The Hungarumlaut: Mastering the Double Acute Accent (ő, ű)

If you scan a page of written text from across the room, you can usually guess the language based on its visual rhythm. German looks blocky with capitalized nouns; French flows with apostrophes and graves; Polish bristles with ‘z’ clusters. But there is one language that stands out immediately due to a peculiar typographic feature resembling aggressive rain falling on the vowels: Hungarian.

Hungarian (Magyar) is a typographic unicorn. It is traditionally considered the only language to use the double acute accent (˝) as a core part of its alphabet. Often jokingly referred to by computer scientists and typographers as the “Hungarumlaut”, these skyward-pointing lines found on the letters ő and ű are more than just decoration. They represent the distinctive logic of a language that refuses to compromise on precision.

For language learners and linguistics enthusiasts, understanding the double acute is the key to unlocking Hungarian phonology. Let’s dive into the history, the sound, and the logic of the world’s most fascinating diacritic.

What is the Hungarumlaut?

Visually, the double acute accent looks exactly like what it sounds like: two acute accents crammed together. While the standard acute accent (´) is used in Spanish, French, Irish, and many other languages to indicate stress or vowel quality, the double acute (˝) is strictly a Hungarian phenomenon within standard orthographies.

Typesetters coined the term “Hungarumlaut” (a portmanteau of Hungarian and Umlaut) because of the diacritic’s function. It creates a bridge between two other diacritics:

• The Umlaut (¨): Used in Hungarian on ö and ü to change the sound quality.
• The Acute (´): Used in Hungarian to indicate that a vowel is long.

When you combine the sound change of the umlaut with the lengthening power of the acute, you get the double acute.

The Phonetic Logic: Length Matters

To understand why these letters exist, you have to understand the rigid logic of the Hungarian vowel system. Hungarian represents a phonetic ideal that English speakers can only dream of: one letter, one sound.

In Hungarian, vowels come in pairs. There is a “short” version and a “long” version. The difference is rarely about the quality of the sound (how the mouth is shaped); it is almost entirely about the duration (how long you hold the note).

Let’s look at the standard vowels:

• o (short) becomes ó (long)
• u (short) becomes ú (long)

Here, the single acute accent acts as a “lengthener.” But Hungarian also has “front rounded” vowels (the ones with dots). So, what happens when you need to make those vowels long?

• ö (short) becomes… ő (long)
• ü (short) becomes… ű (long)

Using a standard acute (ó) would remove the “rounded” quality represented by the dots. Using just the dots (ö) would keep it short. The solution? Take the two dots of the umlaut and stretch them upward into lines. The result is a symbol that retains the “front rounded” meaning of the dots but adds the “long duration” meaning of the lines.

Pronunciation Guide: Hearing the Difference

For an English speaker, the difference between o and ó, or ö and ő, can feel agonizingly subtle. However, mixing them up is dangerous. In Hungarian, vowel length changes meaning entirely.

The O-Group

Ö (Short): Similar to the ‘ea’ in early or the ‘i’ in bird (received pronunciation), but with lips rounded. Short and punchy.
Ő (Long): The exact same sound, just held twice as long. Think of it as the sound of disgust: “Ugh.” or the hesitation sound “Er…”

Example:

• Öt = Five
• Őt = Him/Her (accusative)

The U-Group

Ü (Short): Like the French ‘u’ in tu or the German ‘ü’ in müde. Tight, pursed lips.
Ű (Long): The same sound, held longer. It sounds very intense, almost like a siren wail if you hold it too long.

Example:

• Füzet = Notebook
• Fűzet = To make someone heat (something) / “to have it heated”

A Brief History: From Dots to Dashes

Hungarian didn’t always have these sleek double lines. In the medieval period and during the codification of the language, orthography was a Wild West. Scribes used various combinations of dots, accents, and macrons to indicate length.

Around the 15th century, the Munich Codex and the Jókai Codex began showing attempts to differentiate the long front vowels. However, it wasn’t until the 19th-century language reform movement, led by frantic linguists trying to standardize Hungarian for the modern world, that the system solidified.

The double acute is essentially a byproduct of handwriting. When writing quickly in cursive, lifting the pen to make two distinct dots (¨) takes precision. It is much faster to strike the paper twice in an upward motion. Over decades of handwriting evolution, the dots of the umlaut elongated into the acute strokes we recognize today. The printing press simply standardized what the human hand had already preferred.

The Typographic Nightmare

While linguists love the logic of the Hungarumlaut, type designers and computer engineers have historically hated it.

In the early days of computing, character sets were limited. ASCII had no room for Hungarian special characters. Even when ISO-8859-1 (Latin-1) became the standard for Western Europe, containing French and German characters, the poor ő and ű were left out. Hungarian required a different encoding standard (ISO-8859-2 or Latin-2).

This led to the infamous “clipping” era of the early internet. Because many fonts simply didn’t bother to design the double acute, computers would often substitute it with the closest available shape. Hungarian texts were often riddled with:

• The Tilde: õ, ũ (Makes Hungarian look Portuguese)
• The Circumflex: ô, û (Makes it look French)

To a Hungarian eye, these substitutions are jarring. Reading õ instead of ő is like reading English where every letter ‘T’ is replaced by a ‘7’. You can understand it, but it feels wrong. Fortunately, with the advent of Unicode (UTF-8) and modern OpenType fonts, the Hungarumlaut is now rendered correctly on almost all devices—though you will still find lazy font designs where the double acutes are disturbingly vertical, clashing with the line of text above them.

Conclusion: A Badge of Identity

Language is rarely purely functional; it is also aesthetic and emotional. The double acute accent is a source of pride for Hungarian speakers. It perfectly encapsulates the nature of the language: isolated, unique, and fiercely logical.

When you see those two lines stretching toward the top of the line on a package of paprika or a street sign in Budapest, remember that they aren’t just funny accents. They are a clever geometric solution to a phonetic problem, combining the quality of the umlaut with the quantity of the acute to create something entirely new.

So, the next time you practice your Hungarian, don’t rush those long vowels. Give the ő and ű the time they deserve—your listeners (and your typography) will thank you.