LESSON NOTES

All About S1 #2 Cracking the Hungarian Writing System!

CONTENTS
2 Grammar

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GRAMMAR
The Focus of This Lesson Is the Hungarian Writing System

Hungarian used to have its own writing system called Old Hungarian script, but only a very few amount of text remained. Instead, Hungarians adopted the Latin alphabet very early, around the eleventh century. What we call the Hungarian alphabet today, is actually the Latin basis extended to conform to the characteristics of the Hungarian language. Alphabet When learning the Hungarian alphabet, the good news is that it is mostly phoneticthat is, once you learn which letter corresponds to which sounds you're pretty much done, you can read Hungarian decently. Apart from a few traditional forms and exceptions, this rule stands. The alphabet has 40 or 44 letters, depending on whether you include Q, W, X and Y, which appear rarely and only in names and foreign words. Using the greater alphabet here, Hungarian has 30 consonants. Prospective students should will be happy to know that there are no little squiggly marks or any other weird symbols that human imagination can conjure upbut you will have to learn what the combination of two consonant letters represent. Here is the list of all the consonants in the order they appear in the alphabet: b, c, cs, d, dz, dzs, f, g, gy, h, j, k, l, ly, m, n, ny, p, q, r, s, sz, t, ty, v, w, x, y, z, zs. The vowels are a bit more challenging, what makes them easier is that they come in pairs of short-long sounds (or at least this is how they are taught). The seven pairs are: a-, e-, i-, o-, -, u-, - Some of these might look bewildering at first, especially , which is the arch-enemy of all the world processing softwares even today. But really, once you learn the first one of the pair, the short vowel, forming the longer version is easywith the exception of a- and e-, where the difference is not in length, but equally straightforward. The layout of a Hungarian keyboard is very similar to the English one, but instead of being QWERTY it is QWERTZ (the German type). Other than z and y trading places, everything is at the same position. The specifically Hungarian vowel letters can be found on the right side

HUNGARIANPOD101.COM

ALL ABOUT S1 #2 - CRACKING THE HUNGARIAN WRITING SYSTEM!

while like to wonder around the left side of the keyboard. Using the Hungarian keyboard to type English is very easy, except for the infuriating reflex of hitting z every time you want to write y. If you'd like to follow along with the audio, the full alphabet in order is: A, , B, C, Cs, D, Dz, Dzs, E, , F, G, Gy, H, I, , J, K, L, Ly, M, N, Ny, O, , , , P, Q, R, S, Sz, T, Ty, U, , , , V, W, X, Y, Z, Zs.

HUNGARIANPOD101.COM

ALL ABOUT S1 #2 - CRACKING THE HUNGARIAN WRITING SYSTEM!