The Metric and Rhythmic Ability of the Hungarian Language

Abstract

The study describes the prosody systems of Hungarian poetry, illustrating each of them with one poem.

The Hungarian language is particularly flexible with regard to metrics and rhythm, since in addition to the original accentual-syllabic versification, the small masters elaborated the rules of the quantitative versification as well in the 18^th century. 

This gave a chance to the structural attachment of the two rhythm principles, creating the simultaneous prosody.

There was also an attempt in the 18^th century for introducing the West-European stress-shifting versification but this remained only a curiosity in three-syllable cadences.

In Sanskrit poetry the duration of the syllables is measured the same way as in the Greek–Latin quantitative prosody. This created the possibility for a version of the mora counting prosody, the ganavritta, to gain ground in Hungarian poetry. The mora counting versification seems to be a result of a spontaneous language operation in most of the cases, but as for Weöres Sándor who translated the Indian literature, it was a real poetic intention.