Learning Hungarian

I have finally taken the leap and found myself a Hungarian teacher. She was the guide for a free walking tour that I took in Budapest when @wongers was visiting me. I’ve had two lessons so far and I feel pretty overwhelmed so far.

The alphabet is impossible with 44 total letters! They have 4 o’s and u’s, plus letters that don’t even exist in English like dz, dzs, gy, ly, and ny. The worse sound for me is the gy sound. There is nothing that sounds like that in English at all.

I’ve been taught a lot of new words and can form basic sentences on how to introduce myself. Spelling is still not so great, but once I solidify my knowledge of the alphabet, should come easier. Now its a matter of review the words and making sure I learn everything I can between lessons.

Its kind of exciting learning a language again! I’ve forgotten what its like to learn from the very beginning. I’ve been learning French for so long that I don’t remember what its like to be a beginner and Mandarin has many similarities to Cantonese that it doesn’t seem like I’m learning from the vey beginning.

Here is a little bit of my Hungarian:

Adelina Wong vagyok. Magyarország élek, de Kanadai vagyok. Beszélek angolul, kiani és franciául. Most maygar tanulok.

Which means “My name is Adelina Wong. I live in Hungary, but I am Canadian. I speak English, Chinese and French. Now, I am learning Hungarian.”

It takes way less time to say the same thing in Hungarian than English. I guess its a more efficient language and with way less grammar. You don’t have a lot of grammar that exists in English as its built into the noun or verb. In that way, its kind of similar to Chinese.

I feel like I’ve already made leaps and bounds in my understand, but I’m only scratching the surface. Here’s to a long road ahead!