"kisebb" pronunciation

  • why is this? I thought long or double consonant sounds in Hungarian were usually spelled with a double consonant letter.
    Usually, yes, but not always: there are some other examples of intervocalic consonant lengthening, but in most cases such pronunciations are considered non-standard or dialectal:

    szalag > pron. szallag (ribbon)
    papír > pron. pappír (paper)
    eső > esső (rain)
    óvatosan > óvatossan (carefully)

    Such lengthened pronunciations were sometimes fixed in the spelling of surnames:

    dalos > Dallos (singer)
    kolár (Slavic word meaning "wheelmaker") > Kollár

    .

    There's another example which is different because the lengthened consonant is not between vowels and where it is standard pronunciation:
    "egy" (one) is pronounced "eggy"
     
    My two cents from the North-East of the Hungarian linguistic area:

    szalag > pron. szallag (ribbon) - possible
    papír > pron. pappír (paper) - never heard
    eső > esső (rain) - never heard
    óvatosan > óvatossan (carefully) - possible, but not typical
    egy (one) is pronounced "eggy" - possible, but rather in case of "eggyet"
     
    being from the "center" :) :

    szalag > pron. szallag (ribbon) - possible, but the pronounciation with double l is imo less frequent
    papír > pron. pappír (paper) - never heard
    eső > esső (rain) - never heard
    óvatosan > óvatossan (carefully) - never heard
    egy (one) is pronounced "eggy" - possible ( imo it is more common to pronounce it with double gy)
     
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    I'm not saying that "pappír" and "esső" are very common today, but they do exist in dialects: googling "pappír" produced around 300 hits. They're mainly from texts written by people whose "uneducated" spelling reflect their own pronunciation.
    Googling "esső" led me to works of Zsigmond Móricz and Géza Gárdonyi, where they used this spelling to reflect dialectal speech.
     
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