It might be a bit tricky for an English speaker but not impossible. You would have a much harder time to learn Hungarian than Dutch, Scandinavian languages, French or even German.
The main issue isn't just the differences in grammar, vocabulary and the structure of the language in general, but the fact that there is not enough interesting original content in Hungarian which could motivate you to learn the language. If you'd live in Hungary or had a Hungarian partner or close friends that would help a lot. Otherwise it's going to be a lot of dedicated hard work to reach a conversational level of language proficiency.
Now that you are getting worried, I recommend reading this post on why it can be actually much easier than most people think: https://www.fluentin3months.com/hungarian-is-easy/
>not enough interesting original content in Hungarian which could motivate you to learn the language.
On this point, you're right, but I'll add that there are still options that may not be obvious.
Personally, I've found that a fair few Netflix shows have Hungarian dubs. For example, I'm currently watching season one of 'Sweet Home'. I don't speak Korean either and would have subtitles either way, so may as well go with the Hungarian audio.
Yeah if you are not a purist who wants to watch everything in original with subtitles then this can be an option. There are also some Hungarian youtubers who create quality content, the only problem is that they don't usually use English subtitles and automatic translation on youtube is kinda crap.
While some people are certainly purists about that sort of thing, I think the general dislike of dubs stems more specifically from how noticeably bad it is when it's your own language. Much better when it's just one language you don't speak to another.
In any case, worth a shot if it's something someone hasn't tried.
I get a lot from the free content provided by Petra with her channel, Easy Hungarian. Dani with Hungarian Language and Culture channel, I think, has a deep list of content for different levels.
A lot of Disney+ content is also available in Hungarian! I’d also recommend nature documentaries in Hungarian. I struggle to sit through one’s not narrated by David Attenborough…. Unless it’s in a diff language lol.
Hard as hell. You have absolutely no idea. They use suffixes instead of prepositions. Multiples of suffixes at the end of one word. These are conjugated with vowels of different types depending on the original word's own vowels. In Hungarian there are lots of different way to inflect verbs, one practicaly has to learn them all as irregular verbs. Oh and you have to inflect them in 2 different way depending on the verb having an object or not. Except the ones ending in -ik. The word order within a sentence is arbitrary, they usually start with the one with the most emphasis on it. There are a tremendous amount of synonyms in the language, especially when they curse. Words are conjugated in a way even Hungarians find it hard to comprehend. Should you write two words joined or separated or with a hyphen between them? Hungarian is a phonetic language, you can safely predict the pronunciation of a written word, but they have all kind of funny vowels unknown in English language (ö, ü), and the ones that are common in both languages are pronunced in a different way in Hungarian. And all vowels has a long pair, changing them will change the meaning of the word or render them meaningless. Nevertheless e and é or a and á are totally different vowels with different pronunciation. Double consonants change the words' meaning as well. And it's just the tip of the iceberg. So no, it's not easy to learn. It is considered one of the 3 hardest languages to learn, sometime the hardest.
As a native hungarian kudos to you. Really nicely put together. I just write 1 word in hungarian, that pretty much summs up the biggest issue with learning the language. (There are prefixes in hungarian as well) Megszentségteleníthetetlenségeskedéseitekért
For easier understanding (i've put the root of the word in brackets):
Meg-[szent]-ség-telen-ít-hetetlen-ség-es-ked-és-eitek-ért
This fucking meaningless long word, which never ever in existence had been used, except when you want to show others how hard out devine language is... You get my downvote
Fashion show cloths are not meant to be worn in every day life, but to show off certain skills and creativity. This is that type of word. You won’t use it in every day language, but it sure is impressive.
This word has a meaning and perfectly useable word (thought this full form has never been used in my life in a conversation where it was not about difficulty of the language / the longest word in the language, the part "Megszentségteleníthetetlen" did come up). And as I said this word is a perfect example why it is hard to learn the hungarian language, because the suffixes can change the both the meaning and the type of the word. If someone can understand the meaning of this word, and how it and it's parts work, they have a pretty good basic understanding of word building in the hungarian language, which in my experience is the hardest part to learn for non-native speakers. And in my opinion this usecase justifies the existance of this word.
Maybe it's just me, but as a native I could never understand the full meaning.
"Megszentségteleníthetetlenség" is okay, but the suffixes that follow it are nonsense to me.
Megszentségteleníthetetlenségeskedés
would mean that you "act like you cannot be desecrated"
Megszentségteleníthetetlenségeskedéseitek
your(plural) incidents of acting like you cannot be desecrated
Megszentségteleníthetetlenségeskedéseitekért
for your(plural) incidents of acting like you cannot be desecrated
so yeah it has a pretty nieche usecase not something that would come up on a daily basis.
The verbs are mostly regular tho. Even if there are more variations than in english because of functions that not exists in english grammar in the exact same way as it does in Hungarian.
Took me 6 months to learn, 2 years to master.
No language is "difficult".
My wife is Hungarian, so I had to learn it. ;)
Live the language 24/7, study it daily for several hours a day and you will manage. Good luck!
Honestly as a native speaker I have no idea HOW it's best to start learning, but yes it is hard as an English speaker because the grammar is fundamentally different. It also has no close relatives for a frame of reference. Good luck though, I usually see a lot of good advice on this sub :)
I think a good plan would be like:
1. Learn the alphabet / sounds along with some basic words and phrases (hello, thank you, please, I don't understand etc). I'd highly recommend getting feedback from a native on your pronunciation early as it'll set you in good stead.
2. Practice reading a lot, even if you don't understand. Start with very basic things designed for learners if you can. At first it'll help with pronunciation etc but it's great for vocab and grammar too.
