The Hungarian language, also called Magyar, is often considered to be one of the most difficult and complex languages in the world, especially for native English, German or French speakers.
The Hungarian language traces its roots back to Asia. Unlike most other European languages, which belong to the Indo-European language family, Hungarian belongs to the Uralic family. It shares almost no similarity with its neighboring languages. The two closest relatives, Finnish and Estonian, stand far to the north of Hungary. And it must be said that today, these languages have, except for their roots, very little in common.
The Hungarian language is the official language of Hungary, where ~10 million people speak it. There are another 3 million speakers living outside the country. It is also one of the languages of the European Union and is classified as an official minority language in Austria, Croatia, Romania, Slovakia, Ukraine, and Zakarpattia.
The Hungarian language seems so difficult, especially for speakers of Indo-European languages, as it is so different. For example, the language has 18 cases. In German, there are just 4, and in English, it’s a reduced version of these 4. Additionally, the Hungarian alphabet contains 44 letters, which is 18 more than in the Latin alphabet. Most of these extra letters are characterized by accent marks and digraphs. Besides this, the word order is super flexible, which makes it very hard to understand the language, especially as a beginner. You really need a certain skill level to follow it.
But there is one thing to mention that makes the language easier: It is mainly onomatopoeic, which means that most of the words are pronounced as they are written.
The Hungarian language style is influenced by the neighboring countries and the growing importance of the English language. But in the traditional language, there are some special features: If you introduce yourself, you start with your surname and not with your first name. Also, the way the date is said is flipped. You say the year first, then the month and the day last. And Hungarian has no grammatical gender – and no pronouns for she or he!
If you are thinking about learning Hungarian: Good luck, it is very tricky but worth delving into! But even if you don’t plan to learn it, you should still visit the country and surround yourself with the special sounds, letters, and extremely long words. Most Hungarians also speak English, so don’t worry about this. If you want to learn a few important words, check them out here.
