Hungarian Short Courses Levels

Course description: Level 1 is for complete beginners or those who have had only very little contact with the language. The course runs over three ten-week terms and each session is two hours long. The course includes all four skills: reading, writing, speaking and listening. The aim of the course is to enable students to function in simple everyday situations and get by in Hungarian. This includes knowledge of basic vocabulary, grammar, morphology, syntax, and phonetics. The course will cover the following:

Topics:

• introducing oneself, friends, and family
• describing one’s environment: classroom, home, flats, and the city
• describing how one feels
• discussing hobbies, activities, and expressing preferences
• describing, and enquiring about, daily routines
• buying clothes, and groceries
• shopping at the market, and in a bookstore
• ordering in a café and in restaurants
• numbers, days, months, and dates; simple time expressions

Functions:

• introductions and greetings
• formal and informal forms of address
• descriptive texts, describing people
• expressing likes and dislikes
• describing skills, wishes, plans
• writing lists; e.g. a shopping list
• understanding basic directions
• giving polite orders
• making requests

Grammar:

• the plural
• the indefinite and definite conjugations in the present tense; the infinitive
• cases: the accusative, some functions of the dative, the primary function of local case suffixes, a few temporal case suffixes, the instrumental
• agreement patterns (number, cases, especially with pronouns, nouns, and verbs)
• a few verbal and nominal derivational suffixes;
• forming adverbs with the -ul/ül suffix
• negation, questions and word order
• focalisation and topicalisation: simple word order patters
• the indefinite and definite conjugations in the present tense; the infinitive
• the consonants and vowels of Hungarian
• morphophonemics: vowel harmony
• existential v. equative sentences

Learning resources:

Course Book

• Tutor will provide materials

Additional material

• Dr M. Kovácsi, Itt magyarul beszélnek, Vol. 1., Nemzeti Tankönyvkiadó Zrt., Budapest, 1993, 2001.
• E. Hlavacska E., I. Hoffmann, T. Laczkó, S. Maticsák, Hungarolingua I. Nyelvkönyv Debrecen: Debreceni Nyári Egyetem, 2002.
• P. Sherwood, A Concise Introduction to Hungarian. London: School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London, 1996.
• Eszter Tarsoly, Reading Strategies: a Hungarian Graded Reader for Post-graduate Students, ePublication in the CEELBAS Language Repository, UCL/SSEES, 2011.
• C. H. Rounds, E. Sólyom, Colloquial Hungarian, London: Routledge, 2011.

Course description: Level 2 is for those who have successfully completed the Level 1 Evening Course or a similar course and have gained limited experience of dealing with authentic material through regular visits to the country or through self-study. The course runs over three ten-week terms and each session is two hours long. The course includes all four skills: reading, writing, speaking and listening. The aim of the course is to give students an opportunity to revise, consolidate, and build on the skills they acquired at beginner level. On completion of the course students should be able to communicate in, and understand, Hungarian on a variety of practical everyday matters. The course will cover the following:

Topics:

• the weekend, holidays, childhood, and other past activities
• habits, favourite activities, preferences, and abilities in the past and present
• festivities around the year and in the family; buying and giving presents
• introducing and discussing a famous personality and/or a family member
• asking for, and giving, directions, describing location
• complex time expressions, telling the time
• cardinal numbers, dates, addresses, telephone numbers
• making reservations and arrangements: hotel, travel, etc.
• Budapest and places to visit in Hungary or elsewhere; a Hungarian dog-type: puli
• food and drink: Hungarian dishes and recipes; favourite restaurants in Budapest

Functions:

• giving one’s opinion, presenting a simple argument, contradicting
• inviting conversation partners to join a discussion, and to give their opinion
• expressing, and enquiring about, likes, dislikes, preferences
• asking for help and basic clarification
• asking for directions and assistance
• giving directions: describing location and motion
• giving orders: polite orders, indirect requests
• describing past events and making references to the future
• differentiating, and discussing, ongoing and completed actions
• understanding short texts from Hungarian literature and lyrics

Grammar:

• areas of pronunciation to strengthen: question intonation, pronouncing longer segments and compounds flawlessly;
• revision and more in depth study of the grammar covered at beginners’ level
• functions of the dative: marking the possessor, in verbal argument structure, case frames (érdekel, tetszik, örül, etc. actions with three participants)
• the habeo or ‘have’ construction revisited, possessive chains
• possessive suffixes to mark possessions in the singular
• possessive suffixes with multiple possessions
• functions and use of the local case suffixes in non-concrete locations, with place names, and in verbal argument structure
• the past tense: indefinite and definite conjugation
• local cases, and a few other suffixes in complex time-expressions
• a few modal verbs and auxiliaries (lehet, akar, tud, kell)
• verbal pre-fixes: directions and aspect marking, word-order

