TUNE UP

One trick to getting your Hungarian off to a good start is good pronunciation of vowels. It's easy to do, once you get your mind around it... and your mouth. Like with the western choice of pentatonic scale in music, (where middle A  on a piano is 440hz) it's really an arbitrary starting point. So in indian and arab music scales, the system is based on other places to tune your tone to. This is your new “language scale” for hungarian vowel sounds:

a á e é i í o ó u ú ö ő ü ű

(notice: y is not a vowel and doesn't ever work as one).

Yes, there are a couple that don't appear in English but I have ways to learn them easily. Yes, there are fourteen of them written but they each have only one sound attached. In spelling, there are no silent 'e's at the end of words, no combinations of ea or ei or eu or eigh. E is e and so are all the other vowels. Hungarian is phonetic.

THE EASY ONES ARE THE EXCEPTIONS

Be warned, the markings on the letters do not suggest sentence stress or syllable intonation. They are simply and mercilessly different sounds. Actually, only the first two Hungarian vowels are in truly different places in your mouth. The others simply lengthen the original sound.

The short a is close to "aw" as in "law" (but don't slide down to the 'w' at the end). No moving your mouth until the sound is over! Keep all sounds unmixed with the previous and following ones. Try the US pronunciation of “sought”, or "caught", similar to the British pronunciation of "hot", and now look at this Hungarian word: hat ...it means 6.

Try matt (check-mate) and say both 't's!

or ba (into) which usually comes at the end of words like a kocsmába (into the bar)

or the exclamation Na!  which is roughly “What are we waiting for? Let's move into the bar!”

DIGRESSION: the english indefinite article "a" is the exact opposite in hungarian, taking the definite article's job. So a kocsmába means "into the bar". This is one of the pesky opposites that were most difficult for me to get used to hearing and using when I started. It can be done, but only by physically practicing it. If you've been making a list of new words from this blog like SERIOUS students, go back and put a in front of the nouns and practice them aloud.

BACK TO VOWELS: The long á is open, like what you say at the ear nose throat doctor. Open and say “ah”. This sound will come to your mouth unintentionally when you try your first Hungarian "pálinka". If you remember the stuff from previous Plone conferences which Balázs attended, you can remember the sound. If not, put that "ah" sound into the previous short a example and you get:

hát ...which means the back of something. Fáj a hátam - my back hurts.

I also use hát to fill time while I'm deciding what to say, like the English word “Well...”. You'll hear this on the streets a lot, and when you ask service personnel if something can be done. Usually followed by nem tudom - meaning "I don't know."

The short 'e' sound is like the 'e' in “get”. It's always like that. Just e . It's very common in Hungarian words. “Le!” means down, and works to get a dog off the couch. My condolences to French speakers, just practice it.

The word eke like the German ecke means plow in Hungarian. TWO syllables, both e's pronounced the same.

The long é is pronounced about halfway up from “hey” to “he.” Smile when you say it. It's farther back up in your throat.

lé - slang for money now, originally means juice or broth; éber - awake; egészséges - healthy; béna - lame; kész - I'm done.

THE REGULAR ONES

The letter i denotes a quick “ee” sound, so "fit" would sound like a fast “feet”. Like the Spanish i sound. The long í sound is more like “feet” at regular speed in English. No worries! This difference is difficult for some Hungarians, and nobody can really tell the difference when speaking. So hít (pronounced "heat") means belief; sit (pronounced "sheet") means construction rubble; itt - here; megabit is said "megabeat"; segítség - help; indítas - start up of an engine.

The short o sound is like our long o as in hope. Try három (three) or telefon or szoba (a room).

The long ó is just a bit deeper in your throat with your mouth tightened to make a 'w' sound. Try szóda (soda water), or jó which means “good”, or kóla (a coke).

The short u most often comes in the middle of words like in kutatás (research) or futni (to run). The long ú is used for út (a big road) but the short u is found in the diminutive version utca. kutya - dog; szuper- super; One of my favorite new magyar slang acquisitions from english is lúzer - meaning loser! If they were all so easy...

NOT FOUND IN ENGLISH

German speakers will have no problem with the ö sound. It's an English short i sound like in kit BUT with your mouth closed like you're saying an “oo” sound as in “boot”. Make the “oo” sound. Hold your mouth there. Say a bunch of words that rhyme with "kit".

köt means “to tie”; löncshús means “canned meat”; szörp – a syrup used to make a kool-aid like refreshment out of elderberries or raspberries; röplabda – volleyball; flört – people to find in bars; döf means “jab or stab something into something”.

[By the way, in parts of south-central hungary, they pronounce the short e sounds with a short ö, so the town of Szeged is actually pronounced (but not spelled) “Szögöd”.]

The long version ő shows up at the end of words or word roots or begins a word. This will help you break up compound words and separate the suffixes and prefixes. Consider this compound word for example: rendőr (policeman)

Logically, I want to ask my friend what a ren is and what a dőr is. But when I learned that rend means order and őr means guardian or guard, I understood why my friends laughed at my question, and also about where to expect these long vowel sounds.

Look at: kettő (the number 2); mező (meadow or field); előtt (in front or before); bőr (skin), bő (plenty); nagybőgő (stand-up double bass), főzelék (traditional stewed food that nobody can explain)

Now for the ü sound. Say “cute” but don't say the 'y' sound in it. If you're like I was before I started teaching English, you probably never noticed there's an unwritten 'y' in "cyute". Now that you know this, you're not far from pronouncing the hungarian ü sound. Try pouting up an “oo” sound again with your lips, hold the pout, and say a long 'e' sound in English. So “eel” + (pout) becomes ül (to sit) and “measly” + (pout) becomes müzli (breakfast cereal). The same works for the long version it's just... uh, longer.

So feet + (pout) becomes the hungarian fűt (to heat a house). Easy, huh! Now try: műterem (studio workshop), művész (artist), betű (alphabet letter), tűz (fire).

Those are all the sounds! It's been slow going but these basics are important. If you want further study, check the wikipedia article on hungarian phonology. For practice, open any site with a .hu in the URL. I'll be giving you numbers and basic expressions in the next article.