The Rules of Hungarian Orthography.