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Hungarian - January challenge thread | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Multilingual Lounge |  | |
| maxval Pentaglot Senior Member Bulgaria maxval.co.nr Joined 4862 days ago 852 posts - 1577 votes  Speaks: Hungarian*, Bulgarian, English, Spanish, Russian Studies: Latin, Modern Hebrew | Message 209 of 1549 08 March 2011 at 7:11am | IP Logged | |||||
You have really good questions! Yes, it means what you guessed. The difference is hard to explain. Gond is closer to worry and problem, while baj is closer to trouble and harm. In many sentences you can use both! In other cases it is not possible. Here is an example: "Nagy gondban vagyok, nem tudom hogyan kell mondani angolul azt, hogy "baj". De nem baj, szerintem Hribecek így is megérti." "Nagy bajban vagyok, nem tudom hogyan kell mondani angolul azt, hogy "baj". De nem gond, szerintem Hribecek így is megérti." but: "Tegnap nagy baj történt velem, elvesztettem a táskámat." - you cant say here gond "Nagy gondom van: nem találom a táskámat." - you cant say here baj You can also say "Az idő nem számít". 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| maxval Pentaglot Senior Member Bulgaria maxval.co.nr Joined 4862 days ago 852 posts - 1577 votes Speaks: Hungarian*, Bulgarian, English, Spanish, Russian Studies: Latin, Modern Hebrew | Message 210 of 1549 08 March 2011 at 9:14am | IP Logged | |||||
This a complex question. I need to give you some background info so you can understand it better. Most native Hungarian speakers also tend to mix up this! First and most important: the ikes conjugation has NOTHING to do with the definite conjugation!!! Most Hungarians also think that they are the same, but this is not true. A separate ikes conjugation exists only in the INDEFINITE conjugation, there is no and never has been a special definite ikes conjugation. So ikes verbs has also two conjugations: indefinite and definite. The definite conjugation of the ikes verbs is and was always the same as the definite conjugation of the IKTELEN verbs. (Iktelen means non-ikes.) Historically there was a special ikes conjugation in Singular and Present Tense only, for the 1st and 3rd person in Imperative and Conditional, and for all 3 persons in Indicative. In all other cases ikes conjugation was the same as iktelen. For examples I will use the ikes verb LAKIK and the iktelen verb OLVAS. First, the form for 2nd person Indicative, as it is the easiest. LAKOL - OLVASOSZ. The two forms combined into a single form more than 300 years ago. Now both iktelen and ikes verbs use the same ending. The rule is the following: - if a verb ends in -dz / -s / -sz / -z – than it takes the former ikes ending, - if a verb has diffent last phonema – than it takes the former iktelen ending. This is why now the correct form is OLVASOL and LAKSZ. So there is no ikes conjugation for 2nd person Indicative since 300 years. You can encounter such forms as LAKOL only in very old literature. Conditional Mood: 1st person: LAKNÁM – OLVASNÉK 3rd person: LAKNÉK - OLVASNA The ikes form for the 3rd person as very, very archaic, is not in use at all. When an average Hungarian speaker sees this form in an old book, he thinks it is mistake, as he doesn’t identify it as 3rd person form. The 1st person form is a little bit less archaic, every Hungarian native speaker will recognize it, but you will never see it in present day speech or writing. So you can simply forget about conditional mood ikes conjugation. Imperative Mood: 1st person: LAKJAM – OLVASSAK 3rd person: LAKJÉK - OLVASSON These forms are considered “very high style”, they are almost out of everydays use. You can see the form for the 1st person in the speech and writing of highly educated persons only when they wish to use a high style. The form for the 3rd person is even less used, it is considered as kind of solemn archaic style. You can see it also in a few idiomatic sentences, for example the verb “tetszik” is mostly used in the “tessék” form, but in present days you can hear with increasing frequency “tessen” too. So you can forget about imperative mood ikes conjugation too. Now the most important: present tense 1st and 3rd person. 