Számában

Számában is a Hungarian inflected form of the noun szám. The word szám has multiple senses, most commonly “number” or “count,” and in colloquial use it can also mean a musical track or song (as in a track on an album). The form számában is built by taking the root szám, adding the third-person singular possessive suffix -a to form szám[a], and then applying the locative suffix -ban to indicate location “in” or “inside.” The resulting word is used to express location inside something described by szám, with the exact nuance depending on which sense of szám is intended.

In practice, számában most often appears when szám is understood as a musical track or song. For example, on a music album one might say that a certain melody is audible “az album öt számában,” i.e., within the album’s five tracks. In this sense, számában functions similarly to a phrase meaning “in its tracks” or “in its number(s).” The construction is productive in literary or descriptive prose as well when referring to content organized in numbered parts or items.

When szám is interpreted as “number” or “numerical entry,” számában can denote location within a set or sequence, though this usage is more specialized and less common in everyday speech. The form remains recognizable as a compound of szám with possessive and locative suffixes, and its exact translation depends on the contextual sense of szám.

Etymologically, számában reflects Hungarian agglutinative morphology: base noun + possessive marker + locative marker, with orthographic rules guiding the final form. See also szám.