ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to describe general and specific features of the Hungarian language that may influence reading acquisition and to give an overview of difficulties in learning to read and spell faced by children and adults. A short description of Hungarian phonology, morphology, and syntax will help us to understand why and how dyslexic readers show deficits in a language that has a relatively transparent and shallow orthography. The first part of this chapter describes the Hungarian orthography. The second part focuses on phonology and gives an overview of the vowel and consonant system as well as that of the phonotactics. The third part focuses on the agglutinative nature of Hungarian morphology in which grammatical relations are expressed by means of affixes. An additional feature of Hungarian language is the free word order. Finally, experimental findings—behavioural and brain measures—that address the general and specific features of the Hungarian language that may influence reading acquisition are presented along with an overview of difficulties in reading and spelling faced by dyslexic children and adults.
