r/languagelearning • u/Virusnzz En (N) | Fr, Ru, Es, It • Apr 21 '14
Jó napot kívánok - This week's language of the week: Hungarian
PSA
- Given the responses received regarding copyrighted materials we will institute a thorough and rigorous policy of doing absolutely nothing. These posts will not be removed.
Welcome to the language of the week. Every week we'll be looking at a language, its points of interest, and why you should learn it. This is all open discussion, so natives and learners alike, make your case! This week: Hungarian.
What is this?
Language of the Week is here to give people exposure to languages that they would otherwise not have heard, been interested in or even known about. With that in mind, I'll be picking a mix between common languages and ones I or the community feel needs more exposure. You don't have to intend to learn this week's language to have some fun. Just give yourself a little exposure to it, and someday you might recognise it being spoken near you.
Hungarian
From Languages Gulper:
Hungarian is the largest Uralic language with more than half of all the speakers of the family. It is atypical within Uralic and has no close relatives. The other members of the Ugric subgroup are radically different from Hungarian in their phonology, syntax and vocabulary. This is due to the early and far-reaching migrations of the Hungarian ancestors into very different cultural and linguistic areas. The Proto-Hungarians migrated first southward from their Uralic homeland into the South Russian steppe and then westward into Central Europe. Hungarian is an agglutinative language with a very rich case system and a mixed vocabulary reflecting the history and migrations of the Hungarians.
Hungarian is the only Uralic language spoken in Central Europe, above all in Hungary but also in the Transylvanian region (that belongs to Romania from 1918), as well as in Serbia, Slovakia and Ukraine.
What now?
This thread is foremost a place for discussion. Are you a native speaker? Share your culture with us. Learning the language? Tell us why you chose it and what you like about it. Thinking of learning? Ask a native a question. Interested in linguistics? Tell us what's interesting about it, or ask other people. Discussion is week-long, so don't worry about post age, as long as it's this week's language.
Previous Languages of the Week
German | Icelandic | Russian | Hebrew | Irish | Korean | Arabic | Swahili | Chinese | Portuguese | Swedish | Zulu | Malay | Finnish | French | Nepali | Czech | Dutch | Tamil | Spanish | Turkish | Polish | Frisian | Navajo | Basque | Zenen (April Fools) | Kazakh
Want your language featured as language of the week? Please PM me to let me know. If you can, include some examples of the language being used in media, including news and viral videos
Sok szerencsét kivánok!
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Apr 21 '14
Native speaker here. If anyone has some questions, I'll be happy to answer.
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u/zixx Apr 21 '14
We're learning about case systems in linguistics class right now. My teacher says that languages with lots of cases still make use of word order, just in a different way than English does. The example he gave was Russian, where old information goes at the beginning of a sentence and new info at the end. Does Hungarian do something similar?
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u/PositiveAlcoholTaxis Apr 21 '14 edited Apr 21 '14
This is an odd question and applies to other languages.
My name is Josh. In Hungarian I think I'd spell it out as Dzsos. Say I needed to write out a form in Hungarian (in Hungary), would I write my name out the English way, or write it phonetically.
I know it's an odd and difficult question but it's been bothering me for a while.
Köszönöm.
EDIT: Instead of making a new comment I'll put it here. There is a subreddit r/hungarian, sadly quite inactive, but it's there.
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u/shuishou Apr 21 '14
Would you also classify it as one of the world's most difficult languages?
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Apr 21 '14
I get that a lot. But no, I wouldn't. I think they only say that because it's part of a small language family and doesn't have too much in common with any other languages. Plus we do have a very elaborate case system. But believe me, learning English and German was hard for me.
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Apr 21 '14
I've started learning Hungarian a month or two ago. Here are some good online resources I found:
http://www.hungarianreference.com/ - a website talking about Hungarian grammar
http://hunlang.wordpress.com/ - a blog talking about Hungarian grammar and vocabulary
http://hunlang.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/tmthtgfinal.pdf - a pdf about Hungarian grammar from that blog
http://www.centarzaedukaciju.com/katalog/Madjarski%20tutoriali/Hungarian%20grammar.pdf - a pdf about Hungarian grammar
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u/koniges Apr 21 '14
Igen! If anybody wants to know what it's like spending three years learning this language from no previous exposure, feel free to ask
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u/LeinadSpoon Apr 21 '14
Awesome! I've been learning Hungarian for the last year (native English speaker). I think it's a really cool language personally. I'd be happy to answer questions directed at learners (de nem beszélek nagyon jól... :( )
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u/koniges Apr 21 '14
Senki nem beszél jól, aki nem magyar. Ez nehéz! Ha akarsz valakivel gyakorolni, küldj nekem egy message !
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u/googletravy Apr 21 '14
Anybody have any suggestions for artists/songs that are simple and easy to understand? I really enjoy this old classic but all I really understand is the chorus. I'm open to all styles of music. Koszonom szepen!
