Meet Hungarian!tal
á
lkozz a magyarral!
To disappoint all the masochists who think that Hungarian is painful, and to please allthose who know that it isn't, but couldn't find a good way to learn it.Cserben hagyni a mazohist
á
kat akik azt hiszik a magyarr
ó
l, hogy f
á
jdalmas,
é
s
ö
r
ö
m
ö
thozni azoknak akik tudj
á
k, hogy nem, de nem b
í
rtak tal
á
lni egy j
ó
modszert arra, hogytanulj
á
k.symbols between slashes (e.g. /e/) are IPA phonetic symbols, all pronunciationreferences are given assuming Queen's English.This book is for those who want to learn from a grammatical and analytical perspectiveas opposed to text-book style immersion.
Chapter I (els
ő
fejezet) – Meet Hungarian (magyar)
The Hungarian Language is the official language of Hungary (or Republic of Hungary), and has been an officiallanguage in all the territories once belonging to the Kingom of Hungary, which is the land within the Carpathianmountains known to the Romans as Pannonia. is the language of the Hungarian people who number some ten millionsin Hungary and about a further four million abroad. Hungarian is spoken world wide by about 15,000,000 people.Hungarian has been our language for a very long time. It sounds strange to say something so seemingly obvious but itis in fact noteworthy. Languages like Portuguese, Spanish, French, Italian, and Romanian (the modern day romancelanguages with national language status) Have not existed very long. French for instance, arose in France, whereinpeople used to speak first Latin then vulgar Latin along side Celtic and Iberian languages, most of which are nowextinct. As these languages mixed and mingled and moved, they changed, and eventually a new language arose fromthe mix. The earliest attested documents in a language which we would identify as “French” (specifically “OldFrench” or by its original name, “langue d'o
ï
l”) are the Oaths of Strasbourg (842AD) some 1,160 years ago. Italian,similarly, begins its linguistic independence from vulgar Latin with a collection of legal documents dated 960-963AD,over a century after the first “French” documents. It is little wonder then, that Italian and French, who have evolvedalong side one another, for just over one millennium, and arose from a common ancestor are so similar in grammar,vocabulary, and style. The further one goes back in time, or the closer one travels to the historic borders, the harder itbecomes to see where one language ends and the next begins.The Hungarian People were a nomadic tribe however. Seven in fact. Our language is not “Indo-European” but rather“Uralic” from the Ural mountain range which historically divides Europe from Asia. Having been continually on themove, Hungarians did not linger long enough to absorb much from any one language, nor did we disperse ourlanguage and allow it to diverge. Hungarian's closes linguistic relatives are Khanti and Mansi (or as we call them
Oszty
á
k
and
Vogul
) spoken in the Khantia-Mansia Okrug in Russia. They comprise the Ob-Ugric branch of the Ugriclanguage sub-family (so named because they are spoken in the expanse between the Ob river, and Ural mountains),while Hungarian stands alone under the Ugric heading. Along side the Ugric languages, Uralic languages are dividedfurther into Finno-permic, Samoyedic, and Yukaghir. The Finno-permic branch contains the highest number of languages including the only two other languages with national language status: Finnish and Estonian.It is estimated that Hungarian left the other Ugric languages behind in the 11
th
century BC (3,000 years ago) and theFinno-permic languages behind far before that. Although linguists can find links between Hungarian and its relatives,to the average speaker those 3,000 years of separation have made even our closest relatives as unintelligible as ancientInca.Hungarian is a language quite unlike any other. For the past thousand years Hungary has bordered and spokenGermanic, Romance, and Slavic languages, and has borrowed from all of them but remains vastly different to any of them. It is agglutinative, vowel harmonic, and disdains prepositions in favour of cases.
Chapter II (m
á
sodik fejezet) - Meet the written language (az
í
rott nyelv)
Meet the Hungarian alphabet (a magyar
á
b
é
c
é
)a
á
b c cs d dz dzs e
é
f g gy h i
í
j k l ly m n ny o
ó
ö
ő
p q r s sz t ty u
ú
ü
ű
v w x y z zsEach of the above monographs, digraphs, and the trigraph are considered “letters”. Each one used to be written withit's own glyph in
rov
á
s
í
r
á
s
(old Hungarian “runic” script, lit. carving writing). The exceptions are dz and dzs whichwere introduced for Turkish loanwords, and q, w, x, and y which are used as part of the Latin alphabet, predominantlyto write European loan words (and in the case of y to form digraphs). the “names” of the consonants are formed byadding
é
.Meet the pronunciation (a kiejt
é
s)m, n, ny, and ng are said as m, n, Spanish
ñ
, and ng respectively - /m/ /n/ / / /
ŋ
/
ɲ
although ng is not seen as its own letter in Hungarian but rather an n and a g, and is usually said as such i.e. /
ŋ
g/, inspeech it can become /
ŋ
/ but not across syllable boundaries.b, d, and g are pronounced as their English variants - /b/ /d/ /g/ p, t, and k are pronounced as in English but with less breath - /p/ /t/ /k/ Compare “spit” with “pit”, “stick” with “tick”, and “scar” with “car” (the former in each being correct)ty and gy are said like the the t in “Tuesday” and d in “due” of Queen's English. - /c/ / /
ɟ
Loosely, t+y and d+y sounds respectively, and are more aspirated, i.e. they should be said with a release of much moreair than p, b, t, d, k, and g.f, v, sz, z, s, zs, and h correspond to the English f, v, s, z, sh, zh
, and h respectively. - /f/ /v/ /s/ /z/ /
ʃ
/ / / /h/
ʒ
Like many European languages Hungarian lacks a “th” sound.1 Zh here represents the z of “azure” or the s of “pleasure”
of 00
Meet Hungarian! Találkozz a magyarral!
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