1st person: LAKOM - OLVASOK 3rd person: LAKIK – OLVAS The 3rd person present form is the only one, when it is absolutely obligatory to use the ikes forn. This is obvious, as if there is no –ik ending, then it is not any more an ikes ige! Now about your question: the 1st person form. This form is dying out in the present days. Older people use more frequently the ikes form. Also more educated people use more frequently too the ikes form. But in present day young peoples speech there is almost no ikes form. But even more educated people wont use ikes conjugation for many ikes verbs, as these forms now sound “artificially”. So this is not a linguistic question, this is a social question. There are words that will be always used with ikes conjugation by highly educated people, for example LAKOM, ALSZOM, ESZEM, ISZOM, DOLGOZOM, etc. But many people will say LAKOK, ALSZOK, ESZEK, ISZOK, DOLGOZOK, etc. I have no statistics data, but in my opinion 25 % of the Hungarian native speakers use the 1st person ikes form in some verbs, and 75 % don’t use it at all. These 25 % tend to think that the other 75 % are speaking “incorrectly”, but this is a myth. So it is totally up to you. This is why I havent corrected these in your texts – I don’t consider using the iktelen conjugation an error, this is a normal form used by most native speakers too. The most important thing is to remember that ikes conjugation IS NOT definite conjugation. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| maxval Pentaglot Senior Member Bulgaria maxval.co.nr Joined 4862 days ago 852 posts - 1577 votes Speaks: Hungarian*, Bulgarian, English, Spanish, Russian Studies: Latin, Modern Hebrew | Message 211 of 1549 08 March 2011 at 9:19am | IP Logged | |||||
There are two diffent words: tanul and tanít. Tanul is learn, tanít is teach. tanul: tanulok / tanulom tanulsz / tanulod tanul / tanulja tanulunk / tanuljuk tanultok / tanuljátok tanulnak / tanulják tanít: tanítok / tanítom tanítsz / tanítod tanít / tanítja tanítunk / tanítjuk taníttok OR tanítotok / tanítjátok tanítanak / tanítják 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| maxval Pentaglot Senior Member Bulgaria maxval.co.nr Joined 4862 days ago 852 posts - 1577 votes Speaks: Hungarian*, Bulgarian, English, Spanish, Russian Studies: Latin, Modern Hebrew | Message 212 of 1549 08 March 2011 at 9:50am | IP Logged | |||||
This is the hardest thing in Hungarian language! There was a few years ago a poll among non-native foreign students at universities in Budapest with the question "What do you consider the hardest part in the Hungarian language?". The answers were the following: 3rd place: the pronunciation, 2nd place: the correct use of the indefinite and the definite conjugation, 1st place with significantly overwhelming majority: the word order with verbal prefixes. Problem is that there is no clear rule. The main rule is that it depends on the context and on the logical emphasis of the sentence. There are three cases: - normal with the verb, preponed: elolvas (is the word “preponed” correct or it is my invention?) - postponed, after the verb: olvas el - separated: el (other word) olvas Holnap elolvasom ezt a könyvet. – Tomorrow I will read this book - simple sentence. Holnap olvasom el ezt a könyvet. Tomorrow I will read this book – exactly tomorrow, not today, or not the next week. In negative sentences and in imperative sentences usually it is used in postponed version: “nem olvasom el”, “olvasd el”. But if there a diffent logical emphasis, it can be different. Example: “a könyvet nem elolvasom, hanem megtanulom” (I wont read the book, I will learn it”. Or “elolvasd” will be used if it is a very direct, aggressive command. If there is a modal type word, usually the separated form is used: A könyvet el kell olvasnod. So my advive is to use in negative sentences the postponed version, this will be correct in 95 % of cases. In imperative setences use also this form, it will be correct. Nem olvasom el, olvasd el. If you use a modal type verb, as kell, tud, lehet, etc, then always use the separated form. El kell olvasnom, el lehet olvasni, el tudom olvasni. In normal positive indicative sentences it is the most difficult. Try to use the “normal”, preponed version, this will be correct in 50 % of the cases 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| maxval Pentaglot Senior Member Bulgaria maxval.co.nr Joined 4862 days ago 852 posts - 1577 votes Speaks: Hungarian*, Bulgarian, English, Spanish, Russian Studies: Latin, Modern Hebrew | Message 213 of 1549 08 March 2011 at 10:22am | IP Logged | |||||
