Hungarian forum -Top All Time posts

My thoughts on the Hungarian course as a Hungarian speaker

122

5 years agoby jzsuzsi
https://archive.ph/TbTXo

58

STICKY

Collection of useful forum posts

89

3 years agoby jzsuzsi
https://archive.ph/laGcz

15

Thx for this course!

76

5 years agoby jrikhal
https://archive.ph/gY6tw

14

Just a reminder -- we are beta-testing.

61

5 years agoby spiraldancing
https://archive.ph/bJ1WX

10

The story of the Hungarian course

55

10 months agoby jzsuzsi
https://archive.ph/GqwIu

69

Tree 2

55

2 years agoby jzsuzsi
https://archive.ph/ubK2a

21

A legjobb kurzus Duolingon

48

5 years agoby magnetholik
https://archive.ph/SArOG

19

STICKY

Saving forum posts

45

1 month agoby jzsuzsi
https://archive.ph/ti1R1

23

General Hungarian Course Feedback

42

5 years agoby YCW0
https://archive.ph/8JGDy

46

My favorite Hungarian bands/musicians

42

5 years agoby magnetholik
https://archive.ph/L0y3m

19

Story translation: Jó reggelt!

39

1 year agoby jzsuzsi
https://archive.ph/rOjUo

23

Back from Budapest and a bit proud of my Hungarian skills.

40

3 years agoby Hubinou
https://archive.ph/uWiWt

[#DuolingoForumGems originally posted on 2019-01-15 on the Duolingo Hungarian for English speakers forum by jzsuzsi ]  https://archive.ph/laGcz

Collection of useful forum posts

Thanks to this community, there are so-so many useful comments in the Forum, explaining Hungarian grammar. But they are not easy to find. Here, I try to collect them.

If you don't want to click through all of these, just quickly get some answers (to questions that come up often and have relatively short answers) take a look at this:
Frequently asked questions. What is the difference between ... kérek/akarok, tud/ismer, idős/öreg/régi, kettő/két, kicsi/kis, hanem/de ... https://magyarbagoly.blogspot.com/2022/01/here-are-some-questions-and-answers.html

Grammar

When should we omit „van”?
Main post: https://magyarbagoly.blogspot.com/2022/01/when-to-use-vanvannak.html
see also: https://archive.ph/aXaMb sentence discussion for „A férfi tűzoltó”

Van and nincs
https://magyarbagoly.blogspot.com/2022/01/van-and-nincs.html

What is a general statement? https://archive.ph/C614U (sentence discussion)

An adjective is singular or plural:
Main post: https://magyarbagoly.blogspot.com/2022/01/plural-adjectives.html
(also for milyen and milyenek)
see also: https://archive.ph/ldxCo  (sentence discussion) „Mi van a kicsi táskákban?”

The use of articles in Hungarian https://magyarbagoly.blogspot.com/2022/02/the-use-of-articles-in-hungarian.html

Using "egy" https://magyarbagoly.blogspot.com/2022/02/using-egy.html

Nem- Hanem sentences
https://magyarbagoly.blogspot.com/2022/01/nem-hanem-sentences.html

Hungarian Cases For Beginners
https://magyarbagoly.blogspot.com/2022/02/hungarian-cases-for-beginners.html

Difference between "mellett" and "-nél/-nál"
https://magyarbagoly.blogspot.com/2022/02/difference-between-mellett-and-nel-nal.html
(and also https://archive.ph/bDPqJ sentence discussion)

Ami, amelyik, amely
https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/19015205 = https://archive.ph/tdBxk
 https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/17279272 =  https://archive.ph/gvEFb  (SD)

Ott....ahol
 https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/26839319  = https://archive.ph/FAhGu   (SD)

Is, sem, and double negatives
 https://magyarbagoly.blogspot.com/2022/01/is-sem-and-double-negatives.html

előtt és elöl https://magyarbagoly.blogspot.com/2022/01/elott-es-elol.html

elől, előtt, elé https://forum.duolingo.com/comment/17986625  = https://archive.ph/uqPKq (SD)

Verb conjugations (present tense, indefinite)
https://magyarbagoly.blogspot.com/2022/01/verb-conjugations-present-indefinite.html

Grammar details: Definite and Indefinite https://magyarbagoly.blogspot.com/2022/01/definite-and-indefinite-conjugation.html

[#DuolingoForumGems originally posted on 2016-07-07 on the Duolingo Hungarian for English speakers forum by magnetholik] https://archive.ph/uhFHy

Additional resources for learning Hungarian

Here are some additional resources for learning Hungarian:

