magyar

before arriving in magyarország (hungary in hungarian) we heard magyar (hungarian language) is pretty difficult. well, after being here for 2.5 weeks and having our first language lesson, i think we concur. it's really the pronunciation of the letters that's the hardest. matt's company is willing to pay for us to have some language classes, so we are taking advantage of it. we have set up to have a lady come to our home for a 1.5 hour session every wednesday evening. pretty cool, huh?! reese will be in the room, so she can learn too. before éva arrived we both said "i hope she speaks english." then when she walked in the door she said "let's speak magyar." uh, okay. we don't understand, but okay. we went through the 41 letter alphabet, repeated lots of different words and phrases and learned how to say "i am hilary dowiak. i am american." - "dowiak hilary vogyok. amerikai vogyok." in the hungarian language you say the family name first and then your name. we also learned the sentence i previously said we need to learn. "én angolul beszélik." (i speak english.)

if you are interested in hearing how some of these words are pronounced, you can visit this website we found. it's great! it pronounces words for you. i think it will help us during the week when we forget how to pronounce something! check out this page to see the alphabet. see how many different o's & u's there are and how to pronounce them! ah! (side note: magyar does not have the letters q, w, or x in it. they are only in foreign words. also, y is only in old hungarian names, so you do see it, but mostly in street names or names of places.)

although difficult, we want to continue the classes. i hope to learn some market talk.