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How difficult is Hungarian? | ||
Tags: Hungarian | Difficulty | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| maxval Pentaglot Senior Member Bulgaria maxval.co.nr Joined 5074 days ago 852 posts - 1577 votes  Speaks: Hungarian*, Bulgarian, English, Spanish, Russian Studies: Latin, Modern Hebrew | Message 17 of 32 28 December 2011 at 2:29pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Thanks... :-) In reality, this is an interesting story about ethnic minorities in Hungary. Before the WWI Hungary was only 45 % ethnically Hungarian, 55 % were non-Hungarians. There was a big assimilation policy from 1848, and specially from 1867 to 1914. But in reality assimilation was very successful only in the German and in the Jewish minority. Most Hungarian Germans became Hungarian speakers or bilingual. And 90 % of Hungarian Jews became Hungarian speakers, only 10 % of the Jews kept their Yiddish (mostly in the North-East part of Hungary). Other minorities (the biggest was the Romanian) refused to assimilate. After the WWI Hungary lost 70 % of its territory, and the country became 90 % ethnically Hungarian. Minorities lost most of their institutions. And the last and decisive attack against minorities came in the years of Communism, in 1961 all ethnic minority schools were closed down, all were transformed into bilingual schools, were de facto only native language, literature and history were in the respective minority language, everything else was in Hungarian. In 1985 ethnic minority schools were reopened again, but the lost 25 years cannot be overcame. The typical situation now in families of non-Hungarian ethnic background is the following: the child goes to the ethnic minority school, but at home he/she doesnt speak this language, as their parents dont know it, so it learns the minority language as a foreign language. Even his/her grandparents are Hungarian native speakers, yet they know the minority language at some level. The last generation that are not Hungarian native speakers are the generation of the great-grandparents, but they are dead or very old. Yes, there are now people who have a strong non-Hungarian self-identity, and many of this people try to learn the language of their ancestors, but even this people are Hungarian native speakers. Even people of the same ethnic minority usually speak between themselves in Hungarian, because "it is easier". 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5382 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 18 of 32 28 December 2011 at 3:32pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Could it be because of the written/spoken dichotomy of Finnish? I have no idea if Estonian is the same, but I read spoken Finnish was closer to Estonian, so I assumed it wasn't. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7157 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 19 of 32 28 December 2011 at 4:47pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
That's possible but normal practice when teaching Finnish to foreigners is to use standard language. Pretty much all of the dictionaries and reference manuals for grammar designed are also meant for learning standard Finnish. It'd be something though if a British diplomat were to address someone in the Finnish foreign service using puhekieli with the odd phrase from Stadin slangi for good measure ;-) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6598 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 20 of 32 28 December 2011 at 6:47pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
/biased 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7157 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 21 of 32 28 December 2011 at 7:15pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
That's true. The more respected courses in Finnish for foreigners focus on the standard language with colloquial language being clearly secondary. FSI Conversational Finnish is a good example of this with students expected to learn and do exercises in the standard language. However in acknowledgement of the prominence of colloquial Finnish the book also shows some differences between standard and colloquial grammar and all dialogues are recorded in a colloquial version so that students can gain some passive (but not necessarily active) competency in colloquial language. The one course for foreigners that focuses on colloquial Finnish is pretty much the effort of a bookish professor trying to teach informal or trendy language with predictably mixed results. I've seen another course that also tries to teach colloquial Finnish but tellingly it's all in Finnish. The implication is that students must already have a good grasp of standard Finnish before getting into colloquial language. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Arekkusu Hexaglot Senior Member Canada bit.ly/qc_10_lec Joined 5382 days ago 3971 posts - 7747 votes Speaks: English, French*, GermanC1, Spanish, Japanese, Esperanto Studies: Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Estonian | Message 22 of 32 28 December 2011 at 9:34pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I meant that spoken Finnish would have been included as part of the language, thus making this 2-tier system more complex than a language that didn't have this dichotomy. I have no idea if the classification only pertained to the written language -- if so, I can't explain why Finnish would have been considered more complex.
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| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7157 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 23 of 32 28 December 2011 at 10:09pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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That'd be interesting if the classes for British diplomats taught both forms at the same time although I find it unlikely. As I noted earlier, the emphasis when teaching Finnish to foreigners rests on standard language. Teaching colloquial Finnish is secondary and it's usually made clear that foreigners are not expected to delve into it until they've got their heads around the standard language. It's also no accident that most courses for beginners focus on standard language. Even Selkouutiset as conceived originally for new immigrants to Finland is done in simplified standard Finnish.
Besides there's a fuzzy line between the now semi-generalized colloquial speech (which is actually based heavily on dialects spoken around Helsinki) and dialects that are marked regionally (e.g. Savonian, Far Northern). Exposing beginning foreign students to this stuff would only confuse them further and probably ensure that they'd sound really strange to native Finns because they wouldn't know any better. If you're going to teach colloquial Finnish, why not also toss in a few items that are characteristic of the teacher's native dialect? :-P The bottom line is that the British Foreign Service's ranking of Finnish relative to Estonian makes little sense (without more information, of course) given FSI's ranking and the experience of a few of us on this board. 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Zgarbas Triglot Newbie Romania goblinjapanese.wordp Joined 4712 days ago 12 posts - 15 votes Speaks: Romanian*, EnglishC2, Japanese Studies: Spanish, Mandarin | Message 24 of 32 03 January 2012 at 9:20am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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It's difficult because it makes no friggin sense.
Ok. So I have a sort of knack for languages. Not as in actually learning them, but I'm generally good at reproducing, getting the basics and stuff. Not useful in the long run but useful when just casually interacting with a language. I've been living in a Hungarian-filled area for nigh 3 year now and had my first interaction with it about 7 years ago. I get to hear it spoken a lot and get to interact with written signs and what not. I spent about 3 weeks in Hungary, albeit mostly surrounded by tourists. I can't even pronounce the most basic sounds. In fact, despite learning my first words over 7 years ago, I still cannot pronounce them. Whenever someone pronounces it back to show how I don't know how to pronounce it, I am unable to even feel the difference, not to mention re-enact it. After meeting hundreds of people with Hungarian names I still get confused by some that I had not interacted with. Not that I've made put much effort into learning it, but seriously. Impossible language. Edited by Zgarbas on 03 January 2012 at 9:23am 1 person has voted this message useful |
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