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To: Leaning Right
Hungarian is one of the most difficult things I have ever learned Its INCREDIBLY difficult. It has concepts I'd never even heard of before....and I'm fluent in German and my Spanish and French sucks but I can get along and understand how the basics work.

Just trying to explain the difference between definite and indefinite.... No other language I've ever heard of has that.

For example most languages have 6 verb conjugations per tense. First person and second and third, singlur and plural for each. I, you, He/She/it, We, You (plural), they. Simple enough right? Watch this. In HungarianL

Vasarolok egy autot. I buy a car. Vasarni = to buy. -ok on the end = I. This is indefinite because its A car. It could be any car. Its not definite which car.

Vasarolom az autot. I buy the car. WTF just happened? The ending on Vasarni changed. Yep. Its THE car. Its definite. You know which car. Therefore totally different conjugation of the verb....and that is for all 6 first person, second person, third person, singular and plural. So its 12 conjugations per verb, not 6.

then there is this...szek = chair. szekek = chairs. BUT if you put a number in front of it....EVEN IF THAT NUMBER IS MORE THAN ONE....you use the singular form of the noun, NOT the plural.

Then there is the fun of making plurals. No hanging an -s or -es on the end of the word like in English. No siree! It can be -ek, ok, just k, o with umlaut then k, o with two slashes then k, ak, a with slash above it then k, etc. You just have to hear from the vowels in the word with its "shallow" or "deep" to know which one to use...and as a non native speaker you will screw that up half the time.

there's more "fun" but that's a taste of what awaits you with Hungarian.......super friendly people, some of the hottest chicks on the planet and one of my most favorite places in the world. They just LOVE you if you make an honest effort to learn their language however badly you speak it.

65 posted on 09/21/2024 12:38:46 PM PDT by FLT-bird
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To: FLT-bird

And I thought Polish was hard.


66 posted on 09/21/2024 12:40:11 PM PDT by dfwgator (Endut! Hoch Hech!)
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To: FLT-bird

I always found the relatively free word order of Hungarian to be an interesting feature of the language. The speaker can change the order depending on what he wants to emphasize.

Shame English isn’t like that.

Kamala is an idiot. - talking about Kamala, who is an idiot
Idiot is Kamala. - talking about idiots, of which Kamala is one

(Kinda makes you wonder if Yoda was Hungarian.)


71 posted on 09/21/2024 1:50:58 PM PDT by Leaning Right (The steal is real.)
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To: FLT-bird
My pal the linguistics professor knows 15-20 languages [or more, now].

He says Hungarian is the hardest.

I know a paltry 4-5.

81 posted on 09/21/2024 8:44:11 PM PDT by kiryandil (Kraft durch Freude! - The Kamunist and The Walzrus )
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To: FLT-bird
Then there is the fun of making plurals. No hanging an -s or -es on the end of the word like in English. No siree! It can be -ek, ok, just k, o with umlaut then k, o with two slashes then k, ak, a with slash above it then k, etc. You just have to hear from the vowels in the word with its "shallow" or "deep" to know which one to use...and as a non native speaker you will screw that up half the time.

That's what kills you - knowing that a native speaker will just shift through these permutations without blinking.

82 posted on 09/21/2024 8:47:09 PM PDT by kiryandil (Kraft durch Freude! - The Kamunist and The Walzrus )
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