I enrolled in a Beginning Hungarian Course at CEU in February as a part of my residence permit agreement (where I begged saliently argued my case to allow me to stay due to my love of Hungarian culture and language).
Before I started the course, a random German guy told me that George Lucas actually based Yoda's speech off of Hungarian O_O! I actually had a random phase in my life (okay, this past winter) where I talked like Yoda nonstop and even had my family catching on ha :)
So, I excitedly went online to look up the details of this amazing fact, but sadly, he was just a bloke spinning a tale to impress.
However, there are some similarities where the subject goes before the verb in certain instances:
Ishita vagyok--[Ishita I am] would be how you introduce yourself.
But this does not hold for everything--
Beszélek angolul--[I speak English] reverts back to subject following the verb.
It's quite puzzling how Hungarian evolved into such a distinct language. While there are some similarities with Slavic languages, it really is a creature on its own. One aspect that really sets it apart from any other language I have encountered is the concept of vowel harmony.
The endings in different grammatical structures depend on whether the vowels fall in one of the two vowel grouping categories. This applies to endings for nouns as well as for verb conjugation!
Pronunciation is also tricky and different.
"s"="sh"
"sz"="s"
"cs"="ch"
And Hungarians always emphasize the beginning syllables and have strong inflection in their phrases, making it difficult to understand when they're speaking at their normal fast pace.
Today was the last day of class. Overall, it was a good introduction to the basic present-tense grammar structures and basic vocabulary of numbers, foods, verbs, etc. I can now at least pronounce the words I see on the signs and buy things at the farmer's market without a convoluted game of charades! We'll see if I continue...
Before I started the course, a random German guy told me that George Lucas actually based Yoda's speech off of Hungarian O_O! I actually had a random phase in my life (okay, this past winter) where I talked like Yoda nonstop and even had my family catching on ha :)
So, I excitedly went online to look up the details of this amazing fact, but sadly, he was just a bloke spinning a tale to impress.
However, there are some similarities where the subject goes before the verb in certain instances:
Ishita vagyok--[Ishita I am] would be how you introduce yourself.
But this does not hold for everything--
Beszélek angolul--[I speak English] reverts back to subject following the verb.
It's quite puzzling how Hungarian evolved into such a distinct language. While there are some similarities with Slavic languages, it really is a creature on its own. One aspect that really sets it apart from any other language I have encountered is the concept of vowel harmony.
The endings in different grammatical structures depend on whether the vowels fall in one of the two vowel grouping categories. This applies to endings for nouns as well as for verb conjugation!
 |
| Conjugations (the notebook is a present from my lil sis's travels to China ha) |
Pronunciation is also tricky and different.
"s"="sh"
"sz"="s"
"cs"="ch"
And Hungarians always emphasize the beginning syllables and have strong inflection in their phrases, making it difficult to understand when they're speaking at their normal fast pace.
Today was the last day of class. Overall, it was a good introduction to the basic present-tense grammar structures and basic vocabulary of numbers, foods, verbs, etc. I can now at least pronounce the words I see on the signs and buy things at the farmer's market without a convoluted game of charades! We'll see if I continue...
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