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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| liddytime Pentaglot Senior Member United States mainlymagyar.wordpre Joined 6226 days ago 693 posts - 1328 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Galician Studies: Hungarian, Vietnamese, Modern Hebrew, Norwegian, Persian, Arabic (Written) | Message 1 of 35 04 August 2010 at 8:58pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I’m finally going to do it.
After fifteen years and several forays into other foreign tongues I am finally going to learn Hungarian. This may not seem to be the most logical, advantageous or opportunistic language for a middle aged, American male to tackle in the Post-Cold War era. I do, however, have my own reasons for taking on the challenge. My first exposure to Hungarian came when I was a Junior in college. I had just completed summer-school in Spain and had met up with a high school friend to do the obligatory “blow through as much of Europe as you can in a month” tour. We had been racing through all the usual stops: France, Italy, Greece, Germany, Austria , when we were approached by a fellow American traveller. “ You know, Hungary just opened up. You don’t even need a visa anymore. You guys should check it out.” Being among the first American tourists to venture into this formerly verboten land was an incredible opportunity that we just couldn’t pass up. I do digress that our first choice of cities was actually Prague, in what was still Czechoslovakia. Unfortunately, every available mode of transportation into Prague was completely booked up. Apparently, the Rolling Stones were playing a huge concert there for the equivalent of $5 US and the influx of fans was just too overwhelming for Czechoslovakia’s transportation infrastructure. The second logical city choice was Budapest. We booked ourselves on the first available train into a place where we had no contacts, no guidebooks and literally, no information. The train pulled into Budapest’s central station around 10PM. It was drab, quiet and very dimly lit. The train dropped us off and we both just stood there; silent, confused and wondering if we just made a huge mistake. The problem was that neither of us spoke a word of Hungarian. Throughout the other European countries we could pretty much get by with broken English and a smattering of words in the other countries’ languages. Not so in Hungary. All of our pleas of “ English?! &nbs p;English?!” , were greeted with blank stares and confused looks. Through some wild gesticulations and the grace of God we were able to secure more than adequate lodging for the night. To this day, I’m still not sure how we worked that one out. We had a fantastic time in Hungary. We ended up staying there longer than any other place on our trip. I did, however, have somewhat of an epiphany there. I vowed never again will I solely rely on my English in a non-English speaking country again. Over the years language learning has become a fascination and, at times, an obsession for me. I have become fluent in Spanish and Portuguese. I have become quite competent in Turkish, Italian, Russian and Haitian Creole. I have dabbled ( just enough to get me in trouble) with German, Dutch, French, Greek, Norwegian, Albanian, Hindi, Persian/Farsi, Czech, Serbo-Croatian, Arabic and Swahili... yes, Swahili... I have always been interested in Hungary and the Hungarian language. I am Hungarian on my maternal side although I’m fairly sure my mother has never been to Hungary. I am certainly sure she doesn’t speak a single word of Hungarian. On my long past trip to Hungary I can remember staring at signs and wondering, “What on earth does that say?!?” The words were so foreign appearing and seemed to come from a different universe, never mind from a European country. “One day I’ll learn what they mean”, I thought to myself. The impetus for my newfound quest to learn Hungarian was set forth by my wife. On deciding where to go for our next vacation, we agreed on Hungary. “There you go, now you can learn Hungarian!!” I certainly have my work cut out for me. Hungarian is considered one of the hardest languages in the world for an English-speaker to learn. It is one of the few members of the Finno-Ugric language family. The other well-known members are Finnish and Estonian although a Hungarian would not be able to pick out more than a word or two from either of them. The Hungarian language was brought into Hungary centuries ago via invading tribes from Central Asia. Remarkably, through the centuries Hungarian has retained its Asian character and syntax and has remained isolated from its neighboring Indo-European languages. Nearly all other European languages belong to the Indo- European language family. Thus, English is much more closely related to Hindi, Persian and Albanian than it is to Hungarian. My plan of attack revolves around using both the Foreign Service Institute’s Hungarian Basic Course from the 1960’s and the Defense Language Institute’s Hungarian Basic Course from the 1980’s. Both of these courses are suitable for self-study with dozens of hours of audio support... which is good... Sadly, in my neighborhood there aren’t many Hungarian speakers! Eventually I will attempt to use some of the video chat programs to speak with real Hungarians. Well, I suppose I should get started.....wish me luck! Edited by liddytime on 01 May 2013 at 10:29pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| David_hu Diglot Newbie Hungary Joined 5344 days ago 6 posts - 11 votes Speaks: Hungarian*, EnglishB2 Studies: German, Russian | Message 2 of 35 04 August 2010 at 9:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Hello liddytime,
I am a native hungarian, if you need any help, don't hesitate to ask! Good luck, I really hope you'll enjoy learning hungarian! 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| liddytime Pentaglot Senior Member United States mainlymagyar.wordpre Joined 6226 days ago 693 posts - 1328 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Galician Studies: Hungarian, Vietnamese, Modern Hebrew, Norwegian, Persian, Arabic (Written) | Message 3 of 35 04 August 2010 at 9:42pm | IP Logged | |||||
Köszönöm szépen!! Szeretem a magyar nyelv eddig! eddig is "so far" right?? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| David_hu Diglot Newbie Hungary Joined 5344 days ago 6 posts - 11 votes Speaks: Hungarian*, EnglishB2 Studies: German, Russian | Message 4 of 35 04 August 2010 at 9:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
It is correct. But you need to use the accusative case, so: Szeretem a magyar nyelvet eddig! or Eddig szeretem a magyar nyelvet! 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| liddytime Pentaglot Senior Member United States mainlymagyar.wordpre Joined 6226 days ago 693 posts - 1328 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Galician Studies: Hungarian, Vietnamese, Modern Hebrew, Norwegian, Persian, Arabic (Written) | Message 5 of 35 05 August 2010 at 10:28pm | IP Logged | |||||
Ohhhhh , that tricky accusative case!!! :-) 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| liddytime Pentaglot Senior Member United States mainlymagyar.wordpre Joined 6226 days ago 693 posts - 1328 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Galician Studies: Hungarian, Vietnamese, Modern Hebrew, Norwegian, Persian, Arabic (Written) | Message 6 of 35 07 August 2010 at 3:37am | IP Logged | |||||
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I have made my first steps in my journey towards learning one of the most difficult languages in the world,
Hungarian. I have managed to make it through the first two units of the Foreign Service course and the first three units of the Defense Language Institute course. The differences between them are interesting considering one course was written for diplomats and the other for soldiers. The FSI course covers such useful phrases as: This is the American Embassy = Ez az amerikai követség. Certainly useful information for any non-diplomat just arriving in Hungary. I’m sure the Embassy is on most people’s “must see” list. But it is also clear the authors intend for the diplomats to get out and socialize bit with phrases like: At what time does the movie begin? = Mikor kezdődik a mozi? The DLI course clearly has a different scope in mind. The first three units cover vocabulary such as: katona - soldier százados - captain (Army rank) tiszt - officer (commissioned) civil - civilian őrmester - sergeant őrvezető - private first class, Interestingly enough, in the first three units the words for: please, thank you and how are you? are not taught. I suppose that’s the military for you. I’m sure by lesson six I will surely learn the words for tank, grenade, bazooka and don’t ask, don’t tell. Hungarian is a very impressive sounding language. If you have never heard Hungarian my bet is you haven’t ever heard anything quite like it. My first impression was that Hungarian sounded like Swedish played through a tape player at double-speed backwards! There is a lot of “shussh-ing” and some peculiar consonant combinations such as “gy” which sounds something like the letter “y” with a “d” sandwiched in the middle. The thing that makes Hungarian so fun to pronounce is its 14, yes, that’s 14 vowels. Hungarian has its basic a,e,i,o,u vowels, but then if you put a grave accent on top, like á, é, etc.. it lengthens the vowels considerably. There are also two kinds of umlauts. The regular sort like one would see in German (ö,ü ) and the lengthened umlaut (ő, ű ) . This is like an umlaut on steroids! The ö and ü are pronounced like a “irr” sound but the ő and ű are prounounced like “EEEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWWWRRRRRRRRRRRRRR”. It makes words like: őrvezető (EEWWwrvessetteewwr)- private first class, repülőtér (REHPewleeewwwtehr) - airport gyönyörű város (djyIIRRRn-yirreew VAAHroosshh) - beautiful city Csak űlok és olvasok. (chok EWWlohk esh OHLvawshokk) - I’m just sitting here reading so much fun to say! Hungarian also utilizes a quality called vowel harmony in its word formation. Vowel harmony is defined by Wikipedia as : “Vowel harmony is a type of long-distance assimilatory phonological process involving vowels that occurs in some languages. In languages with vowel harmony, there are constraints on what vowels may be found near each other.” ....say what?? Hungarian is an agglutinative language. That means that when constructing sentences, many particles pertaining to prepositions and possession can be stuck onto the end of a word rather than using a different, separate word. It can give such words as megszentségteleníthetetlens geskedéseitekért which means “because of your continuous pretending to be indesecratable”. When constructing words such as megszentségteleníthetetlenségeskedéseitekért ( which thankfully doesn’t need to be used that often ) the vowels must agree or harmonize with each other. This quality is shared with the other Finno-Ugric as well as the Turkic languages. For example one could not say kavehasben ( in the coffee house) but would rather say kavehasban. One would not say kézba ( into the hand) but would rather say kézbe. This gives Hungarian a pleasant flow, an almost musical quality, that is unique ( along with Finnish and Estonian) to the languages of Europe. I must admit that while Hungarian is quite different than English, it doesn’t seem extremely difficult...yet... There is no gender, no declensions of numbers, a relatively straightforward pronunciation and what appears to be a logical (though complex) grammar. I’m sure as I delve deeper into the language, I might not be quite as confident! 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| David_hu Diglot Newbie Hungary Joined 5344 days ago 6 posts - 11 votes Speaks: Hungarian*, EnglishB2 Studies: German, Russian | Message 7 of 35 07 August 2010 at 12:10pm | IP Logged | |||||
Well, that might be a scary word, but you'll never have to use such long words. I mean, I'm a native, but it takes me some time to understand what that 'word' means, and when it comes to pronunciation... :D That is a word, that shows what suffixes can do in the hungarian language. You can attach more than one to a single word, but never that many :) So don't worry about that... 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| liddytime Pentaglot Senior Member United States mainlymagyar.wordpre Joined 6226 days ago 693 posts - 1328 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Galician Studies: Hungarian, Vietnamese, Modern Hebrew, Norwegian, Persian, Arabic (Written) | Message 8 of 35 14 August 2010 at 7:09pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I figure I am now about three weeks into my Hungarian studies. I have made it through the fourth unit of the FSI course and the fifth unit of the DLI course. DLI is still very basic.. “What is that?” “That is a house.” “Who is she?” “She is a soldier...” However, I am sticking with it because the grammar explanations are so good in the DLI text. Some of my recent favorite words from DLI are: hadnagy - second lieutenant or ensign, which sounds like “hodge-nodge”. I personally couldn’t imagine going up to a lieutenant and calling him a “hodge-nodge”. I also really like katonanő, which literally translates as “soldier-woman”. It just sounds tough! I also really like főz ( fewwwwz), which means he/she cooks. FSI has taken me shopping for suits, dishes, glasses and, of course, cigarettes. You are also taught how to say , “ It’s impossible to get the good ones in Pest so you have to go to Vienna to get the good stuff! I’ll grab you some next week when I go!” “Pesten nehéz kapni. Mi Bécsben szoktunk venni. Jövő héten megyek Bécsbe. Akkor hozok maguknak is. Jo?” Of course these units are more practical as they were designed for the diplomats who needed to figure out how to get their cigarettes in short order in their new country. The vocabulary is much more intensive as well. I figure, I’m probably up to about 400-500 Hungarian words at this point. I’m not sure how far the military terms will get me though... I am discovering that one of the more difficult things with Hungarian is the total lack of cognates with English. For example, take the word “airport”. In Spanish you would have an aeropuerto, in French you would have an aeroport , in Italian you would have an aeroporto , in German you would have a Flughafen (which you could probably figure out) , but in Hungarian you have repülőtér! Restaurant is pretty much some derivation of “restaurant” in most languages but in Hungary you would need to look for an étterem. In Hungarian, computer is számítógép, pharmacy is gyógyszertár, bathroom is fürdőszoba (although you could always use the international WC “ve-sze”), police is rendőrség ... you get the picture... So, there is no “faking it” in Hungarian as one could get away with in Spanish, “push-la el buttòn, amigo!” I have had somewhat of a breakthough. I have been listening to some news snippets over the internet in Hungarian over the last few weeks. In the beginning it just sounded like unintelligible, gobbledigook. I took a week off but listened to some stories today. I could actually pick out some words and tell what they were talking about!! I couldn’t understand more than a few words here and there, but that was enough to at least get the gist of the story. Best of all, it didn’t sound like gobbledigook anymore, it sounded like Hungarian! Edited by liddytime on 14 August 2010 at 7:12pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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