Hungarian Alphabet: Long Vowels, Doubled Consonants, ő and ű

Are ccs, ggy and ssz letters of the Hungarian alphabet?

No. Each one is a long consonant, spelled by doubling. AkH 12 (opens in a new tab), the spelling rules of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, sets this out in point 7. A letter of one character is written twice: tt, ll, rr. A letter of two or three characters doubles only its first character. So a long sz is ssz, and a long dzs is ddzs.

Unicode CLDR puts these doubled forms in its set for Hungarian, beside the real letters. The grid above keeps them out of the alphabet and lists them on their own.

Length is not decoration. Point 9 gives pairs that differ only in it. Wiktionary glosses megy (opens in a new tab) as to go and meggy (opens in a new tab) as sour cherry. Kasza (opens in a new tab) is a scythe, kassza (opens in a new tab) a cash register.

Each doubled form below comes with a word from AkH 12. The last column follows point 226 f, with the splits AkH gives in points 7, 226 f and 227: at a line break the short spelling is undone, and each line gets the whole letter.

Doubled form	Long version of	Word in AkH 12	Split at a line end
ccs	cs	loccsan	locs-csan
ddz	dz	eddzük	edz-dzük
ddzs	dzs	briddzsel	bridzs-dzsel
ggy	gy	poggyász	pogy-gyász
lly	ly	Kodállyal	Kodály-lyal
nny	ny	asszonnyal	asz-szony-nyal
ssz	sz	össze	ösz-sze
tty	ty	szittya	szity-tya
zzs	zs	rozzsal	rozs-zsal

The rules print no split for a zzs word. The one in the last row applies point 226 f to rozzsal, from point 82.

Why does Hungarian write jegygyűrű with gy twice in full?

Because two words meet there. Point 7 doubles a letter of two characters in full only at the seam of a compound: jegygyűrű, fénynyaláb, díszszemle. Wiktionary takes jegygyűrű (opens in a new tab) apart as jegy, engagement, and gyűrű, ring.

Inside one word, or between a word and its ending, the short form wins. Point 92 gives meggy and hosszú, and with endings jeggyel and mésszel. Names follow the same rule: Arannyal, Kodállyal.

Endings are where most doubles come from. Point 82 says the v of -val, -vel (with) and -vá, -vé (into) turns into the last consonant of the word. So arany gives arannyal, rozs gives rozzsal, négy gives néggyel, király gives királlyá.

Where the doubled sound sits	How it is spelled	Words from AkH 12
inside one word	first character twice	meggy, hosszú, loccsan
between a word and its ending	first character twice	jeggyel, Kodállyal, rozzsal
where two words of a compound meet	whole letter twice	jegygyűrű, fénynyaláb, díszszemle
where three of one letter would meet	two, never three	tollal, füttyel, könnyé
across a line break	whole letter on each line	asz-szony-nyal, Arany-nyal

The fourth row is point 93. Toll and -lal would give three l's, so the spelling keeps two: tollal. Fütty and -tyel give füttyel the same way. None of these spellings adds a letter to the Hungarian alphabet: each is a letter of the grid, written longer.

What do the acute and the double acute on ő and ű tell a Hungarian reader?

The acute and the double acute mark a long vowel. They are two of the three Hungarian accents; the third, the two dots on ö and ü, makes vowels of their own, not long ones. AkH point 4 lists the short vowels a, e, i, o, ö, u, ü and the long ones á, é, í, ó, ő, ú, ű. So ő is the long partner of ö, and ű of ü. In Unicode's Latin Extended-A chart (opens in a new tab) the mark is a double acute, two strokes in place of the two dots.

Point 6 warns that length can make another word. It gives one pair or more for every vowel:

Short vowel	Long vowel	Pairs in point 6
a	á	bal, bál; akar, akár
e	é	kemény, kémény; veréb, véreb
i	í	irt, írt
o	ó	oda, óda; koros, kóros
ö	ő	öt, őt
u	ú	áru, árú
ü	ű	tüzért, tűzért

Wiktionary glosses bal (opens in a new tab) as left and bál (opens in a new tab) as a ball, the dance. Kemény (opens in a new tab) is hard; kémény (opens in a new tab) is a chimney.

Ő and ű are not rare letters, either. Point 34 says the endings -ből, -ről and -től always carry a long vowel: erdőből, tetőről. The adjective ending -ű does too: bőkezű, jószívű. The languages block on this page shows which other CLDR alphabets use ő and ű. Both have keys of their own on a Hungarian layout, and the Hungarian keyboard page shows where.

Does software sort naggyal and nagygyakorlat the way Hungarian dictionaries do?

With Hungarian rules, yes; with English rules, no. Point 14 of AkH 12 sets two rules for putting words in Hungarian alphabet order. A doubled form is split before sorting, so ggy counts as gy plus gy. Long and short vowels count as equal, and the short word comes first only when nothing else differs.

We tested both on 2026-10-10. We took seven example columns from point 14, reversed each, and sorted them with Intl.Collator in Node.js v26.0.0 (ICU 78.3, CLDR 48.0). The English rules are the control: they cannot know about ggy.

Column from point 14	What it tests	Hungarian rules	English rules
nagy, naggyá, nagygyakorlat, naggyal…	ggy as gy plus gy	the AkH order	naggyá and naggyal come before nagy
mennek… meny, Menyhért, mennybolt, mennyi	nny as ny plus ny	the AkH order	mennybolt and mennyi come before menü
kas… kasza, kaszinó, kassza, kaszt	ssz as sz plus sz	the AkH order	kassza comes before kastély
ír, Irak, iram, Irán, írandó…	í equal to i	the AkH order	the AkH order
Eger, egér… elöl, elől	the short word first in a tie	the AkH order	the AkH order

The other two columns, kerek to kóros and szel to szűret, matched under both rules. So the vowel rule needs no Hungarian data: any Unicode sort treats á as a with a mark and breaks the tie the same way. The doubled forms do need it. The CLDR Hungarian collation (opens in a new tab) is what files naggyal after nagygyakorlat.