Hi everyone,
I'm just being curious here. While everyone would agree that Hungarian is quite a unique language, the challenges associated with the study of Hungarian must be different depending on your native language. I started learning more intensively a few weeks ago only. It has been challenging and I love learning it. But I have found that there is some "unusual" things about Hungarian for a French native speaker:
1) Vocabulary. While I can "guess" the meaning of some words in other latin languages that I don't know (like Italian or Spanish), I can barely recognize any Hungarian word.
2) The lack of prepositions. French speakers absolutely need prepositions and use them a lot. Give me back my prepositions! :)
3) Lack of the verb "to have" (correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems we need to always use possessive forms to represent the action of "having"). I feel that in "sok a munkám", for example, something is missing. ;-)
4) Most importantly: the order of words. I know I'm still learning the very basics, but I feel helpless when I try to put the words in the "right" order.
Those very differences are what makes language learning fascinating.
What about you? What have you found to be the most "unusual" in Hungarian considering your native language?
As a native English speaker:
1) vocabulary - as a beginner few words are recognisable.
2) igekötök - verbal prefixes. Other than how their position can change, they help form many verbs from a single stem. The resulting verbs can have very different meanings. For abstract concepts this can be difficult as the usual concrete meaning of the verbal prefixes doesn't help understanding.
3) tárgyas/tárgyatlan ragozás - applying the rules correctly all the time is beyond me. Luckily sometimes it doesn't matter as there's no difference.
4) Second person plural - too many T's! Try forming past tense műveltető verbs in the second person plural. Hours of fun.
5) Hungarian's wonderfully flexible word order.
6) You - how many words does a language need? English has one. Hungarian's te, ti, ön, önök, maga, maguk, benneteket, titeket, téged, önt, önöket, magát, magukat seems excessive! :)
7) Personally I think Hungarians aren't used to hearing their language spoken by foreigners. As a beginner this can cause frustration. Small imperfections in pronunciation can make your efforts to communicate useless. I think it's important to practice pronunciation. You can't get away with poor pronunciation like non-native speakers of English can. The whole world speaks broken English!
Somebody joked that Hungarian must be the official language in heaven, as it takes an eternity to master it. :)
* edit: besides that you can also say:
sok munkám van
sok munkád van
sok munkája van
etc.
where "van" is the verb you missed :)
So with or without the verb it's still understandable.
