Here is the Hungarian alphabet – 40 natural letters, including 14 vowels
In preparation for my mission I have been reading as many Hungarian missionary blogs as I can find to see what lies ahead for me. I think the biggest concern that most missionaries feel in going to Hungary is…learning the language! From what people tell me it’s suppose to be the 2nd hardest language in the world to learn. I found some wonderful information on Elder Cameron Alldredge’s blog. Here are some things he said about the Hungarian language. Enjoy!
1. Our name tags are backwards. Mine will say “Whittaker Nover”.
2. Hungarians don’t have Q, W, or X in their alphabet.
3. No one really “learns” Hungarian. Even if someone were to move to Hungary, they wouldn’t learn the language. It’s only if you’re born there or you’re an LDS missionary that you would learn it. I guess it’s because it’s so hard.
4. Basically, the entire language is backwards to English in the aspect of sentence structure. So in English, It sounds like you’re speaking like Yoda. “Whittaker Nover, I am” or “The late-day holy followers Jesus Christ church.” They also don’t have the word “of”. So we have to say “Wisdom’s Word,” and stuff like that. Also, in prayers we say, “Thank you this day for” etc.
5. One thing that I find hilarious is that in Hungary (because they HATE the French) when you want to tell someone to, “go to hell” (which I would never say) you literally say “go to France.”
6. There is no difference between a sentence that is a question and one that is a command. The only way you can make it a question is a certain voice inflection on a certain vowel in the last word of the sentence. Without the voice inflection, “Will you be baptized?” turns into “You are going to be baptized.”
7. When you want to say you’re going to Hungary you have to literally say you’re going ONTO Hungary not INTO Hungary. (Because they think they’re so much higher and better than everyone else) I would say I’m going into America but onto Hungary.
8. When telling time, if you want to say it’s 3:15. You wouldn’t say, “It’s Three Fifteen” You’d say, “It’s Three Quarters to Four”… they measure everything according to the next hour. So 12:30 would be “Half to One” and so on.
9. The word “-e”… yea–that’s the actual word. You put it at the end of a sentence to make it mean “or not”. So if I wanted to say “We can know that it’s true or not” I would say “Tudhatjuk hogy igaz-e.”
10. You speak really fancy in formal form. They directly translate to statements such as, “How does it please you to be?” (What’s up?) Or, “Where does it please you to be going?” (Where you headed?)
