About Hungarian

Although Hungarian is classified by location as "Central European" it is not a Slavic language. It is distantly related to Finnish and Estonian.

Recommended Fonts

Latin-2 (Central European) Encoding

Although Hungarian uses the Western alphabet, Hungarian includes accented letters (e.g. ő, ű) which may not be found in all fonts.
Note: The term Central European is sometimes used to refer to the languages which use accented letters not common in Western European languages.

Common Fonts

Many common fonts such as Times New Roman, Arial, Helvetica, Comic Sans, Calibri, Cambria, Palatinto and many more do include these characters.

Third Party Fonts

Below are some additional third party Unicode fonts which include Central European characters.

  • SIL Fonts – The SIL has created multiple fonts with IPA characters including:
    • Andika – Designed for new readers. It could be suitable for some students with reading disorders.
    • Doulos SIL – Includes Greek, Cyrillic
    • Charis SIL – Font family and includes Greek, Cyrillic
    • Gentium – From SIL. Very readable
  • Quivira – Modelled on Garamond and includes ancient language, basic Cyrillic/Armenian/Georgian and math/astronomical symbols.

Note: Many fonts designed to include phonetic characters or Greek and Western letters include Central European characters. Additional Central European or Extended Latin fonts may be available online, but users should be sure they are properly encoded fonts before installing them.

Typing Hungarian

Windows

Activate Hungarian Keyboard

Microsoft provides keyboard utilities for Central European languages which allow you to type Central European Characters.
Note: Neither the Windows International
Keyboard or ALT code repertoire includes Central European characters.

  1. See detailed keyboard activation instructions for different versions of the Windows operating system.
  2. To see where the different characters are, go to the Microsoft Keyboard Layouts Page.

Other Options

  1. You can also input characters from the Character Map. This can be useful if you only need to insert characters into only a few words.
  2. You can use ALT codes or Windows International keyboard codes to input everything except the double accent vowels (ő,ű).

ALT Codes

Many, but not all characters can be inputted with the numeric ALT codes. You can also use the Character Map utility for any code
NOTE:
Codes with numbers over 255 are only available in Microsoft Word.

Acute Accent
Vwl Entity Code
Á ALT+0193
á ALT+0225
É ALT+0201
é ALT+0233
Í ALT+0205
í ALT+0237
Ó ALT+0211
ó ALT+0243
Ú ALT+0218
ú ALT+0250
Other Accents
Vwl Entity Code
Ö ALT+0214
ö ALT+0246
Ü ALT+0220
ü ALT+0252
Ő ALT+0336
Capital O double acute
ő ALT+0337
Lower o double acute
Ű ALT+0368
Capital U double acute
ű ALT+0369
Lower u double acute
 

International Keyboard Codes

In order to use these codes you must activate the international keyboard. Instructions are listed in the Keyboards section of this Web site. Again, not all characters are available, but some can be entered via the Character Map utility

International Keyboard Codes
Acute & Umlaut Only
ACCENT SAMPLE TEMPLATE
Acute ó,Ó ‘, V
‘ = apostrophe key
Umlaut ö,Ö

", V
"=quote key

 

Macintosh

Extended Keyboard Codes

You can activate the Extended Keyboard to input Central European characters. This extends the range of available accented letters.

Extended Keyboard Codes,
V = any vowel

ACCENT SAMPLE TEMPLATE
Double Acute ő,Ő Option+J, V
Acute ó,Ó Option+E, V
Umlaut ö,Ö Option+U, V

Example 1: To input the lower case ő (o-double acute) hold down the Option key, then the J key. Release both keys then type lowercase o.
Example 2: To input the capital Ő, hold down the Option key, then the J key. Release all three keys then type capital O.

Hungarian Mac Keyboard Utilities

Apple also has keyboard utilities for most Central European languages. See instructions for activating a Macintosh keyboard for more details.

Web Development and Language Codes

This section presents information specific to Hungarian. For general information about developing non-English Web sites, see the Encoding Tutorial or the Web Layout sections.

Test Sites

If you have your browser configured correctly, the Web sites below should display
the correct characters.
Note: If a site displays gibberish, see the Browser Setup page for debugging information.

Historical Encodings

Unicode (utf-8) is the preferred encoding for Web sites. However, the following historic encodings may still be encountered.

  • win-1250 (aka "Windows Encoding")
  • iso-8859-2 (aka "Latin-2")

Language Tags

Language Tags allow browsers and other software to process Hungarian text more efficiently. The appropriate codes are:

  • hu (Hungarian)

Unicode Character Codes for HTML

The Entity Codes

Use these codes to input accented letters in HTML. For instance, if you want
to type jövő you would type jöv&#337.

Be sure the appropriate Encodings and Language Tags are used.

NOTE: Because these are Unicode characters, the formatting may not exactly match that
of the surrounding text depending on the browser.

Acute Accent
Vwl Entity Code
Á Á (193)
á á (225)
É É (201)
é é (233)
Í Í (205)
í í(237)
Ó Ó (211)
ó ó (243)
Ú Ú (218)
ú ú (250)
Other Accents
Vwl Entity Code
Ö Ö (214)
ö ö (246)
Ü Ü (220)
ü ü (252)
Ő Ő 
Capital O double acute
ő ő 
Lower
 o double acute
Ű Ű 
Capital U double acute
ű ű  
Lower u double acute
 

European Quote Marks

Many modern texts use American style quotes, but if you wish to include European style quote marks, here are the codes. Note that these codes may not work in older browsers.

Entity Codes for Quotation Marks
Sym HTMl Entity Code
« « (left angle)
» » (right angle)
‹ (left single angle)
› (right single angle)
„(bottom quote)
‚(single bottom quote)
“(left curly quote)
‘(left single curly quote)
”(right curly quote)
’(right single curly quote)
– (en dash)
— (em dash)

Hungarian Language

Central European Computing

Linux/Unix

Linux is used in the region so a search for specific issues may be useful.

Hungarian Unix Portal (HUP.hu)

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