If you’re interested in learning the Hungarian language then you may want to know a little bit more about it before starting.
This post will cover if it is hard to learn Hungarian as an English speaker and the similarities and differences between English and Hungarian.
It will also answer how long it takes to learn Hungarian.
Table of Contents
Is Hungarian Hard To Learn?
Language Families
English is part of the Indo-European language family which means it has lots of similarities with other languages that are part of that family including French, Spanish, Italian and German.
Hungarian is part of the Uralic language family. Other languages that fall within this family are Finnish and Estonian.
These language families group together languages that descend from a common ancestral language.
Learning languages from the same language family tends to be easier as these languages share many similar characteristics with one another.
The similarities vary between languages but can include vocabulary, word order, grammar, pronunciation and word composition.
As English and Hungarian come from different languages families this means it would be very hard for an English speaker to learn Hungarian.
This means that Hindi (an Indo-European language) actually has more in common with English/French/German/Russian etc than Hungarian does.
This has led to Hungarian having a reputation for being a very difficult language to learn.
So, how hard is it to learn Hungarian?
Well, there are many differences between English and Hungarian that do make it difficult.
These include grammatical cases, use of idioms, pronunciation and more.
I’ve discussed the similarities and differences between English and Hungarian in depth later in the post.
Can Hungarian Be Easy To Learn?
Even though Hungarian is hard to learn for an English speaker, it’s definitely do-able and there’s tons of amazing resources out there that will make the learning process much easier.
My top recommendation is the Pimsleur Hungarian course. This fantastic audio course will get you speaking from day 1 and it is a good starting point for absolute beginners.
This course is perfect for anyone who wants to focus on being able to speak the language (rather than just reading and writing). You can try the first Pimsleur Hungarian lesson for free to see if you like it.
Another recommendation is Glossika which is a great resource for building up vocabulary and learning to speak the language fluently.
Glossika is better suited for people at a lower intermediate level rather than absolute beginners.
The best thing about Glossika is that they help you to acquire the language (rather than memorizing). It’s a fun, easy and effective way to learn Hungarian.
As Hungarian is not a dying language, there’s millions of people to practice with. See if you can find some local Hungarian speakers to chat with.
One way to speed up your learning is by typing in Hungarian. I’d recommend changing the keyboard on your laptop to Hungarian. Check out the guide below:
Similar Languages
If you speak another similar language, such as Finnish or Estonian, then you may find Hungarian much easier to learn.
A Finnish or Estonian person wouldn’t be able to understand Hungarian straight away as the languages do fall under different branches of the same language family.
However, the languages do share many similarities so you should be able to pick up Hungarian quicker if you know another language from the Uralic language family (like Finnish or Estonian).
How Hard Is It To Learn Hungarian Compared To Other Languages?
It would be much easier for a native English speaker to learn Hungarian than some other languages such as Mandarin Chinese, Arabic, Korean and Japanese.
However learning Hungarian will be much harder than learning Indo-European languages such as French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch and German.
Hungarian is also harder to learn than Slavic (otherwise known as Slavonic) languages like Russian and Polish.
This is because Slavic languages are part of the Indo-European language family, so they will be more closely related to English than Hungarian.
Many people think that Russian and Hungarian are similar languages but this isn’t true.
Hungarian is quite different to Russian as they developed along different paths and from different language families.
How Similar Are Hungarian And English?
There are many similarities and many differences between English and Hungarian. Below I have summarised the main ones.
Similarities Between Hungarian & English
English and Hungarian do have some similarities, many of these make learning Hungarian much easier.
Gender
You’ll be happy to know that words do not have grammatical gender in Hungarian. English also doesn’t have grammatical gender.
If you’ve studied Spanish or French before you’ll know all about gender. Each noun will be either masculine or feminine (or neuter in some other languages like Polish).
This can be tricky for English speakers but luckily you won’t have to worry about it with Hungarian.
Loan Words
Hungarian does have some loan words from English which also makes it easier to learn.
If you’ve ever studied Spanish or French you’ll know there’s lots of loan words taken from English which make the learning process much easier.
For example, the word ‘television’ in Spanish is ‘televisión’.
Hungarian does also have some loan words. See if you can guess what the Hungarian words listed below mean in English.
- Parlament
- Oxigén
- StÃlus
- Reneszánsz
- Tévé
- Bank
- Dráma
- Elefánt
- Taxi
- Alkohol
- Park
There are at least 500 of these loan words in Hungarian.
No Dialects
Whilst there are many different dialects of English, they are easily understandable by groups who speak a different dialect.
For example, someone from New York could easily understand someone from London.
Hungarian is exactly the same. Everyone that speaks Hungarian speaks the same standard language so you don’t have to worry about dialects at all.
Differences Between Hungarian & English
As English and Hungarian are from different language families, there are many differences.
