és, meg, pedig

What are the differences between "Meg, Pedig, and És?

What are the proper instances to use each word?  Can they be interchangeable in some instances? 

Short answer:  all of them mean "and"

In the following, I copy some selected comments from the Duolingo Forum:

comment by jzsuzsi:

és is neutral , just "and".

I think in a sentence like This is a chair and that is a table, we are more likely to use meg/pedig. Ez egy szék, az meg/pedig (egy) asztal.

When listing adjectives, go for és. A tó nagy és szép. The lake is big and beautiful.

Maybe we could build a contrast scale: no contrast just listing -> és (or meg)

a bit of contrast -> meg

even more contrast -> pedig


comment by peter.kristof.hu

It is best to learn the words in context.

és = and. Here are some example sentences from the Hungarian-English learning dictionary: https://www.angolszokincs.com/%C3%A9s-angolul.html

meg = and. https://www.angolszokincs.com/meg-angolul.html

pedig = in turn. But it is more complicated because it has several meanings and there is no one-to-one correspondence between Hungarian and English. https://www.angolszokincs.com/pedig-angolul.html


comment by Judit:

They both mean and but while "meg" is just "and"; "pedig" is "and" with a flavour of "while" or "but".

comment by jzsuzsi:

Pay attention to word order too:
Péter énekel és Anna alszik. 
Péter énekel, Anna meg alszik. 
Péter énekel, Anna pedig alszik.   (Péter is singing and Anna is sleeping)

with "és" you place it where you would place "and" in the English sentence.
But, place meg/pedig after the second subject in the sentence. 

Side note, this comes up later in the course: the placement of pedig can change the meaning. We can think of it as two different pedig's:

Péter énekel, Anna pedig alszik. Péter is singing, and Anna is sleeping. 
 here pedig -> and/whereas/while

Péter énekel, pedig Anna alszik. Péter is singing, even though Anna is sleeping.
 here pedig -> even though/although

In the first sentence, I just stated what they are doing. In the second sentence, Péter, you should keep quiet and let Anna sleep!

sources:

https://archive.ph/PQVpq

https://archive.ph/QTAp7

https://archive.ph/AWWbm

(SD)  https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/16945069  =  https://archive.ph/hzzQa