Hungarian Learning Community and Resources

Another interwiew with another Hungarian polyglot! We talked to Gabor, a polyglot and ex-Erasmus+ student, who is originally from Budapest but now he lives in Stockholm. His hobby is to learn new languages, and he is a real pro in it! He shared his experiences with us and also gave great advice on language learning that enable people to improve quickly. I hope you find the interview as fascinating as we did. Here it is in full. 

You speak several languages, but first, let’s speak about your mother tongue! Do you think Hungarian is a
difficult language – to learn?

Based on my experience, it really has proven to be challenging to many, then again, I do know a handful of people who have managed to master it. Is it difficult? It sure is, like all languages, Hungarian has its peculiarities such as a pretty complex grammar, words that don't resemble any other from the languages you may already speak and a crazy amount of letters in our alphabet just to name a few. But then again, is it impossible to learn? No it's not, simply don't be discouraged by all the challenges Hungarian may pose and you will learn the basics in no time, from then on, it's a joyride full of new discoveries every day.

Which language was your first foreign language?

Actually, it was German since English wasn't even an option in my school back in the day. Funnily enough, a bit over a year of German, our family moved to a village with no German teacher avilable so I had to pick up English instead. 

How did you pick up the next ones?

My next language in line was Italian as a teen, around that time my strategy was to pick up new words and expressions from songs mostly, and in all honesty, that hasn't changed that much since. Swedish came right after Italian, and let me tell you, it was a whole new level of language learning since I started the whole thing at university, things got a little competitive over time, not only were there a limited amount of seats available at the department at that time, it was also a race against time since we had to get proficient in just under half a year so that we could start reading actual literature in our second year already. So obviously, listening to music was not necessarily enough anymore, I did a lot of reading, translating random sentences or even try to speak to myself or narrate my own life in Swedish whenever I could. To me, learning a language is more about learning patterns that you can then re-cycle endlessly, once you have that going, you will want to pick up expressions, idioms and all that makes a language more than just words and grammar but something quite organic.

Why did you decide to start to learn Swedish at the University?

I always thought Swedish had a unique sound and that learning a language spoken by so few in my country, it may come in handy later on. It was only after I started getting familiar with the language that I realized how rich it actually can get, the sound system, the grammar, the dialects, the history, how everything is connected and just makes sense across Germanic languages, how the simplest of words make an appearance in so many languages. Swedish can sometimes feel like you are in a museum since it is just teeming with historical detail, so imagine what it could be like learning e.g. Icelandic.