:::Material Available Online:::

MagyarÓra has a variety of listening and reading exercises. You can also purchase some of the books they made. I have the Hungarian Grammar book they make and it has a lot of great exercises and enlightening explanations. http://magyarora.com/english/index.html

Mango offers a course that is basically like an online version of Pimsleur (if you're familiar with that). It's an easy-going, slow-paced course that will build your confidence in the fundamentals of the language. It is free for many people in the US that have memberships at public libraries. Check to see if your library has a subscription. https://www.mangolanguages.com/available-languages/learn-hungarian/

FSI Course Materials. As you may be aware, old materials made by the US Foreign Service Institute are in the public domain. They are a bit old and rigid, but they are thorough and free to use. The graded reader has lots of wonderful and interesting passages, but you need an intermediate level before you attempt it. https://www.livelingua.com/project/fsi/Hungarian/

DLI Course Materials. Also in the public domain is the old course from the US Defense Language Institute. This course is also very drill heavy and it centers around many military themes, but it is quite thorough and helpful for beginners with its dozens of hours of listening exercises. Highly recommended if you have patience to work with materials that are a bit dated. https://www.livelingua.com/project/dli/Hungarian/

:::Decent textbooks I have used:::

Halló, itt Magyarország! (2 books) -- A decent course for beginners with plenty of dialogues and reading passages. Audio available.

Hungarolingua -- Another nice introductory course which has 3 books to it (going from zero Hungarian to intermediate). The books have interesting pictures and the passages are often somewhat amusing. The books are completely in Hungarian, so you have to purchase a glossary separately, or look up the words yourself (my recommendation). Supposedly there is audio and video that goes with the course, but I haven't been able to find it.

Assimil Hungarian -- It's a decent beginner's course (supposedly recently updated, but I haven't seen the newer version), but can be a bit frustrating at times. Some of the passages are a bit convoluted and some are downright useless, but it has a lot of content. I recommend taking it slow and being patient if you use this course. Audio available.

Teach Yourself and Colloquial Hungarian -- Of course introductory Hungarian is available from both the Teach Yourself and Colloquial series. They are both okay, but very tourist-focused. If you only purchase one, I recommend Colloquial because I think it gives a better introduction to the language. Audio available.

Hungarian Dialogues and "Dialogue Summaries" by Alexander Pavlenko. -- There are I think around 8 or 9 books in this series. The first books are really good for beginners because you get to see a lot of the same grammar and vocabulary repeated over and over again in novel ways, as opposed to constantly teaching you something new so you can never keep up. Unfortunately these were originally made for Hungarian speakers studying English, so the dialogues generally feature English people talking about English things, rather than a course based in Hungarian culture. There is audio available, but the recordings are just Hungarian speakers dully reading off the lines directly in an unmotivated monotone, so they're not too fun to listen to. The intermediate and upper-intermediate courses are also nice, but I don't think they're quite as helpful as the courses for beginners because the content is less focused. https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/hungarian-english-simple-hungarian/id679437290?mt=11

 [#DuolingoForumGems originally posted on 2020-05-23 on the Duolingo Hungarian for English speakers forum by MrtonPolgr ]

Behind the scenes: reporting, development of trees and more

Hi there!

If you are reading this post, you probably belong to the small minority of Duolingo users that contributors and other learners can access. This is amazing, you guys provide the most feedback to the courses while having a much better Duolingo experience thanks to all the knowledge that's available on the forum! There are things that you maybe haven't come across yet.
This post is meant for "naive" Duolingo users, like I was a couple of months ago, not quite knowing how Duolingo is programmed and what happens behind the scenes. Now that I have been a contributor for almost two months, I thought it would be good to share a couple of things that I learned from it. This includes to-do's, not-to-do's, general information about what you can expect in certain scenarios and of course my own personal opinion sometimes.

Reverse course

Something that may be unexpected is that a lot of resources are shared between the EN-HU and the HU-EN courses. This isn't a unique thing, just how Duolingo works. X for Y speakers and Y for X speakers always complement each other. This means you can't have the same sentence in both courses as distinct entries. The same way, you can't have the same words in both courses as separate entities either. If you change a common sentence, it will change for the other course as well. This is a huge constraint on acceptable translations and also part of the reason why hints are so problematic. Their reverse-translation is our translation and vice versa. This means certain translation issues can only be resolved with the help of the EN-HU team. (I find this design choice quite weird. It seems fairly obvious not the same people want to contribute to an English course and to a Hungarian course - it's also obvious these courses have very different needs.)