Originally Posted by
acidfast7
Sie müssen mehr Deutsch mit mir sprechen weil ich möchte besser Deutsch sprechen.
Hungarian is quite hard. I picked up some
really basic conversational Hungarian while spending time in Bakonyoszlop, Veszprém and Balatonfüred.
I follow CFR Cluj because I spent some time in Cluj-Napoca and the stadium is right next some of my buddies houses. Got to use some of my crappy Hungarian and found out the Romanian sounds quite similar to Italian. There was a 50-year old woman we stayed with who was trained in English for 2 years during the late 70s and early 80s in "gymnasium." She was quite happy to talk with an American. Hungarians are quite proud and I was fascinated to learn about the history of the Hungarian kingdom (1000 years!).
German didn't help at all.
I need to get some slavic language training
My German wife corrects you:
Sie müssen mehr Deutsch mit mir sprechen, weil ich besser Deutsch sprechen möchte .
"Modal werb is always at the end in causal sentences".
STAZI wife always reads my mail and EVERYTHING must be correct. Her English is with a strong Arnold-Schwarzenegger accent!
Part of Serbia where I live, northern one, called Vojvodina (Dukeland is a liberal translation to English) used to be a province of (Austro)Hungarian empire, with a Serbian majority and lots of Hungarians and Germans. After WW2, most Germans were driven out (quite an injustice IMO) and it was inhabited by Serbs from poor parts of Bosnia and Montenegro - those people were starving and Vojvodina has lots of fertile land, perfect for raising crops.
All in all, Hungarian is mostly a part of culture, especially in the north. Hungarian neighbours are quite proud of their history: they were giving Turks (Otoman empire) a really hard time. Hungarians have great culture, I can confirm (generally) they cook great, their women are the most passionate ones and their work ethic is really good.
What you said about Italian and Romanian is true. With Italian being the most beautiful language (next to Russian) and VERY easy to learn. After 2 days in Italy I could speak sentences, understand basic signs and say what I need. It took me a week to do so in German, but still was worse. As far as Hungarian language goes, it is unlike any other language IMO. Nothing similar, nothing to compare with. My experience was that most Hungarian Hungarians
don't speak English. Not good at all. I believe they are worse than the French.
As far as politics go: Hungary is giving Hungarian citizenship to citizens of former great Hungarian empire, so I could get an EU Hungarian passport.
Nationalism starting to grow there - like in the '90s Serbia. I'm alergic to nationalism.
Slavic ones: Russians understand Serbs, but Serbs can't understand Russians. Don't know why (maybe we're more stupid
). All the former Yugoslavia countries are similar: Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin are all the same - differ like US and UK English - no more. They all used to be called - Serbo-Croatian language. Macedonian is somewhere between Bulgarian and Serbian IMO, but can be understood if you speak Serbian well. Slovenian is a bit more exotic - most Slovenians understand Serbian though.
One beauty of Serbo-Croatian is it has two alphabets. Cyrilic and Latin. After the break up of Yugoslavia and rise of nationalism, Latin was cast out of Serbia (now official alphabet is cyrilic), while Cyrilic was cast out of Croatia. Still, most people over 20 years of age can fluently read and write in both alphabets (used to be obligatory to learn them both). Also, Serbo-Croatian is a "phonetic" language. Everything is written the way it is pronaunced. So while it has 7 tenses (what do you call that, like in ancient Latin?), when you know what you need to write down it is easy. Also, reading is as simple as it gets - you see it writen, you read it out letter by letter and get it right. Whichever is easier.
Here's an example:
English:
I am happy.
Serbian latin:
Aj em hepi.
Serbian cyrilic:
Ај ем хепи.