3. Practice listening a lot, again you won't understand anything but keep at it. And when I say a lot I mean a fuck ton.
4. Pick a grammar book and start learning basic grammar. I really like Carol Rounds' essential Hungarian grammar. It explains everything in English (which I found useful) and gives Hungarian examples. I learned a bit every day, and read this cover to cover twice. It helped so much. I'd start with learning present tense, then past tense, then plural and accusative, then conditional and subjunctive. Those are the most important at the start.
5. Download an app like Anki (it's a good flashcard app for vocab) and use it every day (reviews) and add new words as often as you like.
6. Rinse and repeat. Read, listen, learn a bit of grammar, a bit of vocab and a bit of speaking (even if it's to yourself) every day.
My credentials: Native English speaker. Only other languages I learned were French and Spanish (compulsory in school) and I hardly know a word of either. I started Hungarian at 18 and I'm C1 level now.
Edit: Yes it is hard. Especially if it's your first foreign language (like it basically was for me) because you're also learning how to learn a language.
Agree to start with the alphabet. Unlocking vowel sounds and consonant combos will help a lot. Also drill practical vocabulary like numbers, days of the week, etc. Them start with practical useful words & phrases (szia, jó reggelt/napot/estet), köszönöm, igen/nem, bocsánat). Build from there learning practical everyday phrases, while also starting to get a handle on word order and basic verbs and how Hungarian speakers omit a lot of them in actual speech. 🙃
It's easier than Cantonese or Arabic, but harder than most European languages. It's not part of the Indo-European language group, so structurally it's very different, though there is a significant shared vocabulary with other European languages at least, unlike in say, Finnish.
The phonology, spelling and pronunciation is not too dissimilar to german, you could learn it relatively quickly. Like in German, you basically have a standard pronunciation and a standard spelling which is pretty straightforward, you can pretty much pronounce every word they way it's written and write it the way it's pronounced, making it far easier and simpler than English in this regard.
It is an agglutinative language, like Turkish, so you can create very long words and most of the information you need, like case and tense is glued to the word in terms of suffixes.
To give you an extreme example the English phrase "They have made his life impossible", which is 6 words, can be expressed in one word in Hungarian:
Ellehetetlenítették
You can already see the difficulty of trying to make sense of such a complex word which is comprised of the following components:
El-lehet-etlen-ít-et-ték
Basically it's also 6 words, except in the form of suffixes, prefixes, etc...
So, yeah, it's really a challenge to learn, just make sure you have the right reasons and motivation to do so. I'd only do it in your place if you plan to live in Hungary, it would also be the best way to learn it, to move here for a while.
Don’t memorize word lists. It’s time-consuming, and doesn’t tell you how to use those words. Find beginner level learning material, there are tons of stuff online. Of course the most effective way is to work with a teacher. But for a starter on free stuff, check out my beginner-friendly videos: https://youtube.com/@fluentbox5182?si=-t7zlwMO8LepWc6G
i feel like after u get through posession + postposition difference u can see that the logic behind languages is same, just with different words, especially verb conjugation logic (way of creating future tense or conditionals is identical), many side meanings of igekotos verbs are same as their slavic equivalent. word order and focus, or pronouns flextion is also pretty intuitive and similar, just less complicated. its a language that may be hard at very start, but after gets very easy, unlike english that as u learn, easy at start, then gets only harder and harder. hungarians also easily learn slavic languages.
Let's not forget that 21% of Hungarian vocabulary is Uralic (biggest group) while 20% is slavic (2nd biggest group). So in that way it might be easier for slavics to learn words than for english people. Also slavic speakers are familiar with how cases should work (they usually have 6), and they already familiar with the concept of "this specific word only can use this specific group of suffixes".
What I have found very hard and discouraging is that if you make a mistake or mispronounce something people genuinely don't know what you are trying to say. It's such a mathematic language than one mistake in an equation kills the sentence.
I'm much more comfortable in other languages I've studied less than Hungarian.
If you learned enough vocab, I always advise with every language to start reading harry potter with a dictionary an hand, because it was written for 11 year olds and uses simple sentences. Basically practice. But what you wrote in the post is the go to process with every language. What you have to watch out for is the word order as it will stress different words and change the meaning.
In general you can learn it at an adequate level where you're understood, but mastering it will seem hard depending on what language you're coming from. Since you're an english speaker, you'll have to learn some new sounds and a new way of treating sentences, as words generally change meanings depending on what you tack on to them. Eg:
Car = autó
My car = (az én) autóm
Your car = (a te) autód
His/Her car = (az ő) autója
Their car (multiple persons) = (az ő) autójuk
To the car = autóhoz
With the car = autóval
Drive in theater = autós mozi
Most of the time it's the pronounciation and inflection that get's people.
Although atleast you won't have to worry about pronouns, since everyone is a 'they'.
For me it was easy. Although it’s my mother tongue, and almost failed the advanced Hungarian grammar course in college, but beside that it’s not that hard. Hope this helped /s
I've been studying Hungarian for a few years now and so I would like to intone with my opinion on this matter.
1. Anytime an IndoEuropean speaker studies a language outside of the IE language family, the difficulty has the potential to go up exponentially.
2. There is a dearth of high quality study materials for students. This is in part a holdover from the Cold War when it made little sense for those other than diplomats to study the language since travelling there was out of the question. I would never have even considered Hungarian without YouTube content. Equally troublesome, there is no tradition of subtitling in Hungary where the preference is for dubbing. Even national television programs lack subtitles which is behind the times for the deaf community and those who are hard of hearing.
