Yes, I'm Hungarian, and I'm not even mad (pun intended) about "mad" matching "madzag". I find that we ourselves sometimes conflate characters and letters, so many people's first thought would be that "madzag" is six letters. I think most other digraphs e.g. "sz" or "gy" are considered more tightly bound, so one would be unlikely to say that "szám" (=number) is four letters rather than three.