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Why is Hungarian considered difficult? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6395 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 25 of 30 08 January 2015 at 6:14pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Cool, I recognize quite bit there, but certainly not all. I'm guessing this part of learning tha language, which is a pretty large hurdle if you want to read academia or even popular science, is easier in Hungarian than in Turkish, which I would expect has fewer loans.
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| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6969 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 26 of 30 08 January 2015 at 7:06pm | IP Logged | |||||
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You could check out the Turkish counterparts of those example articles to see how many technical loanwords are recognizable to you.
As I've been studying Turkish, I've been a little surprised at how many loanwords from French turn up in basic vocabulary. See here for a list of examples. A lot of these French loanwords are spelled in Turkish such that they're pronounced quite similarly to their French sources. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| hrhenry Octoglot Senior Member United States languagehopper.blogs Joined 4943 days ago 1871 posts - 3642 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, ItalianC2, Norwegian, Catalan, Galician, Turkish, Portuguese Studies: Polish, Indonesian, Ojibwe | Message 27 of 30 08 January 2015 at 7:53pm | IP Logged | |||||
It also depends on what the word actually is, ie: noun, adjective, adverb, verb, etc. Take asansör (elevator), as an example. You'll only find the French loan word as a noun. You won't find a French loan for the verb "to elevate/raise" (kaldırmak or yükseltmek are just two examples) or as an adjective (also derived from the two Turkish verbs). Most of the French loanwords that I've seen in use in Turkish are nouns. There are also many, many Ottoman Turkish words still in use that can alternate to modern Turkish, depending on word function. R. == Edited by hrhenry on 08 January 2015 at 7:54pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6410 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 28 of 30 08 January 2015 at 10:51pm | IP Logged | |||||
Let me post my example from another thread, about learning medical vocabulary: Useimmiten eturistisiteen repeämä pyritään hoitamaan leikkaamalla, mutta ei aina.
Now, of course there *are* many loan words, especially from Swedish, but most of them have been assimilated long ago. Also, in many cases there are both loans and compounds, and then you may sound too much like a foreigner if you avoid the compounds. For example, despite my interest in medicine I somehow managed to say "operaatio" instead of "leikkaus" at my CEFR exam. And "operaatio" does exist, but it's much more common in the meaning of a military or mathematical/logical operation. I'm trying to take advantage of the loans in my learning of Swedish, obviously, but somehow I still know very few. Unfortunately it doesn't seem like there are any methods taking advantage of it, akin to "Spanish vocabulary: an etymological approach" or "You already know Italian". I just got a slang dictionary which often lists the origin of words. (I posted some examples here for a mini-challenge) As for Hungarian, I think I read somewhere that it actually has more loan words than Finnish, but there's so much variety with all the Slavic, Romance, Turkish, Germanic loans that only a polyglot with a specific combination of languages has any significant advantage. Maybe it was Erik Gunnemark or even Barry Farber who wrote about that? Edited by Serpent on 09 January 2015 at 4:02am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| beano Diglot Senior Member United KingdomRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4435 days ago 1049 posts - 2152 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Russian, Serbian, Hungarian | Message 29 of 30 12 January 2015 at 1:42pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I find it interesting that many Hungarian people themselves seem to revel in the fact that their language is regarded by many outsiders to be one of the most difficult. It's almost as if they get a mini ego-boost by being able to say they have an expert command of the "world's hardest language"
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| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6410 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 30 of 30 13 January 2015 at 12:31am | IP Logged | |||||
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That's not unique to Hungarians
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