mi

When you are talking in Hungarian and you use the first person plural, the personal pronoun for “we” is “mi”. It is an A1 level word, meaning it is one of the first words you should learn as a beginner. It’s practical to learn early because you’ll use it in many basic sentences. You can use it to refer to a group of people including yourself. For example, if you want to say “we are here,” you would say “mi itt vagyunk.”

It’s important to note that, in Hungarian, the personal pronoun “mi” (we) is often omitted if the verb ending already clearly indicates who the subject is. For example, “vagyunk” (we are) already implies “mi” (we), so you could just say “Itt vagyunk” to mean “We are here.” However, including “mi” can add emphasis. For instance, “Mi itt vagyunk, nem ők” means “*We* are here, not them,” highlighting the “we.”

When you're first starting out with Hungarian, you'll encounter a common word that can be a little tricky: mi. At the A1 level, you'll primarily learn mi as meaning "we" when it's used as a noun, like when you're referring to a group of people including yourself. However, as you progress to a C2 level, you'll discover that mi is incredibly versatile and can also function as an interrogative pronoun meaning "what" or "which," and even as a relative pronoun. This dual nature can be confusing, but understanding the context and grammatical structure will help you differentiate its meanings. For example, if you see a sentence like "Mi van?", it means "What's up?" or "What's the matter?", clearly using mi as an interrogative. In contrast, if someone says "Mi megyünk," they mean "We are going," where mi is a pronoun referring to a group.