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0 to conversational Hungarian in 3 months | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| irishpolyglot Nonaglot Senior Member Ireland fluentin3months Joined 5632 days ago 285 posts - 892 votes  Speaks: Irish, English*, French, Esperanto, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Sign Language Studies: Mandarin | Message 1 of 52 15 July 2010 at 9:09pm | IP Logged | ||
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It's time for my next 3-month endeavour :)
You will see a thread in the archives called "High school German to C2 in 3 months" and it was mostly a success - so I am going to be even more ambitious this time and aiming for conversational Hungarian in just 3 months, STARTING TODAY! I was able to get by in Thai and understand the writing system quite well earlier this year, but this will be my first true attempt at aiming for proper spontaneous communication in a non-Indo-European language. A big introduction with a silly picture is on my blog (link in my details on the left), but otherwise I will post here with non-blog updates and other details as I did the previous thread. My plan is as follows: July 15 - July 31: Study Hungarian part time. I'm still enjoying Berlin while I can, and doing some things with my German, like hopefully making a video soon! So Hungarian will get about an hour or two a day for the next two weeks. Not ideal, but it will give me a head start where I usually would start learning on arrival. August 1/2: Arrive in Budapest, get SIM card, and look for apartment. I will be with a (French speaking) friend for this time so it's unlikely I'll get much practise. August 3 - August 9: Spend week in Pécs just south of Budapest with some Esperanto speakers. The majority of them will be Hungarian, so this will allow me to adjust culturally without having a language barrier just for that week and make some friends who live in Budapest. Living in the country and seeing the language everywhere will get me partially immersed. I usually don't do this, but I want to see if "easing myself in" over a few weeks has any benefits at all. There are also some practical things to consider before abandoning other languages, like I need to understand how to eat well as a vegetarian in Hungary. August 9 - October 14: Full immersion. Nearly all of my socialising will be in Hungarian, even from the first day where I will only have had about 3 weeks to prepare. I will not be speaking any English with Hungarians (or Esperanto with those friends I'll have made during the first week). I will practise and maintain my other languages by hosting Couchsurfers and in international parties etc., but the focus will be to speak in Hungarian. At the end of my time I hope to be at conversation level. Not "fluent", but speaking confidently and understanding as much as possible said to me in social situations. I'll first attempt to converse with people who will likely need to talk slowly to me, and then hopefully be able to understand someone talking normal speed or conversing with someone else. But the priority will always be to maintain non-awkward conversations and focus on **communication** rather than producing flawless Hungarian. If any of you have any experience with Hungarian, or advice for me for how to reach my target better. Please do share :) Looking forward to this! :D 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5380 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 2 of 52 15 July 2010 at 9:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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Sounds like an awesome challenge! I'm jealous and I wish I could spend several months in a country to do that myself!
Keeps us updated as you progress though the challenge! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7155 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 3 of 52 15 July 2010 at 11:06pm | IP Logged | ||
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Since you'll be doing some couchsurfing, go all over Hungary when possible (or even to southern Slovakia or Transylvania where Hungarians still live) and stay with hosts who are much more comfortable using Hungarian than anything else. I did this many years ago by staying for a week on a farm owned by a couple of older folks. Our only common language was Hungarian and I had no choice but to draw on all of my accumulated knowledge in Hungarian since they spoke only a little German otherwise. It was pointless to communicate in anything else. By the end of that week I was really surprised at how well my Hungarian held up and how much came back.
Sok sikert! 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| liddytime Pentaglot Senior Member United States mainlymagyar.wordpre Joined 6228 days ago 693 posts - 1328 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Galician Studies: Hungarian, Vietnamese, Modern Hebrew, Norwegian, Persian, Arabic (Written) | Message 4 of 52 16 July 2010 at 12:47am | IP Logged | ||
Good Luck, Benny!! I am sooo jealous. I am part Hungarian and have always wanted to speak more than just a smattering of Hungarian. I don't think you will find it as difficult as people try to scare you into believing. Its syntax is very regular and predictable...just a little more complex than most European languages. I look forward to following your progress! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| irishpolyglot Nonaglot Senior Member Ireland fluentin3months Joined 5632 days ago 285 posts - 892 votes Speaks: Irish, English*, French, Esperanto, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Sign Language Studies: Mandarin | Message 5 of 52 22 July 2010 at 10:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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@liddytime
You're right! I will write a summary now of my first impressions and it isn't that bad! :) @Chung Thanks! Although, I really prefer cities - I have ways of convincing locals (who may speak English) to maintain the local language with me and I'm confident these methods will work in Budapest :) I will however try to travel at some stage to get to know other parts of the country. I'm actually spending all of my first week in Pécs! @Arekkusu Will do! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7155 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 6 of 52 22 July 2010 at 10:29pm | IP Logged | ||
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You'll probably like Pécs as it's a nice larger city (by Hungarian standards) with stuff to do. Pécs is also in one of Hungary's wine-regions. The wine from nearby Szekszárd and Villány is pretty good, and if you can, try to visit a vineyard or take part in a wine-festival.
