ABSTRACT
Hungarian vowels are classified according to front vs. back assonance and rounded vs. unrounded. These terms come from describing the tongue position in the mouth and the roundedness of the lips, respectively. The following is the vowel inventory of Hungarian:
Back vowels: a, á, o, ó, u, ú
Front unrounded vowels: e, é, i, í
Front rounded vowels: ö, o˝, ü, u˝
Vowel harmony rules in Hungarian require that front or back assonance in the vowels of a stem be maintained throughout the entire word, thus for the most part – except for recent loan words – Hungarian words have either only back vowels in them or only front vowels.
