When I ask Hungarians for things (restaurants, directions, etc.), conversations generally go one of the following ways:
- Elnezest, beszél angolul (Excuse me, do you speak English):
- Yes - conversation continues in English
- Nem - They usually walk away
- Elnezest, hol a Vásár utca (Excuse me, where is Vásár St.)
- Answer in Hungarian and I struggle to understand
- Answer in English and, though I'm happy to get worthwhile help, I'm a little let down
- Nem beselek angolul - They definitely walk away
As I mentioned before, the first two and a half weeks of my stay in Budapest involve a 9-to-4 Hungarian language course. Though it is still a struggle, my difficulty has evolved:
- Is she asking me a question? Am I supposed to answer? "20 éves vagyok."... I guess not.
- Do I really know this many words in English? What are the chances I will need to say "refrigerator" in Hungarian? Well, "mushroom" is "gomba" which is kind of like "goomba" which is like Mario who likes mushrooms - I can remember that.
- If I'm going "to" school, is it "iskolaba" or "iskolabal?" Maybe it's "iskolaról?" (this word came to mind because it's one of about six cognates). What if I'm going "towards" school? Is being "near" school different that being "at" school? Are you "in" the school or "on" the school? How is eating "an" apple different than eating "the" apple?
I've somewhat overcome Stage 1 and have come to terms with only picking up a fraction of the vocabulary thrown at me, but this grammar business is difficult. Generally word roots are modified by a never-ending series of prefixes and suffixes that alter the meaning in increasingly subtle ways. Whereas, when speaking in Spanish or in Hebrew, I can borrow the structure of the desired sentence from English, translating almost word-for-word (though I do not have to translate in this manner when speaking Hebrew), Hungarian's grammar makes this approach impossible, making even the simplest sentences a challenge to construct. That was an awesome sentence, was it not?
For instance:
son = fiú
Her son = fia
With her son = fiával
She lives with her husband and her son in New York. = Él férjé|vel és fi|á|val New York|ban. ('|' denotes an affix)
Words like "with," "for," "from," "to," "until," "toward," "away," "up," "down," "across," are all replaced by prefixes and suffixes.
One thing that makes this language nice is that written Hungarian is that the language is 100% phonetic. If you can say it (say it properly, that is), you can write it, and vice-versa. The only problem with this is fighting my instincts when it comes to pronouncing some of the letters:
s = "sh"
sz = "s"
c = "ts"
cs = "ch"
j = ly = "y"
gy = I'm still trying to figure this one out
"n" < ny < "ñ"
The vowels are also difficult: there are two versions of each vowel (except for 'o' and 'u', of which there are four). There is also a concept of "vowel harmony;" the 2nd person plural possessive ending for a noun might be '-tok,' '-tek,' '-tök,' '-otok,' '-atok,' '-etek,' or '-ötök' depending on not only the last syllable of the word, but also the combination of vowels withing the word. Because only the last word in a compound word needs to be taken into account for vowel harmony, you also need to know the etymology of words like "számítógép."
Despite all this, I'm enjoying the course very much, especially because it is a great venue to meet other students on the program. I imagine that as the semester begins, we will stop travelling in packs wherever we go. Also, we get to ask our teachers some pretty random questions about living in Hungary that would otherwise go unanswered.
Added bonus: CD of 23 of the choicest Hungarian children's songs.
Webpages that may or may not be relevant:
