hová

Hová is a Hungarian word meaning “to where” and is used as an interrogative adverb to ask about direction or destination. It plays a central role in forming questions about movement and is the standard question word when inquiring where someone or something is going.

In use, hová typically appears in questions with verbs of motion. For example, hová mész? means “Where are you going?” and hová utazik? can be translated as “Where are you traveling to?” The word is generally placed early in the question, and the rest of the sentence provides the predicate and the destination context. Hungarian also pairs hová with various verb phrases to specify movement toward a place, person, or thing.

Orthography and formality: the norm is to write the word as hová with an acute accent on the o, indicating its historical vowel length and stress. In informal digital text without diacritics, it is sometimes written as hova, but the accented form hová is preferred in standard Hungarian. The word does not decline for number; it remains the same in singular and plural question contexts, with the rest of the sentence providing subject and object information.

Relation to other question words: hová contrasts with honnan (“from where”) and hova together with other directional expressions forms part of Hungarian how-where question constructions. It is one of several interrogatives that help specify location and destination in discourse.

See also: Hungarian language, interrogatives, movement verbs, direction and case in Hungarian grammar.