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| irishpolyglot Nonaglot Senior Member Ireland fluentin3months Joined 5632 days ago 285 posts - 892 votes Speaks: Irish, English*, French, Esperanto, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Sign Language Studies: Mandarin | Message 7 of 52 22 July 2010 at 10:38pm | IP Logged | ||
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FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF HUNGARIAN ********* About a week into the challenge, I've had my chance to review the grammar books (not intensively mind you, since this is still very much part time until I am in Hungary), and I have a few impressions of the language I'd like to share! The grammar seems NOT THAT BAD!
One thing that does seem like I will need to do lots of mental gymnastics in, as far as grammar is concerned, is the definite vs indefinite conjugations. These exist for ALL tenses. Their use is very logical on the plus side (although I can see how a beginner learner with a weak idea of what definite & indefinite are would have huge headaches here: I've been forced to understand this concept through years of language learning), but it's just different to what I am used to. A different conjugation for if the noun is "a" or "the" (or other variants of def/indef) is an extra step to think about and an extra group of conjugations to learn. PRONUNCIATION: Good news: It's very phonetic! The stress is always on the first syllable (stress position can be... stressful in some languages! :P ) and the use of the Latinised alphabet will make it easy enough to read. Work needed: The different phonetic rules will take some getting used to are "gy" (actually pronounced more like "dy"), and s ("sh") and sz ("s"), which is the reverse of Polish. Some consonants change from voiced to unvoiced and vice versa (p to b for example) if grouped with other consonants and I can see this causing problems. VOCABULARY: This will likely be the bulk of my work, since it has (due to being in a completely different language family) a very different set of vocabulary to get used to. However:
INTERESTING SIMILARITIES TO OTHER LANGUAGES: IRISH: In Irish we have a rule called slender with slender, broad with broad for vowels. Hungarian has something which reminds me quite a lot of this: the vowel agreements between suffixes & roots (for conjugations and "cases" etc.) Although the rules are different, the concept itself is not that new to me, so I'll have this edge. :) This seems to be the main "complication" to variations in suffixes and verb conjugations, but it's basically just changing an "a" to an "e" for example. Hungarian also has no verb for "to have", but neither does Irish. Using a different way of phrasing for that is fine. ESPERANTO: I know a lot of people on this forum appreciate grammar, but I prefer it in small doses. Esperanto introduced me to what accusative means in a very straightforward way that never made sense to me when learning German in school. This will also help even more in Hungarian since it seems to apply accusative endings way more consistently than German would. Also, as I said, word formation seems very logical, and Esperanto taught me how to appreciate this more than inconsistent languages have. Overall, I don't see ANYTHING so far that will cause me huge problems or that is drastically harder than other languages. Hard work will be involved, but as long as I keep a positive attitude and continue to look at the language in a "glass is half full" mentality as described here, then I am confident I can learn things quicker :) I have yet to really listen to the language, other than a quick few minutes of streamed radio, so I'll try to listen to the basic conversations included in the audio courses I have, and perhaps meet up with a native briefly. I just have one week before I have to go to Hungary, so now that I have a vague overall view of the language (I'm sure there are tonnes of holes!) I can start learning some phrases (as well as the structure of their meaning to help with future expansion) in preparation for basic communication :) 6 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| yearlyglot Triglot Newbie United States yearlyglot.com/Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5345 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Russian Studies: German, Italian, Lithuanian | Message 8 of 52 22 July 2010 at 11:07pm | IP Logged | ||
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Wow, man. Based on that description it sounds a lot easier than the reputation people generally give it. Very
interesting. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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