Learning resources:

Course Book

• Tutor will provide materials

Additional material:

• Dr M. Kovácsi, Itt magyarul beszélnek, Vol. 1., Nemzeti Tankönyvkiadó Zrt., Budapest, 1993, 2001.
• Sz. Szita, T. Görbe, Gyakorló magyar nyelvtan / A Practical Hungarian Grammar, Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó.
• C. H. Rounds, E. Sólyom, Colloquial Hungarian, London: Routledge, 2011.
• P. Sherwood, A Concise Introduction to Hungarian. London: School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London, 1996.

Useful websites:

http://ungarischalsfremdsprache.blogspot.co.uk/p/tartalomjegyzek.html

http://www.magyarora.com/magyar/index.html

Course description: Level 3 is for those who have successfully completed the Level 2 Hungarian Evening Course or a similar course and/or have developed a sound knowledge of the basics of the language through extensive visits to the Hungary or through self-study. The course runs over three ten-week terms and each session is two hours long. Linguistic and cultural awareness is reinforced through continuous revision and by building on students’ previous knowledge when introducing a new topic. On completion of the course students should be able to get by in most Hungarian-speaking environments, and to retrieve information from authentic materials. The course includes all four skills: reading, writing, speaking and listening. The course will cover the following:

Topics:

• regions of Hungary and Budapest; travelling
• idioms and proverbs, the regional features of Hungarian
• health and illness, at the doctor’s, body parts revisited
• how to rent, buy, and furnish a flat
• getting by at the airport and calling a taxi
• opening a bank account, paying one’s bills and charges
• making arrangements, enrolling and attending events
• setting up a mobile phone or internet contract
• what can go wrong: making complaints while travelling or at home
• wishful thinking... discussing goals, purpose, and conditions; things that have gone wrong in the past
• a few essential texts in Hungarian literature

Functions:

• agreeing/disagreeing, expressing opinion
• relating past events (news or personal circumstances)
• writing letters in different registers
• expressing wishes, desires, and possibilities
• negotiating and discussing conditions
• making suggestions and recommendations
• speculating, making assumptions
• complaining and apologising; excuses
• giving orders and making polite requests: understanding the difference
• comparing and contrasting

Grammar:

• students are expected to pronounce Hungarian reasonably well when commencing the course
• revision and more in depth study of the grammar covered at previous levels
• the imperative-subjunctive in the definite and indefinite conjugations
• the present and past conditional in both conjugations
• the potential and other techniques of expressing modality
• the comparative and the superlative
• the –ék collectiviser suffix
• post-positions in spatial function and in time expressions
• one’s belongings: true and ‘untrue’ ownership of possessions, objects, and acquaintances
• vowel elision, vowel shortening, and v-stem nouns: overview and summary
• question words, definite, indefinite, and relative pronouns: an overview
• complex sentences: relative clauses and complement closes (with hogy ‘that’) and the -e question particle

Learning resources:

Course Book

• C. H. Rounds, E. Sólyom, Colloquial Hungarian, London: Routledge, 2011.

Additional material

• G. Kiss, I. Molnár, Jó szórakozást magyarul! Fun Reading Exercises / Olvasókönyv magyarul tanulóknak, Bp: Molilla Könyv, 2009.
• The more advanced volumes of the Hungarolingua series, e.g. Nem csak novella, Szemezgető, Fülelő;
• Sz. Szita, T. Görbe, Gyakorló magyar nyelvtan / A Practical Hungarian Grammar, Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó.
• P. Sherwood, A Concise Introduction to Hungarian. London: School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University of London, 1996.
• Eszter Tarsoly, Reading Strategies: a Hungarian Graded Reader for Post-graduate Students, ePublication in the CEELBAS Language Repository, UCL/SSEES, 2011.
• Dr M. Kovácsi, Itt magyarul beszélnek, Vol. 1. and 2., Nemzeti Tankönyvkiadó Zrt., Budapest, 1993, 2001.

