Tips for learning Hungarian (if you want to survive this language)

Well I have been living in Budapest for long enough to at least try and make an effort to learn Hungarian. I say while many before me have come and failed to learn this unpenetrable language. Whenever someone asks me what's the best way to learn Hungarian I tell them "don't"! Ranked as the third most difficult language in the world after Mandarin and Arabic, Hungarian is certainly no joke. I felt this from the moment I set foot into the airport and heard people speaking this for the first time ever. For those of you who have read my blog before, know that I am a language freak; learning languages is my hobby and my skills include being able to talk shit in 4 different languages, which is amazing please send my resume over to your boss. Anyhow this would be my 5th language to learn and I do not want to discourage you in anyway but if you don't have to, don't go after learning Hungarian. Stick to your Italian and Spanish, they will make your life way easier.

This doesn't sound much like a tips entry and more like a rant piece, well it's not even thought Hungarian has gotten it's quirks, the way it makes Hungarians themselves smile and crack up when you manage to utter a word or two in their language makes the effort worth it; I mean this is what it's all about right? It's all about communication and well I think I may have achieved it a few times. If you have lived here or been to Hungary before you would know that's a pretty big achievement right there.

Moving on, I have to learn Hungarian in my university, it is part of our curriculum, which makes sense since we are going to be doctors and we would have to spend our practices here in the pharmacies and the hospitals in Hungary; at least basic Hungarian is required. So for us it's kind of a big deal, now I have been having Hungarian classes ever since September because that's when I started school. Our university has its own Hungarian book and so we use that in our classes. I think it's a pretty good book and if you do live in Budapest, you can purchase it from Semmelweis University but that's quite a bit of trouble to go through and there are much better books availabe. Anyhow what I'm going to do is to include a few websites and some other refrences for you guys to use.

What I mean when I say Hungarian is complicated

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Hungarian is a pretty complicated language, that we covered so far and so using Google Translate to translate the Hungarian words or sentences isn't as useful as it is with other languages such as German, I always used Google Translate for German words and it almost always made sense. So now that Google Translate is out of the picture let's see what else can we do.

Resources to learn Hungarian

1) Duolingo

Almost everyone is familiar with this app and pretty much so many people are satisfied with the learning technique. Although I don't think duolingo is a long term solution to learn a language, it is absolutely a great place to start. They didn't have Hungarian before but now they have added our bizarre Hungarian to it as well. Do at least one lesson per day or if you are freer go for more. It really depends on you but get yourself familiar with the vocabulary; the thing about Hungarian and everyone else says this too, is that Hungarian is unlike any other language. The vocabulary is not like anything else you know, it's not like Italian and Spanish in which they have huge similarities to English in terms of vocabulary. I guess this is what makes Hungarian so unique afterall, it's completely different and there are no connections. That being said take your time to learn the words. Words like "Kozlekedes" and "bevasarloskozpont" ( my keyboard doesn't have the accents and the different "O"). Anyhow that two words mean "public transport" and "shopping center"! So imagine the rest.

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2) Tandem

Tandem was probably my favorite app of last year, being super new to learning German and desparate to have someone I could speak some German with I downloaded the app, you have to wait for a little while till they get back to you and then you can start chatting with the people that have similar language learning goals as you. Basically if you are good in English, you can teach someone English and they would teach you for example Hungarian or German. So it's a language exchange application. I have actually found many friends from all over the world in this application and we are indeed very good friends now..

I started reusing it once I moved to Budapest and I can say that the response has been amazing. So many different Hungarians have messaged me, offered to help me with my Hungarian skills and it has been very helpful in my journey of improving my Hungarian. If you are the type that would learn better if you conversed with someone else then do try Tandem, I have introduced it to all my friends and not one of them have disliked it. Plus you can send each other voice messages and it also has this option to correct each other's sentences which I found the most useful.

Tandem logo

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3) Hungarian Podcasts

Podcasts are one of the most effective ways to learn a language, even though I live here I don't hear that much Hungarian on the daily. I study in an international university and so we speak English for a larger part of our day. The only exposure I have to real Hungarian is drunken conversations of Hungarians in the bars on friday nights and overhearing people speaking loudly on public transport. But podcasts give you the opportunity for uniterrupted and relatable listening, you can learn about topics you are passionate about and more importantly they speak much slower than normal people and so you can understand the words better. The one I like the most is Hungarianpodcast101; it's reliable, it's cheaper than other podcasts and it has been there for a really long time, do give it a try if you think this method is the best one for you.

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4) BBC language

I do think BBC language has dramatically improved over the past few years and I can say it is a good resource to learn Hungarian from as well. They have this essential Hungarian phrases audio which I think is pretty good, apart from that I haven't used their other resources but my teacher also recommended it to us and so I'd say yeah for sure give it a try. BBC languages has also great resources for learning Spanish and French, I used to make use of it all the time back in the day.

Well these were some resources and I hope that you find them useful and use them accordingly. As for some tips from me, I'd suggest putting a lot of time into learning the vocabulary, as I already mentioned Hungarian is a language like no other and so every word needs to be memorized and pretty much hacked into your memory.

Try to speak with locals as they will always help you improve, you can't improve if you don't talk and lastly I am going to try and find some good Hungarian movies for beginners like us but till then... Happy learning!

Cheers and hope you enjoy this piece (and learn from it too).

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