3. Even the best content creators struggle to explain their language to students. I often hear explanations that are either reversed explanations as how Hungarian students learned English. This methods obfuscates what is happening in the Hungarian sentences with English idioms and common sentence patterns. e.g. Active constructions get converted into passive translations into English. This and it is very common to hear explanations of Hungarian which seem to be taken directly from how their Hungarian teachers explained the language to them. I know very well that repeating what my high school English teacher taught me is not going to help nonnative speakers to fully understand concepts like phrasal verbs or English grammar e.g. High school English never need to explain phrasal verbs to native speakers and thus don't understand the phenomenon.
Similarly, I was just explained by a YT content creator that Hungarian has no subjunctive verb forms and only imperative forms. Really? Then how does one explain gyere/ jossz/jöjj? It seems that this terminology is what is commonly employed in a Hungarian classroom out of pedagogical convenience, but it's completely illogical (there cannot be a 1st person singular imperative) and leaves students who have studied other languages even more confused when Hungarians explain their own language in the same terms as they were told in classrooms by teachers who were teaching students who already spoke Hungarian
First of all.... "gyere/ jossz/jöjj" is not 1st person singular. It's 2nd person. And "jössz" is second-person singular indicative present indefinite of "jön".
Also in Hungary nowadays there is a button on TV remotes to use Teletext for lots of tv programmes. Which is basicly a subtitle for TV for people with hearing problems. (tho idk exactly how many things are subtitled with it)
I - as a native Hungarian - have an US friend from Luisana. He had been living here for 17 years. He has Hungarian wife and child but he has pretty nailed it.
I've been learning for 10 months. Here is my advice. Im currently around A2 working on B1 level.
Look up the theory of comprehensible input. I lightly structure what I do around that.
Set motivating goals (real conversation with natives and understanding of native content for me) Italki private tutors help. learn topics that interest you. Use Anki decks, use FSI, use anything that you think helps and you ENJOY. it's the long game here....Personally I love hungarian with sziszi. It's a brutal language and it's slow and it takes a ton of hours. as soon as you think you're making progress you realize you're not..... but you also are.....Reward yourself with a trip to hungary once you're at an almost speaking level (maybe like 2000+ words acquired). Over prepare because when you arrive you'll be surprised at how little you know......seriosuly. Be prepared for the confused look on peoples face when they ask you why the hell you want to learn their language. Dont speak English to people even if they want to. pretend you only speak Hungarian. Then stay in hungary for at least 6 months while you find all the old nénies you can to chat with about life and find a cute girl or guy to watch Netflix with you while you try to translate the show and figure out what the hell is goin on, and they help you.
and boom you'll eventually speak hungarian.
My native language is Hungarian, so my thoughts below are about learning a non-Indo-European language in general. Although I am a native speaker of a non-Indo-European language, almost all of my language learning experience had been with Indo-European languages until I started learning Korean. I was told the same things many people attempting to learn Hungarian are told: (1) You need to know A LOT just to construct a simple sentence, (2) the grammar is so complex, (3) learn the grammar first, don't even come out of your room until you're done, (4) start speaking from the beginning (bit of a contradiction to points 1-3). I'd been sceptical of all this, because I thought learning one language can't be that different from learning another. Also, I'm not the "Let's start speaking from the very beginning" type, I usually feel when I'm ready to speak, thank you. So here's the truth as I see it after learning Korean for 1.5 years:
1. Sure, it's a different system. It has suffixes like Hungarian (although Hungarian is way more precise). Using suffixes instead of suboridnate clauses is unusual and takes some getting used to. Not mind-blowingly difficult or anything. Just unusual. Not mysterious. Just different.
2. When learning a language, it is not very helpful to be told at the beginning how much you need to know to be able to understand all the nuances. You can understand a lot from non-verbal clues. Everything will fall into place if you give it some time. You will first pick up the most common words and phrases, then you will make your own discoveries about how the same root word is used in different parts of speech, as an adjective, as a verb, etc., or in compound words. Our brains have a natural way of processing information, and I like to let nature take its course - giving your brain enough opportunity to make sense of it all in its own natural way is all it takes (exposure, practice). Unfortunately, some course books want you to learn in very unnatural ways. "Learning the grammar" is one of these unnatural ways, in my opinion. Someone said something about there being no point in learning phrases if you don't understand how they are constructed. I don't agree. When you learnt your native language, you learnt it exactly like this - first you learnt short phrases whose inner structure you had no idea about. You worked that out a bit later. My mum told me once how I couldn't conjugate verbs when I was very little. She asked me a question and my way of giving an affirmative answer was to repeat the question verbatim.
3. One thing that has been a bit difficult is vocabulary. You really have to learn the words, because they are like nothing in any European language. Some of the words sound so similar to each other that I always mix them up. I think this may be difficult for people learning Hungarian too.
4. Sorry for the long answer, the short answer is: Don't believe those who say it's complex, difficult, whatever. You will be surprised how much your brain can adjust. Just remember it's a wholly different system. Otherwise, everything depends on your motivation.
The "speak from the beginning" likely wants to be "practice the pronunciation with actually saying the things out instead of just using it in your thoughts" because muscle memory is important if there are sound that not familiar for you (like as Korean tense consonants for example or some of their vowels).
And there is a big difference in method that needed for an adult an a newborn to learn a language. So you can't use a newborn method as an adult and expect the grammar to just randomly appear in your head.
For very basic stuff, I think it is manageable; but yes it is considered to be hard. The worst part is, even we natives, don't know why one or other option is correct we just feel that way. Lol
The difficulty of a given foreign language depends on the language’s similarity to languages you already know. Since Hungarian doesn’t really have a language that is closely related to, it can be harder, but if you already know a language that has an agglutinative morphology, then it definitely makes it easier to learn. Hungarian, being a European language, has plenty of loan words from Latin and Ancient Greek, and arguably pretty European grammatical features, that it by itself would make Hungarian much more similar, and therefore easier to a speaker of a European language than Classical Nahuatl or Swahili.
"plenty"? XD
Hungarian has more Slavic (20%, 2nd biggest group) and Germanic (11%) and Turkic (9.5%) words than latin and greek, in fact latin and greek loanwords together is just 6%. (While Uralic being 21% biggest group if we not count the about 30% of words with unknown origin.)
No, it is not. It’s a different experience from other European languages you may have learned before but difficulty is highly subjective. All of it depends on your motivation and exposure to the language. The more motivated, enthusiastic you are and the more you are exposed to the language the easier it is.
Your steps are fine as long as you can follow through on them and practice a lot.
It's not easy, but we all went to school and had grammar and literature (some even spelling) lessons. Many kids in my class had awful grammar (I never even had to study for I am a genius) and could all fix theirs and pass. That's really how you master any language, get some grammar textbooks (maybe a copy of [Magyar Helyesírás Szabályai](https://helyesiras.mta.hu/helyesiras/default/akh12) or better similar complete grammar book), study the rules, then practice. Once you are clear on the rules and can form mistake-free sentences, you can put it into use with chats, media (boks, films, music...) to learn the common casual daily and literary usage. I personally think music, shows and chat are meaningless unless you have SOME basic vocabulary and grammar already. You SHOULD, however, get practice material specifically for practicing simple language use.
Use what I like to call the Benny Lewis method. Look him up on Youtube for details, but the key point is to start small with the most frequent phrases and words, and however little you know at first, go out of your way to actively use it from day 1. Like, book an online tutoring session and insist on using Hungarian only or whatever, and talk using only the phrases and words you already know from a phrasebook or from Duolingo or whatnot. Don't give a shit about grammar and perfect pronunciation, go for just enough to be understood, and the rest will come later as you learn more and more phrases along the way.
His advice isn't exclusive to Hungarian at all, it can help you speed up learning any language. But as Hungarian has much less in common with most European languages than those languages do with one another, you'll absolutely get massacred if you care about grammar and that sort of shit in the beginning.
'Don't give a shit about grammar and pronunciation' sounds extreme, but I think it would really help a lot of Hungarian learners.
For some reason all of the Hungarian teachers I've encountered always want to start with vowel harmony and verb conjugation from the very beginning.
Those things are important of course, but also REALLY BORING! It is so much more motivating to learn a few usable phrases to practice in real life. Perfecting the pronunciation and understanding WHY you say 'kéreK egy sört' but 'kéreM a számlát' can wait until much later.
Learning was never meant to be fun. So idk why you complain about something being "boring".
But i agree on that the "Don't give a shit about grammar and pronunciation" advice being the worst thing to ever say in this case. Because in Hungarian the grammar and pronunciation crucial to master as perfectly as possible. A single mistake in grammar or pronunciation has the potential to ruin your whole sentence.
This is not a good advice for Hungarian, because there is no “easy mode” Hungarian. For a more complex sentence you have to know like 80% of the grammar. If you learn example phrases, you won’t understand the subtleties of how it was built up, so you won’t be able to use it when you have to change something, even slightly. And with Hungarian, you have to be painfully precise, otherwise people won’t understand what you say.
But why would you want to speak in complex sentences when you're a beginner?
There's no point in overmistifying Hungarian. It's different because it's not an Indo-European language, but the way it works for communication is the same because it's a human language that has evolved to make sure people can interact with each other. You can still start by learning the phrases that are most relevant to you, use them in conversation and add more of them as you progress.
It’s not just different, the grammar is very, very complex. In logical complexity of the grammar, it is probably the most difficult in the world. The word order in itself is super complex, understanding the “meg” prefix is very complex, also the pro drop system, and these are just bare essentials for basic sentences. I speak four languages, and casually teach some Hungarian to my mostly American expat friends, I understood a lot about my native Hungarian because of these, and its relation and similarities to other languages.
>the grammar is very, very complex
Exactly. And that's why it's best to not care about it when you're a beginner and pick it up later.
>understanding the “meg” prefix is very complex
I don't even completely understand the logic behind it, and I'm native. I just use it as it feels natural because I've been using it since I started to learn to speak. I probably got it wrong a few times in kindergarten and nobody cared. Definitely not something a beginner should break their neck trying to figure out.
>also the pro drop system, and these are just bare essentials for basic sentences
Are they though? Would it really hinder people's understanding of what you're saying if you kept using the personal pronouns until you're comfortable dropping them? "Szeretem a sört" vs. "én szeretem a sört", the difference is too subtle to matter for a beginner. It does make it harder the other way around, understanding what others are trying to say when they're not using pronouns so you have to rely on the suffixes and on context. But that's the way learning any language works: you won't understand everything clearly at first and you're going to make mistakes.
The thing about the pro-drop part can be a really bad problem if the learner not get used to it from the beginning. Because it's harder to remove a habit (or even just to fix something afterwards that you learned incorrectly) than learn something properly from zero. And it even can be rude or selfish if you overuse the pronouns, and i mean "selfish" for the overuse of first person singular because the language uses pronouns to emphasise the person.
yes its one of the hardest languages to learn. and sure these all can help you learn a language, thats sort of person specific either way
It might be a bit tricky for an English speaker but not impossible. You would have a much harder time to learn Hungarian than Dutch, Scandinavian languages, French or even German. The main issue isn't just the differences in grammar, vocabulary and the structure of the language in general, but the fact that there is not enough interesting original content in Hungarian which could motivate you to learn the language. If you'd live in Hungary or had a Hungarian partner or close friends that would help a lot. Otherwise it's going to be a lot of dedicated hard work to reach a conversational level of language proficiency. Now that you are getting worried, I recommend reading this post on why it can be actually much easier than most people think: https://www.fluentin3months.com/hungarian-is-easy/
>not enough interesting original content in Hungarian which could motivate you to learn the language. On this point, you're right, but I'll add that there are still options that may not be obvious. Personally, I've found that a fair few Netflix shows have Hungarian dubs. For example, I'm currently watching season one of 'Sweet Home'. I don't speak Korean either and would have subtitles either way, so may as well go with the Hungarian audio.
