Spatial Postpositions

In English, there are prepositions. They dictate relationships between nouns. Here are some examples of spatial relationships.

• The bird flies above the city.
• The man is below the bridge.
• The boy is in front of the building.

In Hungarian, there are postpositions. They are placed after the noun relationship instead of between. Here are the translations.

• A madár a város felett repül.
• A férfi a híd alatt van.
• A fiú az épület előtt van.

Challenge!

A kutya a lány mellett ül. (Original image, merging free images together)

The dog sits next to the girl.

These postpositions don’t indicate relative movement between the nouns, i.e. at that specifc point of time, they are not moving away from each other. Spatial postpositions can also represent the relationship of a noun moving towards the other noun or away from that noun.

Postposition	Moving towards (to)	No relative movement	Moving away (from)
Next to	Mellé	Mellett	Mellől
Above	Fölé	Felett/Fölött	Fölül
Below	Alá	Alatt	Alól
Infront of	Elé	Előtt	Elől
Behind	Mögé	Mögött	Mögül
Between/Among	Közé	Között	Közül

Felett and fölött were a result of dialectual differences, however now they are virtually interchangeable.

IMPORTANT NOTE

Postpositions cannot be used with standalone pronouns, such as én, te or ő. Instead, the postposition gets a possessional suffix to indicate who or what it is referring to.

• István sat next to me.
  • István én mellé ült.
  • István mellém ült. (Sitting implies moving to sit somewhere, thus mellém is used instead of melletem)
• The man came out from behind you.
  • A férfi te mögül kijött
  • A férfi kijött mögüled.

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Yet to Learn

• -m, -e which are markers of the possession suffix
• ki, a coverb

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