Date and time notation in Hungary

Date

In Hungary date is traditionally expressed in big-endian form, like ISO 8601. Numeric date elements are followed by a dot. The format yyyy. month d. is commonly used, the name of the month can be abbreviated (standard are ‘jan.’, ‘febr.’, ‘márc.’, ‘ápr.’, ‘máj.’, ‘jún.’, ‘júl.’, ‘aug.’, ‘szept.’, ‘okt.’, ‘nov.’, ‘dec.’). Months can also be written using Roman or Arabic numerals. Examples:

• 1999. augusztus 1.
• 1999. aug. 1.
• 1999. VIII. 1.
• 1999. 08. 01. or recently 1999-08-01

As year and day elements in Hungarian are ordinal numbers, they are followed by a dot. However, unless a suffix is added, they are said as cardinal numbers. Also note that stacking of symbols when writing in Hungarian is considered a bad practice, therefore when a suffix is attached to the date using a hyphen, the dot is omitted.

• 1999. augusztus 1-jén (on August 1, 1999)

A single year is followed by a dot unless it is

• followed with a suffix ‘1999-ben’ (in 1999)
• the object of the sentence ‘1999 szép év volt.’ (1999 was a nice year.)
• followed with a postposition ‘1999 után’ (after 1999)
• a genitive ‘1999 tele’ (winter of 1999)
• in parentheses ‘születésének éve (1999)…’ (the year of his/her birth (1999)…).

Monday is the first day of the week.

Time

Like in most countries, the 24-hour clock is used in formal or informal and 12-hour clock in formal. The time format is “[hh óra mm perc] Error: {{Lang}}: text has italic markup (help)”, but the numeric form hh.mm can also be used (although colons are sometimes used instead of dots). Example:

• 10.35

The following are commonly accepted divisions of the day that can be said before the time:

• hajnal (dawn) – 1–5 a.m.
• reggel (morning) – 6–9 a.m.
• délelőtt (before noon) – 10–11 a.m.
• délután (afternoon) – 1–5 p.m.
• este (evening) – 6–10 p.m.
• éjjel (night) – 11 p.m.-1 a.m.

Additionally, dél (noon) and éjfél (midnight) may be used.

Each hour is divided into four equal periods and are verbally referred to as in the following examples:

• negyed 8 (quarter 8) – 7:15
• fél 8 (half 8) – 7:30
• háromnegyed 8 (three-quarter 8) – 7:45

Combining the above with 5 perc múlva (5 minutes before) or 5 perccel múlt (5 minutes after) is commonly used when asked for the time. Example:

• 5 perc múlva háromnegyed 8 – 7:40
• 3 perccel múlt 7 – 7:03