PONS Grammar - Practical & Easy Hungarian offers a clearly constructed view of present-day Hungarian. The succinctly formulated rules of its grammar are illustrated with a wealth of examples in English translation.

PONS Grammar is also careful to highlight those problematic areas that present potential 'traps' for language learners.

The following signposts have also been designed to help learners master the language more quickly:

Here a rule or a special feature of grammar is highlighted.

In this 'helpful tips' section the book helps you to remember a feature of the grammar more easily.

The asterisk shows an incorrect/ungrammatical formation (e.g. pronunciation, word form, etc.)

Here special points of contrast between English and Hungarian are enumerated.

The arrow will direct the learner to other chapters in this book

In case you are interested in a specific issue of the grammar, you can turn to the concise Subject index section at the back that will direct you to the appropriate location in the book. This way the book will become a helpful guide in getting to grips with the grammar of Hungarian.

Good luck and enjoy learning!

Magyar – Magyarok

Hungarian – Hungarians

Hungarian is a fascinating language quite different from most other European languages. It is the westernmost member of the Finno-Ugric language family, having Finnish, Estonian and several less well-known languages as its distant cousins. In addition to the approximately 10 million speakers in Hungary proper, several million native Hungarian speakers dwell in the neighbouring countries of Romania, Slovakia, Serbia, Croatia and Austria.

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Hungarian is challenging for the adult hungarian private teacher language learner for two main reasons: English and Hungarian share very little common vocabulary, so each new word you learn will look very different from its English counterpart. Some loan words from English and other languages are easier to recognize than others: bank, telefon, posta are some obvious ones, but until you get the knack of Hungarian spelling, words like szendvics 'sandwich', and menedzser 'manager' may make you pause though their origins are clear. English has even borrowed a word from Hungarian: our 'coach' comes from kocsi (a word used nowadays in Hungarian to mean anything from coach to personal cars or wagons on a train). Although more words from other European languages hungarian teacher district 9 are being adopted by the Hungarian language all the time, the bulk of the vocabulary is as rich, varied and home-made as Hungary's folk traditions.

With few exceptions, the written language mostly reflects the pronunciation of words, thus, from a phonetic point of view, Hungarian is quite easy to master. It is the structure of Hungarian that is the big surprise, sharing few common elements with the Germanic, Romance and Slavic languages of its neighbours. Hungarian is a so-called 'agglutinative' language - meaning that several endings can be attached ('glued') to a root word to change not only its meaning, but its role in a sentence as well. Instead of using prepositions, Hungarian adds a case ending; and instead of expressing possession with a word like 'my', 'your', Hungarian adds an ending. You will see that your fluency in the language takes shape not only with the number of words you learn, but how long you can make them!

After several millennia travelling across the steppes gergely and central Eurasia the Magyars settled in their current homeland in the centre of Europe in 896. From their earliest times and throughout known history they have always been in close contact (for better or worse) with a large variety of peoples and languages. In modern times - perhaps especially since the change of government in 1989 - Hungary can be considered the bridge between East and West from a political, economic, cultural and religious point of view. Linguistically, however, it stands quite alone in Central Europe.

Colloquial Hungarian

Every step of the way, we have endeavoured to make this book lively, contemporary, and relevant to the daily encounters of the language learner. Whether you have business or relatives in Hungary, or are enticed to study its exquisite language and culture for other reasons, this book is meant to equip you with situational savvy, up-to-date vocabulary and expressions, and a clear outline of the rules of the language and its structure.

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