Gemination in the context of Hungarian verb conjugation means the doubling-up of the last consonant in a verb's ending. The first consonant in the ending we are trying to apply turns into the last consonant of the stem.

Three examples of this, explained below, may be see here:

• olvas + -ják = olvassák they read it
• barát + -val = baráttal with a friend
• ház + -vá = házzá turning into a house

Take care with gemination because it may mean that you do not recognise a word as having had a known ending applied. Learn to recognise -ss- etc near the end of words.

Verbs that end in one of these letters usually undergo gemination of this final letter when we add any ending that starts in -j-.

Note that although there are five letters in this group, only three exhibit gemination all the time: -s, -sz, -z.

• The -zs ending undergoes gemination in the present tense definate conjugation and the definite and indefinate conjunctive/imperative/subjunctive mood.
• The -dz ending undergoes gemination in other circumstances. TODO.

It will only occur when the first letter of the ending is -j-.

We simply replace the -j- with the sibilant letter from the root.

• olvas + -ják = olvassák they read it
• hoz + -jon = hozzon let him bring it!
• vés + -jük = véssük we chisel it
• ébresz + -jük = ébresszük we awake

Since gemination occurs only with -j- endings, the present tense indefinte, which contains no endings that start with -j-, does not exhibit gemination. The same applies to third person singular and all plural persons for front-vowel words in the present tense definte, they do not exhibit gemination simply because no -j- endings exist.

When we apply the -val-vel (instrumental case) or the -vá-vé (translative case) endings to a noun, the -v- is replaced with the last consonant in the noun stem.

For nouns ending in a vowel then there is no gemination.

To summarise: We simply replace the -v- with a final-consonant in a noun.

• barát + -val = baráttal with a friend
• könyv + -vel = könyvvel with a book
• barátom + -val = barátommal with my friend
• könyveid + -vé = könyveiddé turning into your books
• hajó + -val = hajóval with a ship N.B. there is no gemination here.

As could be seen above, remember that when we end up with two double-glyph letters next to each other, we write only the first stroke twice:

• színész actor
• színész + vel
• színész + szel
• színésszel with an actor Note how sz + sz = ssz

See the

TODO - link

section of the alphabet.