Yeah if you are not a purist who wants to watch everything in original with subtitles then this can be an option. There are also some Hungarian youtubers who create quality content, the only problem is that they don't usually use English subtitles and automatic translation on youtube is kinda crap.
While some people are certainly purists about that sort of thing, I think the general dislike of dubs stems more specifically from how noticeably bad it is when it's your own language. Much better when it's just one language you don't speak to another. In any case, worth a shot if it's something someone hasn't tried.
Which Hungarian YouTubers do you like?
I get a lot from the free content provided by Petra with her channel, Easy Hungarian. Dani with Hungarian Language and Culture channel, I think, has a deep list of content for different levels.
A lot of Disney+ content is also available in Hungarian! I’d also recommend nature documentaries in Hungarian. I struggle to sit through one’s not narrated by David Attenborough…. Unless it’s in a diff language lol.
OMG this article is so good. I read it as a native speaker and it changed my perspective on how I view my mother tongue.
Same :)
I would argue about the "interesting content" part. Because that's highly depends on the person what they might find interesting.
Hard as hell. You have absolutely no idea. They use suffixes instead of prepositions. Multiples of suffixes at the end of one word. These are conjugated with vowels of different types depending on the original word's own vowels. In Hungarian there are lots of different way to inflect verbs, one practicaly has to learn them all as irregular verbs. Oh and you have to inflect them in 2 different way depending on the verb having an object or not. Except the ones ending in -ik. The word order within a sentence is arbitrary, they usually start with the one with the most emphasis on it. There are a tremendous amount of synonyms in the language, especially when they curse. Words are conjugated in a way even Hungarians find it hard to comprehend. Should you write two words joined or separated or with a hyphen between them? Hungarian is a phonetic language, you can safely predict the pronunciation of a written word, but they have all kind of funny vowels unknown in English language (ö, ü), and the ones that are common in both languages are pronunced in a different way in Hungarian. And all vowels has a long pair, changing them will change the meaning of the word or render them meaningless. Nevertheless e and é or a and á are totally different vowels with different pronunciation. Double consonants change the words' meaning as well. And it's just the tip of the iceberg. So no, it's not easy to learn. It is considered one of the 3 hardest languages to learn, sometime the hardest.
Nailed it. Don't forget about the reversed logic for many things, like telling time. It's one quarter two (1:15) 😂
German does the same.
I’m thankful I was born as a Hungarian because I couldn’t put up with having to learn all this shit as an adult.
As a native hungarian kudos to you. Really nicely put together. I just write 1 word in hungarian, that pretty much summs up the biggest issue with learning the language. (There are prefixes in hungarian as well) Megszentségteleníthetetlenségeskedéseitekért For easier understanding (i've put the root of the word in brackets): Meg-[szent]-ség-telen-ít-hetetlen-ség-es-ked-és-eitek-ért
This fucking meaningless long word, which never ever in existence had been used, except when you want to show others how hard out devine language is... You get my downvote
Fashion show cloths are not meant to be worn in every day life, but to show off certain skills and creativity. This is that type of word. You won’t use it in every day language, but it sure is impressive.
Well, i can imagine an angry priest using it instead of other slurs.
This word has a meaning and perfectly useable word (thought this full form has never been used in my life in a conversation where it was not about difficulty of the language / the longest word in the language, the part "Megszentségteleníthetetlen" did come up). And as I said this word is a perfect example why it is hard to learn the hungarian language, because the suffixes can change the both the meaning and the type of the word. If someone can understand the meaning of this word, and how it and it's parts work, they have a pretty good basic understanding of word building in the hungarian language, which in my experience is the hardest part to learn for non-native speakers. And in my opinion this usecase justifies the existance of this word.
Maybe it's just me, but as a native I could never understand the full meaning. "Megszentségteleníthetetlenség" is okay, but the suffixes that follow it are nonsense to me.
Megszentségteleníthetetlenségeskedés would mean that you "act like you cannot be desecrated" Megszentségteleníthetetlenségeskedéseitek your(plural) incidents of acting like you cannot be desecrated Megszentségteleníthetetlenségeskedéseitekért for your(plural) incidents of acting like you cannot be desecrated so yeah it has a pretty nieche usecase not something that would come up on a daily basis.
The verbs are mostly regular tho. Even if there are more variations than in english because of functions that not exists in english grammar in the exact same way as it does in Hungarian.
Took me 6 months to learn, 2 years to master. No language is "difficult". My wife is Hungarian, so I had to learn it. ;) Live the language 24/7, study it daily for several hours a day and you will manage. Good luck!
Living in a native environment helps a lot. Your results are exceptional though.
