Budapest / Budapesti

cisarro

cisarro

Senior Member
Chilean spanish
Hello!
Please, what's the difference between Budapesti and Budapest?

«A Budapesti Történeti Múzeum Budapest egyik legjelentősebb múzeuma, a főváros történetének dokumentumait, tárgyi emlékeit gyűjti. Önkormányzati intézmény, de hivatalos besorolása szerint országos múzeum. Központja Budapesten az I., Szent György tér 2. szám alatt van.»

Thanks in advance.
 
    • The form "budapesti" is an adjective. (Usually with a lower case 'b' unless it's a title or the name of an institution.)

    E.g. chilei = 'Chilean'. :)

    The suffix '-i' is very productive: see here.
     
    Meanwhile Budapest is a noun, the name of the Hungarian capital...

    The suffix -i (in budapesti) indicates that the museum in question 'belongs to' the capital, i.e. can be found in this town.
    It is not easy to give a meaning to our suffixes because according to the context they can be translated in different manners. I would say e.g. that the -i suffix means 'coming from' a place but it may not be true to all cases.
     
    Only for curiosity:

    In Spanish budapesti could be in theory "budapestense" (=de Budapest), like praguense (=de Praga), matritense (=de Madrid, madrileño), etc ...

    The reason while the adequate adjective does not exist in some foreign languages, is probably due to the fact that historically Budapest consisted of two towns, Buda and Pest . These two towns (plus Óbuda and Újpest) were administratively united only in the 19th century. Thus e.g. in medieval documents written in Latin we can find the adjectives budensis and pestensis, but - logically - not *budapestensis.

    In Hungarian the ending -i can be used to create adjectives of provenience in general (e.g. madridi, prágai, chilei, budai, pesti, budapesti, londoni, magyarországi, angliai, etc ...)
     
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