Exploring Hungarian from Folksongs for English Speakers: 101
Using lyrics from a simple song students begin to learn to read Hungarian text, building vocabulary and grammar.
What you will learn
Explain what a digraph is
Give examples of digraphs in English and Hungarian
Correctly pronounce Hungarian digraphs
Read aloud the words to Kilenc kis gólya
Optionally sing the folksong Kilenc kis gólya
Count from 1 to 10 in Hungarian
Form plurals for regular nouns in Hungarian
Explain the idea of “vowel harmony”
Why take this course?
In this course I am going to share two of my passions – Hungarian language and singing. The singing is optional – but by singing the words you will find it sticks better.
An easy, fun introduction to the Hungarian Language.
- Learn to read Hungarian words aloud
- Learn to sing a simple Hungarian song
- Learn how to count to 10
- Form simple plurals
Learn to speak Hungarian by singing.
I decided on this approach to learning Hungarian as I struggled with keeping up spoken Hungarian in an English speaking environment. I remembered my Hungarian family who would sing for hours and realized it is a great way to practice the language.
This course will introduce you to the Hungarian alphabet. We start first with the consonants which stress out English speakers (those combined letters like “sz” or “ty”). Using that knowledge, we will try the words of a simple Hungarian folksong.
You will find that much of Hungarian pronunciation is predictable and easy as we try to read the song lyrics. I will help you with the words – and tell you what they mean. Then I will sing them to you. I encourage you to sing along at home.
Then we will explore some vocabulary and grammar suggest by the song. In this case counting and plurals. And yes, there is a 102 planned.
You should finish the course with a sense of achievement and a new song to sing.