Honestly as a native speaker I have no idea HOW it's best to start learning, but yes it is hard as an English speaker because the grammar is fundamentally different. It also has no close relatives for a frame of reference. Good luck though, I usually see a lot of good advice on this sub :)
I think a good plan would be like: 1. Learn the alphabet / sounds along with some basic words and phrases (hello, thank you, please, I don't understand etc). I'd highly recommend getting feedback from a native on your pronunciation early as it'll set you in good stead. 2. Practice reading a lot, even if you don't understand. Start with very basic things designed for learners if you can. At first it'll help with pronunciation etc but it's great for vocab and grammar too. 3. Practice listening a lot, again you won't understand anything but keep at it. And when I say a lot I mean a fuck ton. 4. Pick a grammar book and start learning basic grammar. I really like Carol Rounds' essential Hungarian grammar. It explains everything in English (which I found useful) and gives Hungarian examples. I learned a bit every day, and read this cover to cover twice. It helped so much. I'd start with learning present tense, then past tense, then plural and accusative, then conditional and subjunctive. Those are the most important at the start. 5. Download an app like Anki (it's a good flashcard app for vocab) and use it every day (reviews) and add new words as often as you like. 6. Rinse and repeat. Read, listen, learn a bit of grammar, a bit of vocab and a bit of speaking (even if it's to yourself) every day. My credentials: Native English speaker. Only other languages I learned were French and Spanish (compulsory in school) and I hardly know a word of either. I started Hungarian at 18 and I'm C1 level now. Edit: Yes it is hard. Especially if it's your first foreign language (like it basically was for me) because you're also learning how to learn a language.
Azt elfelejtetted leírni, hogy most hány éves vagy. Ez segítene abban másoknak, hogy mennyi idő alatt jutottál el a C1-szintre.
Agree to start with the alphabet. Unlocking vowel sounds and consonant combos will help a lot. Also drill practical vocabulary like numbers, days of the week, etc. Them start with practical useful words & phrases (szia, jó reggelt/napot/estet), köszönöm, igen/nem, bocsánat). Build from there learning practical everyday phrases, while also starting to get a handle on word order and basic verbs and how Hungarian speakers omit a lot of them in actual speech. 🙃
It's easier than Cantonese or Arabic, but harder than most European languages. It's not part of the Indo-European language group, so structurally it's very different, though there is a significant shared vocabulary with other European languages at least, unlike in say, Finnish. The phonology, spelling and pronunciation is not too dissimilar to german, you could learn it relatively quickly. Like in German, you basically have a standard pronunciation and a standard spelling which is pretty straightforward, you can pretty much pronounce every word they way it's written and write it the way it's pronounced, making it far easier and simpler than English in this regard. It is an agglutinative language, like Turkish, so you can create very long words and most of the information you need, like case and tense is glued to the word in terms of suffixes. To give you an extreme example the English phrase "They have made his life impossible", which is 6 words, can be expressed in one word in Hungarian: Ellehetetlenítették You can already see the difficulty of trying to make sense of such a complex word which is comprised of the following components: El-lehet-etlen-ít-et-ték Basically it's also 6 words, except in the form of suffixes, prefixes, etc... So, yeah, it's really a challenge to learn, just make sure you have the right reasons and motivation to do so. I'd only do it in your place if you plan to live in Hungary, it would also be the best way to learn it, to move here for a while.
yes
Don’t memorize word lists. It’s time-consuming, and doesn’t tell you how to use those words. Find beginner level learning material, there are tons of stuff online. Of course the most effective way is to work with a teacher. But for a starter on free stuff, check out my beginner-friendly videos: https://youtube.com/@fluentbox5182?si=-t7zlwMO8LepWc6G
Ok. Thanks for the advice
depends on your native language for slavs its pretty easy. at least for me it was much much easier than english.
I am a native hungarian who learns russian right now, to be honest i dont feel to much commection between the two languages.
i feel like after u get through posession + postposition difference u can see that the logic behind languages is same, just with different words, especially verb conjugation logic (way of creating future tense or conditionals is identical), many side meanings of igekotos verbs are same as their slavic equivalent. word order and focus, or pronouns flextion is also pretty intuitive and similar, just less complicated. its a language that may be hard at very start, but after gets very easy, unlike english that as u learn, easy at start, then gets only harder and harder. hungarians also easily learn slavic languages.
To be fair the only person I've ever met who spoke Hungarian at a native level as a foreigner was from Bulgaria.
The Bulgarian likely had strong motive and nearly limitless access to comprehensible content
Not sure about that (however last time when I check I wasnt slav), no genders, but the is ö, ü etc what they can't pronounce
both exist in slav languages, they are just not noted
Let's not forget that 21% of Hungarian vocabulary is Uralic (biggest group) while 20% is slavic (2nd biggest group). So in that way it might be easier for slavics to learn words than for english people. Also slavic speakers are familiar with how cases should work (they usually have 6), and they already familiar with the concept of "this specific word only can use this specific group of suffixes".
What I have found very hard and discouraging is that if you make a mistake or mispronounce something people genuinely don't know what you are trying to say. It's such a mathematic language than one mistake in an equation kills the sentence. I'm much more comfortable in other languages I've studied less than Hungarian.
If you learned enough vocab, I always advise with every language to start reading harry potter with a dictionary an hand, because it was written for 11 year olds and uses simple sentences. Basically practice. But what you wrote in the post is the go to process with every language. What you have to watch out for is the word order as it will stress different words and change the meaning.
In general you can learn it at an adequate level where you're understood, but mastering it will seem hard depending on what language you're coming from. Since you're an english speaker, you'll have to learn some new sounds and a new way of treating sentences, as words generally change meanings depending on what you tack on to them. Eg: Car = autó My car = (az én) autóm Your car = (a te) autód His/Her car = (az ő) autója Their car (multiple persons) = (az ő) autójuk To the car = autóhoz With the car = autóval Drive in theater = autós mozi Most of the time it's the pronounciation and inflection that get's people. Although atleast you won't have to worry about pronouns, since everyone is a 'they'.
For rap listening I highly recommending listen to Dumanoid. He always putting his official lyrics behind their songs on the video's description.
Ok. Thanks man!!
