Gymnastics of the Brain: Hungarian Language

There is one thing to the foreigners about the Hungarians that is more complicated than the Rubik’s cube. If in some way foreigners find the Hungarian people a complicated race, even more so the Hungarian language causes both their brains and tongues to do Olympic level gymnastics.

One was in a point of frustration saying, “I have learned eight languages, and am very fluent in five, OK in one but I forgot two when I learned Hungarian! No other language I’ve learned is even similar except for some Latin insertions like ‘szimpatikus’ or words borrowed from English like, ‘internetezni.’ The Hungarian language is supposed to be related to Finnish, but I never met a Finn who could make any sense out of Hungarian.

As far as verb attachments are concerned, I still can’t figure out why you wash down the mirror, wash up the floor tiles, wash out the clothes, and wash away the dishes. What is the logic? And of course there is the “meg.” I know it is sometimes used as part of a verb giving it meaning, and other times it is used to emphasize a verb as something that is already completed but that also is a Roulette game.

Then there is the subtlety of the alphabet and the insistence that vowel sounds work in harmony. How does one keep track of fourteen vowels? A small change in the vowels can mean one is happy, crazy, or grinding! Nem mindig örulök neki, hogy megőrulök, mikor ez a nyelv őröli az agyamat! If one does not speak Hungarian, it means that I am not always happy that I go crazy when this language grinds my brain!

Then there is the famous “t” at the end of an object and it sometimes changes the word. One example is the word for thing, ‘dolog’ which becomes ‘dolgot’ when it is the object. To the beginner, when he sees a word like this that has changed form, and does not recognize it he looks in the Hungarian – English dictionary. “Dolgot” is not in the dictionary as it is a form of, ‘dolog.” A beginner who does not understand how this change of form works gets absolutely frustrated!

That is why I am convinced that Hungarians are extremely intelligent, because any adult who has learned so many other languages will usually still speak Hungarian with difficulty. But here in Hungary every little kid speaks the language with such ease!

Hungarian language, Hungarian culture