Olvastam

Olvastam is the first-person singular past tense form of the Hungarian verb olvasni, meaning "to read." It expresses a completed act of reading that the speaker performed in the past and is used in both spoken and written Hungarian to recount past events or experiences.

The form is built from the stem olvas- plus the past-tense suffix -t- and the personal ending -am, yielding olvastam. This construction follows standard Hungarian past tense conjugation patterns, with the stem maintaining the root consonants and the suffixes marking person and tense.

Pronunciation follows typical Hungarian phonology, with the word pronounced roughly as [ˈolvɒstɒm], and the primary stress placed on the first syllable: OL-vas-tam.

In use, olvastam can appear with a direct object, as in "olvastam a könyvet" (I read the book), or it can stand alone in contexts where the object is understood from the surrounding text or conversation. The form is common in narratives, memoirs, and everyday speech when describing past reading activity.

Historically, the form reflects the standard Hungarian conjugation system that developed through the 19th and 20th centuries, aligning with other verbs in the -ni family and their past tense inflections.

See also: Hungarian grammar, conjugation of verbs, and the verb olvasni.