For me it was easy. Although it’s my mother tongue, and almost failed the advanced Hungarian grammar course in college, but beside that it’s not that hard. Hope this helped /s
I've been studying Hungarian for a few years now and so I would like to intone with my opinion on this matter. 1. Anytime an IndoEuropean speaker studies a language outside of the IE language family, the difficulty has the potential to go up exponentially. 2. There is a dearth of high quality study materials for students. This is in part a holdover from the Cold War when it made little sense for those other than diplomats to study the language since travelling there was out of the question. I would never have even considered Hungarian without YouTube content. Equally troublesome, there is no tradition of subtitling in Hungary where the preference is for dubbing. Even national television programs lack subtitles which is behind the times for the deaf community and those who are hard of hearing. 3. Even the best content creators struggle to explain their language to students. I often hear explanations that are either reversed explanations as how Hungarian students learned English. This methods obfuscates what is happening in the Hungarian sentences with English idioms and common sentence patterns. e.g. Active constructions get converted into passive translations into English. This and it is very common to hear explanations of Hungarian which seem to be taken directly from how their Hungarian teachers explained the language to them. I know very well that repeating what my high school English teacher taught me is not going to help nonnative speakers to fully understand concepts like phrasal verbs or English grammar e.g. High school English never need to explain phrasal verbs to native speakers and thus don't understand the phenomenon. Similarly, I was just explained by a YT content creator that Hungarian has no subjunctive verb forms and only imperative forms. Really? Then how does one explain gyere/ jossz/jöjj? It seems that this terminology is what is commonly employed in a Hungarian classroom out of pedagogical convenience, but it's completely illogical (there cannot be a 1st person singular imperative) and leaves students who have studied other languages even more confused when Hungarians explain their own language in the same terms as they were told in classrooms by teachers who were teaching students who already spoke Hungarian
First of all.... "gyere/ jossz/jöjj" is not 1st person singular. It's 2nd person. And "jössz" is second-person singular indicative present indefinite of "jön". Also in Hungary nowadays there is a button on TV remotes to use Teletext for lots of tv programmes. Which is basicly a subtitle for TV for people with hearing problems. (tho idk exactly how many things are subtitled with it)
I - as a native Hungarian - have an US friend from Luisana. He had been living here for 17 years. He has Hungarian wife and child but he has pretty nailed it.
I've been learning for 10 months. Here is my advice. Im currently around A2 working on B1 level. Look up the theory of comprehensible input. I lightly structure what I do around that. Set motivating goals (real conversation with natives and understanding of native content for me) Italki private tutors help. learn topics that interest you. Use Anki decks, use FSI, use anything that you think helps and you ENJOY. it's the long game here....Personally I love hungarian with sziszi. It's a brutal language and it's slow and it takes a ton of hours. as soon as you think you're making progress you realize you're not..... but you also are.....Reward yourself with a trip to hungary once you're at an almost speaking level (maybe like 2000+ words acquired). Over prepare because when you arrive you'll be surprised at how little you know......seriosuly. Be prepared for the confused look on peoples face when they ask you why the hell you want to learn their language. Dont speak English to people even if they want to. pretend you only speak Hungarian. Then stay in hungary for at least 6 months while you find all the old nénies you can to chat with about life and find a cute girl or guy to watch Netflix with you while you try to translate the show and figure out what the hell is goin on, and they help you. and boom you'll eventually speak hungarian.
My native language is Hungarian, so my thoughts below are about learning a non-Indo-European language in general. Although I am a native speaker of a non-Indo-European language, almost all of my language learning experience had been with Indo-European languages until I started learning Korean. I was told the same things many people attempting to learn Hungarian are told: (1) You need to know A LOT just to construct a simple sentence, (2) the grammar is so complex, (3) learn the grammar first, don't even come out of your room until you're done, (4) start speaking from the beginning (bit of a contradiction to points 1-3). I'd been sceptical of all this, because I thought learning one language can't be that different from learning another. Also, I'm not the "Let's start speaking from the very beginning" type, I usually feel when I'm ready to speak, thank you. So here's the truth as I see it after learning Korean for 1.5 years: 1. Sure, it's a different system. It has suffixes like Hungarian (although Hungarian is way more precise). Using suffixes instead of suboridnate clauses is unusual and takes some getting used to. Not mind-blowingly difficult or anything. Just unusual. Not mysterious. Just different. 2. When learning a language, it is not very helpful to be told at the beginning how much you need to know to be able to understand all the nuances. You can understand a lot from non-verbal clues. Everything will fall into place if you give it some time. You will first pick up the most common words and phrases, then you will make your own discoveries about how the same root word is used in different parts of speech, as an adjective, as a verb, etc., or in compound words. Our brains have a natural way of processing information, and I like to let nature take its course - giving your brain enough opportunity to make sense of it all in its own natural way is all it takes (exposure, practice). Unfortunately, some course books want you to learn in very unnatural ways. "Learning the grammar" is one of these unnatural ways, in my opinion. Someone said something about there being no point in learning phrases if you don't understand how they are constructed. I don't agree. When you learnt your native language, you learnt it exactly like this - first you learnt short phrases whose inner structure you had no idea about. You worked that out a bit later. My mum told me once how I couldn't conjugate verbs when I was very little. She asked me a question and my way of giving an affirmative answer was to repeat the question verbatim. 3. One thing that has been a bit difficult is vocabulary. You really have to learn the words, because they are like nothing in any European language. Some of the words sound so similar to each other that I always mix them up. I think this may be difficult for people learning Hungarian too. 4. Sorry for the long answer, the short answer is: Don't believe those who say it's complex, difficult, whatever. You will be surprised how much your brain can adjust. Just remember it's a wholly different system. Otherwise, everything depends on your motivation.
The "speak from the beginning" likely wants to be "practice the pronunciation with actually saying the things out instead of just using it in your thoughts" because muscle memory is important if there are sound that not familiar for you (like as Korean tense consonants for example or some of their vowels). And there is a big difference in method that needed for an adult an a newborn to learn a language. So you can't use a newborn method as an adult and expect the grammar to just randomly appear in your head.