Some of these differences make Hungarian hard to learn but some actually make it easier!
Cases
Hungarian has 18 cases whereas English doesn’t really use the case system.
Cases are a feature of languages where the ending of a word changes to indicate the role that the word plays in the sentence.
For example, the word for house in Hungarian is ‘ház’ in its most basic form but there are actually 36 different versions of this word if you consider the 18 cases with each having a singular and plural form.
This means the word for house in Hungarian could also be ‘házat’, ‘házakban’, ‘házakhoz’, ‘házról’, ‘házért’, ‘házig’ and many more!
Hungarian cases aren’t as complex as cases in other languages such as Russian or Polish.
In fact, the grammatical cases in Hungarian are only present in place of prepositions.
For example, in English we would say ‘in the house’ with ‘in’ being the preposition.
In Hungarian, this is written by adding a suffix to the word for house. You’d say this as ‘the house-in’ or ‘házban’.
Once you’ve learnt the basic rules of each case, you’ll find them quite easy.
It will just take some time at the beginning to memorize the different word endings and then you’ll be fine.
Many people say that the complexity of Hungarian cases is often exaggerated and they’re very different to cases present in other complex languages like Russian.
Idioms
Hungarian is a very expressive language and it relies on idioms a lot more than other languages like English.
Idioms are common expressions that mean something different to the literal meaning of the words e.g. ‘over the moon’ in English is an idiom.
Hungarian uses a lot of idioms in everyday speech so even if you understand what the individual words mean you may not fully understand what is being said.
For example, a common Hungarian idiom is ‘ha lúd, legyen kövér’ which literally translates to ‘if it’s a goose, it should be fat’. This means that if you’re doing something, you should experience it to the fullest.
Pronunciation
Pronunciation of words in Hungarian can be difficult for English speakers as Hungarian contains many sounds that don’t exist in the English language.
The language sounds very ‘throaty’ and it may take some time to be able to mimic these sounds and learn correct pronunciation of words.
The words ‘új’ and ‘ujj’ mean ‘new’ and ‘finger’ respectively but sound almost identical to the untrained ear.
Hungarian has 14 different vowels (the main difference between them is their accents) e.g. a, á, e, é, o, ó, ö, ő.
This means that you’ll find words often have lots of accents that may look unfamiliar to an English speaker.
For example, the word for ‘fountain’ in Hungarian is ‘szökőkút’. Try saying it then click on it to hear the correct pronunciation.
Luckily though, once you’ve got the hang of the pronunciation of each letter you’ll find that words are almost always spelt exactly the same as they are pronounced.
Word Order
In general, in English the word order is quite rigid meaning there is one way to order words in a sentence and any other way would be incorrect e.g. ‘we went to the beach’ sounds fine but ‘the beach to we went’ sounds unnatural.
In Hungarian word order is very flexible meaning you can play around with words and cases in different orders in a sentence and it will still make sense.
This is great for language learners as it’s one less thing to worry about.
Verb Tenses
Verb tenses in Hungarian are actually really simple which is great to know.
Whilst English has 12 tenses, Hungarian has just 3 tenses – past, present and future. Easy, right!?
How Long Does It Take To Learn Hungarian For An English Speaker?
On average it would take about 1100 hours or 44 weeks to learn Hungarian for an English speaker.
This is based on the language classification system created by the Foreign Service Institute.
The Foregin Service Institute has several language categories that categorize how long it takes for a student to reach ‘professional working proficiency’ in a language.
They have put Hungarian into category III which they describe as ‘hard languages’ which have ‘significant linguistic and/or cultural differences from English’.
Some consider Hungarian to be the hardest language within this category.
Other languages that fall into this category include Russian, Polish, Lithuanian and many more.
1100 hours or 44 weeks is the average time that it takes students to learn to speak Hungarian, however this can vary depending on many factors.
This assumes you do 25 hours of studying a week. If you’re not able to dedicate this much time to learning Hungarian it may take you longer.
Your progress may actually be much faster if you already speak a similar language such as Finnish or Estonian.
Is Hungarian Worth Learning?
The answer to whether Hungarian is worth learning is really up to you.
As I mentioned previously, it would take you roughly 1100 hours or 44 weeks to learn Hungarian.
This is a lot of time and effort and you have to have a lot of motivation and discipline to achieve this.
If you do decide to learn Hungarian you will get a lot out of it.
Hungarian is spoken by around 13 million people around the world, mainly in Hungary.
By learning Hungarian you would be able to communicate with 13 million people and enjoy their vibrant and interesting culture.
This can range from movies, TV shows, music, poetry, books and much more.
Hungarian is a very old language, rich in culture and heritage.
In fact, the Hungarian language existed at least 1,000 years before English and maybe even before Latin!
If you’re interested in learning Hungarian why not start by learning how to say hello in Hungarian.
Check out our other Hungarian content here.
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