Tuesday, May 8, 2018

A little speak I Hungarian language

That's the literal translation for a way to say "I only speak a little Hungarian." Famously, "everybody" knows that it is difficult to learn a new language as an adult. So I am grateful to my friends who encourage me and say they're confident that I will pick it up. Thanks, folks! I like to think positive, as "everyone" knows. But this is one area where it's hard to cheer myself through the rough spots. Oh, yes, I sing a bit, I crack really dumb jokes using my baby talk Hungarian. But here is a little info about what I'm swimming in now.

Nouns and verbs can each have more than a dozen variations.  I've read that Hungarian has potentially millions of variations on words, That's because almost every word has multiple endings, depending upon the formality of the conversation, with whom one is speaking, whether it's past, present or future, and how the vowels harmonize. Yes, they almost rhyme-it can making speaking Hungarian fun.  They do have some very funny words. One of my favorite is "HEY-ba-ho-ba." It means "sometimes." Another is "FEN-ky-pez-o-gape," meaning "camera." Oh, and another is "HEP-a-hoop-a," for "bumpy." And "FRE-go-li" is a folding rack for air drying clothes. I get the giggles sometimes listening to a conversation. The family know I like funny words so they give them to me whenever they think of good ones.

Anyway, back to grammar. Let's use "to go." I go, you go, we go. They go. A person goes (no gender based pronouns). Nothing new here, right? But that's just the verbs. Nouns are conjugated as well. And that depends not only on who is speaking, but also the person or thing in relation on to the noun. For instance, my money, your money, our money their money, a person's money. The word "money" changes, not the indicator of whose money it is. Pronouns apparently are generally used for emphasis. Or, if a person doesn't know how we to conjugate anything and has to use a pronoun with the root word of every verb and noun. A person, say, like a dumb American (ahem).

Thus I speak in the infinitive with pronouns, and it sounds ignorant. Which, obviously, I am.  I bet it's irritating so I'm working on learning the endings. But my brain can can only take so much each day. I feel like I did when I was learning SQL-burnt out at the end of every day. Thank Isten for Google Translate app!

Here is an image of a song in the church songbook. It is beautifully old fashioned. You might be able to see examples of the words and diacritical marks. Learning all those vowels can be pretty funny as the family exaggerate prounounciation so I can hear and replicate it.





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