Let's Learn Hungarian!

Fun lessons with Steve and Györgyi

You are here: Home / Archives for Let's Learn Hungarian!

Lesson 4 – Everything hurts!

By

Lesson 4 introduces you to Zoltán and his Aunt Erzsi, who insists she is fine even though everything seems to hurt! This is another informal language dialogue with a number of useful, everyday expressions.

We enjoy reading your comments and finding out how you enjoy the podcast and why you’re interested in learning Hungarian. Feel free to drop us a line on a post and let us know your thoughts. Thanks again to all those who’ve previously written.

Our theme music is provided courtesy of Curtis Maranda. You can check out more of his music by going to http://www.curtismaranda.com/ Thanks again to Curtis for providing us with the music for our podcast.

The PDF file below contains the written dialogue and vocabulary, and the MP3 file has the audio for Lesson 4. Download both of them below, and thanks for listening!

Lesson 4 notes (PDF)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Lesson 3 – Shall we go to the movies?

By

Lesson 3 is packed with lots of useful, everyday expressions, so make sure you learn them well! See below for the new dialogue, vocabulary, and some simple grammar forms. It’s a lot of new material, but try to learn it all if you can, and see if you can memorize the dialogue too.

We love getting feedback, hearing how all of you are doing with the language, and why you want to learn Hungarian, so feel free to leave us a comment on this post with your thoughts and impressions. Thanks for all of the previous comments and words of support.

Once again, our theme music is provided courtesy of Curtis Maranda. Please check out more of his music by going to http://www.curtismaranda.com/ Thanks to Curtis for providing us with the music for our podcast.

The PDF file below contains the written dialogue and vocabulary, and the MP3 file has the audio for Lesson 3. Download both of them below, and thanks for listening!

Lesson 3 notes (PDF)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Lesson 2 – Buying a ticket

By

Lesson 2 is available here! It is a bit longer than the first lesson with A LOT of new vocabulary and grammar, so make sure you listen several times, follow along with the script below, and try to memorize as much as you can. Thanks for all your comments on the first lesson, we really appreciate your feedback! We always welcome your questions and opinions, so feel free to leave a comment below. And thanks for listening!

Theme music: Curtis Maranda, “Crystal Night.” Please check out more of his music by going to http://www.curtismaranda.com/ Thanks to Curtis for providing us with the music for this podcast.

The PDF file below contains the written dialogue and vocabulary, and the MP3 file has the audio for Lesson 2. Download both of them below, and thanks for listening!

Lesson 2 notes (PDF)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Listener question – from Fatima

By

Hi folks!

The next lesson will be up very soon, like in a day or two. Until then, please have a listen to the first lesson below, and try to memorize as much as you can! Thanks to everybody who left a comment about our first lesson. I hope you’ll keep listening to and enjoying our podcast.

Ok, so we received our first listener question, from Fatima. It’s kind of an intermediate-level grammar-type question, so if you are just a beginning learner, this may not interest you very much.

Fatima wrote:

Sziasztok.
I have a question – something that I cannot figure out and maybe you can help.

If you are stating something in the plural from the singular, example, kedves to kedvesek it has taken the ending ek.

Now from my understanding:

Front vowel words take the ek ending – kedvesek.

Back vowel words take the ok ending – autok (strip on o) and viragok (strip on a).

My question is:
What is the rule for: poharak. (strip on first a)
Where does the ak ending come from and what is the rule is making use of it?

If you know, pray tell, pleeeeeeeeease.

koszonom.
fats

Thanks for the question, Fatima! You’ve hit upon one of the trickiest areas for foreign learners of Hungarian: the correct ending that a conjugated word should take.

First of all, I want to recommend that every serious learner of Hungarian should own a copy of Hungarian Verbs And Essentials of Grammar by Miklós Törkenczy. It’s a bit of a tough read as you might expect of a serious grammar book, but it’s also short, concise, and the conjugated verb tables make it invaluable. He also does a great job of explaining the entire mess that is Hungarian endings. Unfortunately, my copy is not with me at the moment so I can’t look up your question.

And as I mentioned in the podcast, neither Györgyi nor I are Hungarian teachers, so there’s a lot of stuff we don’t know how to explain. That said, I’m going to venture an answer to your question:

I’m tempted to say that all multi-syllable words ending in “-ár” conjugate to “-arak” in the plural. E.g. “mocsár” –> “mocsarak,” “pohár” –> “poharak,” “bogár” –> “bogarak” et al. BUT there’s also “tanár” –> “tanárok” which doesn’t follow this pattern!

Which is the rule? I’m guessing that “-ár” to “arak” is the general rule, with the exception of “tanár” and maybe a few others. You’ll see that there’s a lot of confusing exceptions when it comes to word endings, unfortunately.

But I’d also like to tell you not to worry about it so much. In my opinion, word endings are an area of the language that, with repeated exposure through listening and reading, you CAN pick it up and remember it. And if you get it wrong, usually it’s not such a big deal. People will still be able to understand what you wanted to say for the most part. This is quite different from choosing the correct verb prefix, which I personally think is the hardest aspect of learning Hungarian and something that is far more consequential if you get wrong!

Well, if anybody can offer a better explanation of has an opinion on this, I’d love to hear it, so feel free to leave a comment on this post.

–steve

Lesson 1 – On the train

By

Lesson 1 is available for download or listening below! Note that you can also subscribe to our podcast for free through the iTunes link on the left, or through a podcatcher like Juice.

We hope you enjoy the lesson and we’d love to get your feedback, so feel free to leave a comment or write an email.

We owe a big debt of gratitude to the folks over at Japanese Pod101 for providing us with the spiritual inspiration and pattern to make this podcast possible. Those guys are the gold standard in language learning podcasts, and we hope everyone will head over there and check them out as well.

Original music for the podcast was kindly provided by Curtis Maranda. Check out more of his music by going to http://www.curtismaranda.com/

The PDF file below contains the written dialogue and vocabulary, and the MP3 file has the audio for Lesson 1. Download both of them below, and thanks for listening!

Lesson 1 notes (PDF)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download