Hungarian has a system of noun endings that allows the speaker or writer to express many nuances without the use of prepositions. Indeed, Hungarian has no “prepositions,” though it has “postpositions.” In English we normally say “around the world” but we could say “the world around” and mean the same thing. (A pint is a pound the world around, as my grandmother used to say.) With few exceptions, Hungarians would say “the world around.” But I digress.

English has three cases: nominative, objective and possessive. Consider the word “father” in the following sentences. Father (nominative) had a dog. The dog had a father (objective). Father’s (possessive) dog had puppies. Notice that the nominative and objective case forms are the same. This is true for all English nouns. Only personal pronouns have different forms for the objective. Here are examples of the three possible pronoun forms:

He, him, his. She, her, her or hers. We, us, our or ours. Who, whom, whose. (By the way, Hungarian has no grammatical gender. He, she and it are all the same word.)

Of course you can also add plural endings, so that an English noun can have up to four distinct forms, for example: father, fathers, father’s, fathers’. Although the four forms have distinct spellings, the last three forms are all pronounced alike.

Inflective languages like Latin and German have four cases and Greek has five. Hungarian has at least eighteen (a half dozen other noun suffixes could be considered case endings). Here is a sampling of what you can do with Hungarian cases, using the word doboz (box).

• Doboz (box, subject) nominative case.
• Dobozt (box, direct object) accusative case.
• Dobozban (in a box) inessive case.
• Dobozba (onto a box) illative case.
• Dobozbol (out of a box) elative case.
• Dobozra (onto a box) sublative case.
• Dobozza ([turn] into a box) translative case.
• Dobozrol (from off a box) delative case.
• Dobozon (on a box) superessive case.
• Dobozhoz (to beside a box) allative case.
• Doboztol (from beside a box) ablative case.
• Doboznal (beside a box) adessive case.
• Dobozzal (with a box) instrumental or comitative case.
• Doboznak (of or for a box) dative case.
• Dobozert (for the sake of a box) causal-final case.
• Dobozig (up to a box) terminative case.
• Dobozkent ([serve] as a box) essive-formal case.
• Dobozul (by way of a box) essive-modal case.

The plural ending comes before the case ending: dobozok (boxes), dobozokat (boxes, direct object form), dobozokban (in boxes), etc.

Hungarian also adds pronoun possessive endings to nouns: auto (car), autom (my car), autonk (our car), automnal (beside my car), autonknal (beside our car), etc. You can make the noun plural as well: autok (cars), autoim (my cars), autoimnal (beside my cars), autoink (our cars), autoinknal (beside our cars), etc.

I figure that with all these possible combinations, a Hungarian noun could have over 200 possible forms. But, if you think that the nouns are complicated, check out the page on the verb system!