In what would appear to be an exercise in empathy, I’m undertaking another scholastic quest: attempting to learn a foreign language (again).
Despite Hungary being a European country, Hungarian is not part of the Indo-European family tree. It’s actually part of the Ugrian subgroup of Uralic languages, and it’s nearest ‘relatives’ are Finnish and Estonian. It is considered to be one of the most difficult languages for an English speaker to master, which isn’t surprising really considering Hungarian uses the Latin alphabet and nouns can have up to 238 possible forms.
In light of my complete mathematical incompetence it’s difficult to say whether learning Hungarian is a more or less realistic aspiration than achieving a C grade at Maths GCSE. But nevertheless I am undeterred! In my quest I’m employing a nifty little app called Memrise that uses flashcards and mnemonics, and I’ll take up classes once I get to Hungary.
I realise this may sound all too familiar to some of you. Last year, after a promising start (I managed to learn the Korean alphabet and half a dozen key phrases before I left the UK) my dream of learning an ultimately useless foreign language floundered somewhat , and in the end I never got any further than the basics.
But I vow that this year will be different! I will master a language spoken by a single community of people if it’s the last thing I do.
Got any tools or tips for conquering Hungarian?
Lauren in Translation 
You’ll be grand. I believe!! Do u think anyone speaks english?
Kchan! I think more so than in Kland but idk that might just be in Budapest…there’s not that much info for the place we’re going to so it’s gonna be a surprise 😛 when are you back in Ireland??
Language school fo’sho’. Seriously though, I learned a lot in just 18 weeks. I should have taken more classes, but I couldn’t afford them.
Are they pretty expensive?