Something interesting. A few years ago I worked for the Finnish company Nokia. Nokia has the policy to transfer most of its departments outside of Finland – the reason is obvious, Finland is among the first places in Europe in salary/wage level, for example Finnish wages are 20-30 % higher than British wages and are 3 times higher than in the Czech Republic. (I think in Europe only Norway, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein and Monaco have higher salaries than Finland.) So, the Customer Support Department and the Complains Department for Eastern and Central Europe is in Bulgaria. I worked there, first in CS, then in the Complains Department. There were 20 language groups for every major language of importance for Nokia (German, Czech, Slovak, Polish, Hungarian, Ukraian, etc, now I wont give the full list). In the Hungarian group there were half of the people native speakers and the other half Bulgarian native speakers who know Hungarian. The level among them was very high, everybody was at a C2 level, there was even people with Hungarian literary awards! Some of them had a little accent, but this is normal, they had no grammatical errors – accent is a problem when speaking by the phone, but in replying to emails its obviously not a problem (we had both phone and email support). The only mistake these colleagues sometimes made was the word order with verbal prefixes! In cases when the logical emphasis was not in the usual place, they committed mistakes. So this is normal. The only way to learn this is to read Hungarian texts and practice. I personally know foreigners who never commit mistakes. My father had such an Austrian friend. Hungarians even didn’t suspect that he wasn’t with Hungarian native language. Once, a Hungarian heard him speaking German and said “wow, you speak German very good, how did you learn German so perfectly”. When he told German was his native language, the Hungarian man didn’t want to believe it. Something different, I have to mention it. I am sorry to say that, but a big part, maybe half of the Hungarians are kind of xenophobic and racist people. There were attacks from clients against colleagues speaking C2 level with a little accent of the kind of “So Nokia has no enough money to hire NORMAL people? Are you a f**king Thailandese whore? Go back to Thailand or China or Russia or wherever you came from and learn Hungarian!”. But don’t worry about this, the other half of the Hungarians are normal people! 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| hribecek Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5138 days ago 1243 posts - 1458 votes Speaks: English*, Czech, Spanish Studies: Italian, Polish, Slovak, Hungarian, Toki Pona, Russian | Message 214 of 1549 08 March 2011 at 12:40pm | IP Logged | |||||
It's quite possible that I'm being stupid here but I still don't get this. My English sentence was 'Now I'm a teacher, I teach English', so I don't understand why the translation is 'most tanítom vagyok, az angol nyelvet tanom'? What is 'tanom' from? And why wouldn't it be 'most tanár vagyok, az angol nyelvet tanítom'?? I know that 'tanul' is learn. Edited by hribecek on 08 March 2011 at 12:41pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| hribecek Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5138 days ago 1243 posts - 1458 votes Speaks: English*, Czech, Spanish Studies: Italian, Polish, Slovak, Hungarian, Toki Pona, Russian | Message 215 of 1549 08 March 2011 at 12:54pm | IP Logged | |||||
To be honest I'm not sure exactly what the correct linguistic term for this is but I'm pretty sure it's not preponed and postponed. I would say prefixed for the first but I don't know about the second because it's not a suffix obviously. I'd say simply that the verbal particle (is this even the right term for them!?) comes after the verb. I haven't studied any languages with this ability to separate the particle from the verb so I'm not sure of the correct term. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| hribecek Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 5138 days ago 1243 posts - 1458 votes Speaks: English*, Czech, Spanish Studies: Italian, Polish, Slovak, Hungarian, Toki Pona, Russian | Message 216 of 1549 08 March 2011 at 12:55pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Thanks as usual for such a thorough answer. You're such a fantastic resource for me!
1 person has voted this message useful |
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