Two Lax Mid Front Vowels of Hungarian Dialects

Standard Hungarian has one mid front lax vowel. It is represented by the letter e. Old Hungarian, however, had two mid front lax vowels, a vowel that corresponds to the mid front lax vowel of English, and one that is a bit lower. Standard Hungarian only has one mid front lax vowel.

In many Hungarian dialects,  the two vowels of Old Hungarian are preserved. The result is that these dialects have one more vowel phoneme than in Standard Hungarian. To illustrate, the following words have a mid vowel that has a higher tongue position than in standard Hungarian. This vowel is underlined:

édes (sweet)

ezer (thousand)

gyerek (child)

hegy (mountain)

igen (yes)

megye (county)

reggel (morning)

szem (eye)

szerencse (luck)

tenger (sea)

Standard Hungarian does not have the mid vowel present in many dialects. This vowel is a little higher than that of Standard Hungarian. Many Hungarian dialects have two mid front lax vowels, but Standard Hungarian has only one. The two mid front lax vowels of Old Hungarian merged into one in Standard Hungarian.