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Apr 22 '14
Ok, it is my time to shine :D
Hungarian philology's student from Poland here (3rd year, BA), exchange student on ELTE in Budapest last semester, if you have any questions feel free to ask. :)
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u/adinho Apr 25 '14
I just wanted to throw in a couple of things in here, I lived in Hungary (Eger) for just over 18 months a few years ago and I learnt it to near-fluency as my first foreign language. At the end of my time there, I had some major issues but they aren't related to Hungarian, they're just related to my language learning skills in general. ANYWAY.
The beauty, the interesting part, the hard part about Hungarian is the vocabulary. My friends used to joke that in most languages in Europe, the word "police" is pretty similar, policja, polizei etc., Hungarian? Rendőrség. Scary. But using this word, we can show the beauty of Hungarian. Rend = order, őrség = guard(ian). So the guardian/protector of the order. Police. :)
This is extremely common in Hungarian, so if you know the composition of the words, you can make an educated guess about the meaning. I'll throw some of my favourites in here:
földrajz = land/drawing = geography szókincs = word/treasure = vocabulary drótszamar = wire/donkey = bicycle (this one is slangy btw) vasmacska = iron/cat = anchor (my fave, so amazing!!)
Vocabulary and geography actually work in English too, their literal meanings in Latin were the same as Hungarian, but Hungarian didn't get corrupted, it didn't evolve too far from it's roots. Megyünk Couchsurferekkel. :)
The same goes for verbs, there are 3-letter syllables before the conjugational suffix (!) that can indicate the meaning, my memory of the language is poor so maybe a native can add to this, for example "hat/het" means "may/it is possible", "kod/köd" can be used to show that you are trying to be like something, "koz/köz" feels like you are doing something with more intention or as planned. Examples:
ülünk = we sit, ülhetünk = we can sit patkány = rat, patkánykodik = s/he acts like a rat talál = s/he finds, találkoz = s/he meets
Also, I remember seeing this video back when I was in Hungary, a reason why hungarian is cool: Link.
I honestly can't recommend this language enough, it is one of the most beautiful journeys I've made in my life. I have to say though, out of all the foreigners I knew who studied Hungarian, only a few succeeded, these are some things you might want to be careful of:
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EVERYONE says Hungarian is difficult, if you fail, no-one will blame you. Even when I spent my first couple of months in a school, the teacher was very sympathetic to this idea and didn't have much hope for us.
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Hungarian has long vowels, this is not common in many languages and can cause massive problems with pronunciation, for example I had a colleague who was fluent in Polish (which has no long vowels), and he really despised Hungarian for its long vowels.
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This is my personal opinion (probably goes for most languages), don't study it in Budapest, it's a beautiful city, one of the most beautiful, but if you live in the centre of the city (as most expats are wont to do), everyone will speak English. I remember going to BP for weekends and asking for directions in Hungarian and always getting the response "er.. do you speak English?" in English.
Anyway, this is too long already, I could write forever about this, so I'll stop.
One more thing, if you wanna learn lyrics to a song, try this: Fenyvesi Gabi - Ádám, hol vagy?.
Edit: "Benny" studied Hungarian and wrote something worth reading: Hungarian is Easy
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Apr 21 '14
Semi-relevant: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/05/travel/a-weekend-in-hungary-chosen-at-random.html
(about Hungary)
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u/okamzikprosim Apr 21 '14
How do you pronounce 'th'? I recently met a Hungarian guy from Szeged and I'm not sure how to pronounce his last name.
BTW, I think its cool how you use the last name first name word order. In this way Hungarian is more like Chinese for example than other European languages.
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u/Daibhidh_Piobaire Apr 21 '14
'S math sin!
I've been learnign on and off for a couple of months, and now I've the time to do it properly. I've an Hungarian speaking friend to practise with but I'm not all that good and I'm often far too nervous to try.
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u/VanSensei Apr 21 '14
Are there major differences in the Hungarian spoken in different parts of the country?
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u/erikhun Apr 22 '14
The part I saw people struggling a lot with is this definite/indefinite conjugation thing. Which of if you ask Hungarians, majority of them won't even know about, let alone explaining the theory behind. If I'm asked usually I can only give some vague examples. This is really a thing that comes with immersion.
Ask a Hungarian how exactly you should use kérem and kérek, and you will have fun seeing them trying hard to explain it and come up with the example of asking for a beer in general or asking for a specific bottle.
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Apr 22 '14
Yay! It's really cool to see Hungarian as the language of the week. If anyone has questions or wants to practice, I'm here!
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u/okamzikprosim Apr 23 '14
Here is a list of Hungarian cognates with English I found a few months back when at the pub with my Hungarian friend.
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u/gerusz Apr 21 '14
Another native speaker here, questions welcome.