Course description: Level 4 is for those who have successfully completed the Level 3 Hungarian Evening Course or a similar course and/or have developed a sound knowledge of the language through extensive visits to the Hungary, personal relationships, or working with the language. The course runs over three ten-week terms and each session is two hours long. Linguistic and cultural awareness is reinforced through continuous revision and grammar is consolidated as an integral part of texts, short films, and topics covered on the course. On completion of the course students should be able to get by in Hungarian-speaking environments, converse reasonably fluently with native speakers, and to retrieve information from a wide range of authentic materials. The course includes all four skills: reading, writing, speaking and listening. The course will cover the following:

Topics:

• Hungarian culture and society through text, film, and music
• Hungary in Central and Eastern Europe, and in the EU
• Hungarian-British relations past and present
• key events of Hungarian history
• Budapest and Hungary all year around: festivals and festivities
• talking about the weather
• environmental protection and nature reserves
• conflicting views and political conflict: past and present
• trends and canon in Hungarian literature

Functions:

• reading, analysing, and summarising authentic texts
• extracting and presenting information from written sources or visual material
• reporting on events and matters of public interest
• writing reports and preparing presentations
• negotiating and discussing various points of views
• commenting, debating, criticising written material, news, and events
• speculating, making assumptions
• retrieving and collating information from a variety of authentic sources and media
• ‘reading between the lines’: detecting non-explicit content in texts

Grammar:

• possession revisited 1: possessive constructions and chains in discontinuous noun phrases
• possession revisited 2: the habeo construction and alienable and unalienable possession
• verbal prefixes and aspect revisited; refining the use of verbal prefixes
• derivational noun and verb suffixes, compounding
• the imperative-subjunctive in a variety of functions: overview
• the past, present, and adverbial participles
• types of complex noun phrases with participial modifiers
• complex sentences and types of relative clauses: overview
• idiomatic expressions and proverbs

Learning resources:

• Dr M. Kovácsi, Itt magyarul beszélnek, Vol. 3 and 4., Nemzeti Tankönyvkiadó Zrt., Budapest, 1993, 2001.
• G. Kiss, I. Molnár, Jó szórakozást magyarul! Fun Reading Exercises / Olvasókönyv magyarul tanulóknak, Bp: Molilla Könyv, 2009.
• Eszter Tarsoly, Reading Strategies: a Hungarian Graded Reader for Post-graduate Students, ePublication in the CEELBAS Language Repository, UCL/SSEES, 2011.
• The more advanced volumes of the Hungarolingua series, e.g. Nem csak novellák, Szemezgető, Fülelő;
• Sz. Szita, T. Görbe, Gyakorló magyar nyelvtan / A Practical Hungarian Grammar, Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó.
• Various authentic sources: works of Hungarian literature, daily press, media.

Course description: Level 5 is for those who have successfully completed the Level 4 Hungarian Evening Course or a similar course and/or have developed an excellent knowledge of the language through working with Hungarian, or through living in a partly Hungarian-speaking environment. The course runs over three ten-week terms and each session is two hours long. The aim of the course is to help fluent speakers of Hungarian to maintain and extend their knowledge of the language, as well as to enhance their literacy and translation skills, and cultural awareness. The course includes all four skills: reading, writing, speaking and listening. The course will cover the following:

Topics:

• key works of Hungarian literature: excerpts or whole works
• writing a reader’s diary
• Hungarian theatre and cinema: iconic places and personalities
• cultural and linguistic cross-roads: Hungary and Hungarian (a history of the Carpathian basin and of Hungarian)
• two key trends in Hungarian political thought and literature: the urbanist-peasantist debate
• spaces of public life in Budapest: train stations, baths, and coffee-houses
• Hungarian in minority context and minorities in Hungary
• topics chosen according to students’ specialised interest

Functions:

• understanding dialectal and societal variation in Hungarian: slang, contact varieties, and archaic forms of expression;
• analysing, and responding to, reviews and criticism
• writing reviews and summaries
• extracting and presenting information from written sources or visual material
• reporting on events and matters of public interest
• commenting, negotiating, and preparing presentations
• ‘reading between the lines’: detecting non-explicit content in texts
• practising advanced translation from and into Hungarian

Grammar:

• regional dialects, Hungarian in contact with other languages
• highlights from the history of Hungarian
• Hungarian in Slovakia, Serbia, and Romania
• Romanian (Boyash) and Romani in Hungary
• early texts and first attestations of Hungarian
• historical past and texts from the 19th century
• once upon a time without vowel harmony…
• complex possessive and participial noun phrases

Learning resources:

• as at Level 4 and the teachers’ and the students’ own material
• various authentic sources: works of Hungarian literature, daily press, media
• recordings of dialects and language varieties
• Hungarian films and excerpts from theatre shows.