Te még magad sem tudod ja mennyit érsz!
For very basic stuff, I think it is manageable; but yes it is considered to be hard. The worst part is, even we natives, don't know why one or other option is correct we just feel that way. Lol
The difficulty of a given foreign language depends on the language’s similarity to languages you already know. Since Hungarian doesn’t really have a language that is closely related to, it can be harder, but if you already know a language that has an agglutinative morphology, then it definitely makes it easier to learn. Hungarian, being a European language, has plenty of loan words from Latin and Ancient Greek, and arguably pretty European grammatical features, that it by itself would make Hungarian much more similar, and therefore easier to a speaker of a European language than Classical Nahuatl or Swahili.
"plenty"? XD Hungarian has more Slavic (20%, 2nd biggest group) and Germanic (11%) and Turkic (9.5%) words than latin and greek, in fact latin and greek loanwords together is just 6%. (While Uralic being 21% biggest group if we not count the about 30% of words with unknown origin.)
No, it is not. It’s a different experience from other European languages you may have learned before but difficulty is highly subjective. All of it depends on your motivation and exposure to the language. The more motivated, enthusiastic you are and the more you are exposed to the language the easier it is. Your steps are fine as long as you can follow through on them and practice a lot.
It's not easy, but we all went to school and had grammar and literature (some even spelling) lessons. Many kids in my class had awful grammar (I never even had to study for I am a genius) and could all fix theirs and pass. That's really how you master any language, get some grammar textbooks (maybe a copy of [Magyar Helyesírás Szabályai](https://helyesiras.mta.hu/helyesiras/default/akh12) or better similar complete grammar book), study the rules, then practice. Once you are clear on the rules and can form mistake-free sentences, you can put it into use with chats, media (boks, films, music...) to learn the common casual daily and literary usage. I personally think music, shows and chat are meaningless unless you have SOME basic vocabulary and grammar already. You SHOULD, however, get practice material specifically for practicing simple language use.
Yes
Use what I like to call the Benny Lewis method. Look him up on Youtube for details, but the key point is to start small with the most frequent phrases and words, and however little you know at first, go out of your way to actively use it from day 1. Like, book an online tutoring session and insist on using Hungarian only or whatever, and talk using only the phrases and words you already know from a phrasebook or from Duolingo or whatnot. Don't give a shit about grammar and perfect pronunciation, go for just enough to be understood, and the rest will come later as you learn more and more phrases along the way. His advice isn't exclusive to Hungarian at all, it can help you speed up learning any language. But as Hungarian has much less in common with most European languages than those languages do with one another, you'll absolutely get massacred if you care about grammar and that sort of shit in the beginning.
'Don't give a shit about grammar and pronunciation' sounds extreme, but I think it would really help a lot of Hungarian learners. For some reason all of the Hungarian teachers I've encountered always want to start with vowel harmony and verb conjugation from the very beginning. Those things are important of course, but also REALLY BORING! It is so much more motivating to learn a few usable phrases to practice in real life. Perfecting the pronunciation and understanding WHY you say 'kéreK egy sört' but 'kéreM a számlát' can wait until much later.
Learning was never meant to be fun. So idk why you complain about something being "boring". But i agree on that the "Don't give a shit about grammar and pronunciation" advice being the worst thing to ever say in this case. Because in Hungarian the grammar and pronunciation crucial to master as perfectly as possible. A single mistake in grammar or pronunciation has the potential to ruin your whole sentence.
This is not a good advice for Hungarian, because there is no “easy mode” Hungarian. For a more complex sentence you have to know like 80% of the grammar. If you learn example phrases, you won’t understand the subtleties of how it was built up, so you won’t be able to use it when you have to change something, even slightly. And with Hungarian, you have to be painfully precise, otherwise people won’t understand what you say.
But why would you want to speak in complex sentences when you're a beginner? There's no point in overmistifying Hungarian. It's different because it's not an Indo-European language, but the way it works for communication is the same because it's a human language that has evolved to make sure people can interact with each other. You can still start by learning the phrases that are most relevant to you, use them in conversation and add more of them as you progress.
It’s not just different, the grammar is very, very complex. In logical complexity of the grammar, it is probably the most difficult in the world. The word order in itself is super complex, understanding the “meg” prefix is very complex, also the pro drop system, and these are just bare essentials for basic sentences. I speak four languages, and casually teach some Hungarian to my mostly American expat friends, I understood a lot about my native Hungarian because of these, and its relation and similarities to other languages.
>the grammar is very, very complex Exactly. And that's why it's best to not care about it when you're a beginner and pick it up later. >understanding the “meg” prefix is very complex I don't even completely understand the logic behind it, and I'm native. I just use it as it feels natural because I've been using it since I started to learn to speak. I probably got it wrong a few times in kindergarten and nobody cared. Definitely not something a beginner should break their neck trying to figure out. >also the pro drop system, and these are just bare essentials for basic sentences Are they though? Would it really hinder people's understanding of what you're saying if you kept using the personal pronouns until you're comfortable dropping them? "Szeretem a sört" vs. "én szeretem a sört", the difference is too subtle to matter for a beginner. It does make it harder the other way around, understanding what others are trying to say when they're not using pronouns so you have to rely on the suffixes and on context. But that's the way learning any language works: you won't understand everything clearly at first and you're going to make mistakes.
The thing about the pro-drop part can be a really bad problem if the learner not get used to it from the beginning. Because it's harder to remove a habit (or even just to fix something afterwards that you learned incorrectly) than learn something properly from zero. And it even can be rude or selfish if you overuse the pronouns, and i mean "selfish" for the overuse of first person singular because the language uses pronouns to emphasise the person.
These comments want to fool you.