What is the metrical style of Hungarian poetry?

Question

While [reading about](https://www.jstor.org/stable/40142205?seq=2#metadata_info_tab_contents) Hungarian poetry, I [came across](http://seas3.elte.hu/coursematerial/PikliNatalia/PoetryHANDOUTandEliot1.doc) the claim that: > pure syllabic/quantitative metre is very rare = Hungarian, Greco-Roman ‘időmértékes’ metre I don't know what "pure syllabic/quantitative metre" means - I found [a good source](https://linguistics.ucla.edu/people/hayes/219/papers/ExtractFromKRyanWeightBook.pdf) about it, but far too technical for me to understand - but it sounds like Hungarian poetry has something in common with ancient Greco-Roman poetry and not many other languages/styles, which is interesting. I also tried looking up "időmértékes", but only found [some pages in Hungarian](https://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/Id%C5%91m%C3%A9rt%C3%A9kes_versel%C3%A9s), which don't tell me much since machine translation seems very bad at Hungarian-to-English. **What is the standard meter (if any) of Hungarian poetry? Is there a special metrical style in this language?**

Answer 1

1. The Accentual-syllabic metre is the metre of most Hungarian folk songs;it is based on the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables. In Hungarian the Stress falls almost always on the first syllable.

For instance:

|Nád a |házam |teteje, |teteje

----- . ---- . -- --- . . . .

|Rászál-|lott a |cinege, |cinege.

---- --- ---- -- . ---- . . . .

2.The Classical metre is frequenly used by the Hungarian poets; based on the pattern of long

and short syllables.

For instance Attila József's beautiful love poem "Flora" from his series, Hexaméterek [Hexameters].

|Roskad a |kásás |hó, csepe-|részget a |bádoge-|resz |már,

|elfeke-|tült kupa-|cokban a |jég ela-|lél, tova-|tűnik

(In general, we pronounce the syllables that contain long vowels are always long.

Long vowels are the following: Á, É, Í, Ó, Ő, Ú, Ű)

You can notice, in the words kupacokban and cseperészget the accent is not on the first syllable, but those small imperfectnesses make an artwork really unique...

I hope this helps. :-)