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Hungarian at a survival level | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 4037 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes  Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 1 of 7 26 August 2014 at 10:18pm | IP Logged | ||
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Hi guys.
Who reads me knows that I want to learn a lot of languages :P I didn't change already my mind about Polish and I'm not giving up with Dutch and French (right now that my study became productive!), and I will still find the time the improve my English. But this is a different story. I'm looking for a place to have a nice spring travel, and I have some desire to go in east Europe. A lot of places are beautiful over there, but I was thinking about a place reasonable small because the idea is to have a nice tour. Hungary came to my mind. Big more or less like North Italy, plus the language doesn't impact my Polish :D, and reasonably not in the north like Estonia and Latvia are. The other candidate, following the pattern, would be Albania. The difficulty of Hungarian is legendary, although someone points out that it is actually easy (well, I guess that being reasonably phonetic and with a regular stress has some advantage). Another point that is well known, (almost) nobody speaks English in Hungary. So that would imply that if I really want to go there I need to learn enough Hungarian to survive. Do you think guys that it is something doable in a time box of three months? Does anyone of you have experience with the assimil french course for Hungarian? After the bad experience I had with Icelandic, I don't want to try the impossible, so that it's why I ask you some insights. Thank you in advance! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5120 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 2 of 7 26 August 2014 at 10:55pm | IP Logged | ||
When I went to Budapest in 2007, I heard English all over the place, so I think as long as you're in tourist areas, you'll get by fine with English. That said, there's nothing wrong with learning a few courtesy phrases as well, and can easily be done with any phrasebook. The locals will appreciate it. R. == 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Radioclare Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom timeofftakeoff.com Joined 4573 days ago 689 posts - 1119 votes Speaks: English*, German, Esperanto Studies: Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian | Message 3 of 7 26 August 2014 at 11:23pm | IP Logged | ||
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I have never tried to learn Hungarian properly but I have found when travelling in
Hungary that people are really appreciative even if you just try out a few phrases. As hrhrenry says, there is lots of English in Budapest so you will definitely survive without Hungarian :) When I have been to other towns in Hungary I have found that fewer people speak English but that a fair number of people speak German instead. So for example I have been able to check into hotels, get served in restaurants, deal with ticket inspectors on trains etc in German when English wouldn't have worked. I would definitely learn the words for male and female in Hungarian. The first time I went to Hungary I failed to do this and accidentally walked into a male shower block. Very awkward! 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| tristano Tetraglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 4037 days ago 905 posts - 1262 votes Speaks: Italian*, Spanish, French, English Studies: Dutch | Message 4 of 7 27 August 2014 at 12:18am | IP Logged | ||
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heh, the point is that my holidays start in the exact moment i'm out of the tourists areas, thing completely shared by
my mates ;) we don't want to limit our possibilities to enjoy the best hidden parts, and to have that we need to communicate with the people we found on our way. In Iceland was possible because virtually everyone in Iceland speaks a decent-enough-to-communicate level of English. In Greece 5 years ago we had problems because many people didn't speak a word of English. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7146 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 5 of 7 27 August 2014 at 1:05am | IP Logged | ||
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If you have only 3 months to learn Hungarian, and intend also to maintain some semblance of a life in addition to studying a couple of other languages, I would focus on picking up a handful of phrases and recognize signs that are useful for a visitor (in all my years of visiting Hungary, signs are very rarely in any language other than Hungarian outside the tourist traps and some businesses in downtown Budapest - signs even at the bus and train stations are in Hungarian only).
In addition to shelling out a few bucks/euros for phrasebook and CD from Berlitz, check out the free set of videos "Hungarian in Hungary". Of course, you and your friends could try to liven things up a bit by travelling through Hungary via Couchsurfing. You don't need to look for accommodation as most cities have decent hotels, bed-and-breakfasts or hostels (and to be honest, Couchsurfers are more likely to host one or two people at a time rather than three or more people), but it could certainly make your trip more memorable by getting in touch with local Couchsurfers who're roughly your age to show you around or meet for drinks. Many of Hungarian couchsurfers speak at least some English and/or at least one of the FIGS (French, Italian, German, Spanish) so that would ease some of your burden on learning that much Hungarian to survive. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| YnEoS Senior Member United States Joined 4244 days ago 472 posts - 893 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish | Message 6 of 7 27 August 2014 at 1:07am | IP Logged | ||
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Hungarian has given me the biggest headache of any of the languages I've studied. I don't think its necessarily or inherently a slow language for indo-european natives, but it definitely required a lot more brain re-wiring than I was used to, and I quickly found my normal learning methods were inadequate for learning Hungarian at a decently quick pace.
The Assimil Hungarian course is a well written, funny course with lots of great cultural information on Hungary. But a friendly introduction it is not, and the difficulty level sharply shoots up around lesson 20ish. With Hungarian I would whole heatedly recommend the FSI course which introduces grammar points at a digestible pace and supplies the necessary practice drill to really learn them. I would say if you really threw yourself into the grammar and got a lot of conversation practice to help cement the language into your head you could probably achieve some solid results in 3 months. But don't expect it to be simple and definitely don't expect things to stick as easily as they do with Indo-european languages. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 5120 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 7 of 7 27 August 2014 at 1:46am | IP Logged | ||
Back when I went, I had an app on my Blackberry (don't remember the name of the app, but it was probably from Beiks or something like it), and I also bought a phrasebook at the airport in Madrid - where I was staying at the time. That was enough for me and 10 days in Budapest/surrounds. I'd only had about a month's notice before going, so there wasn't any language preparation. But, as Radiolare noted, folks were quite appreciative of anything I'd tried to say in Hungarian. Also as Radioclare noted (and I'd completely forgotten about), German was a very common second language there. I had no use for my Spanish or Italian. R. == 1 person has voted this message useful |
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