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.’[1]). Months can also be written using Roman or Arabic numerals.[2] Examples:

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.

A single year is followed by a dot unless it is

Monday is the first day of the week.

Time

Like in most countries, the 24-hour clock is used in formal and 12-hour clock in informal contexts. The time format is “hh óra mm perc”, but the numeric form hh.mm can also be used.[2] Example:

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

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:

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:

References

  1. Osiris Helyesírás, 2006 (ISBN 963-389-541-3)
  2. 2.0 2.1 A magyar helyesírás szabályai, 2005 (ISBN 963-218-980-9)