Talk:Hungarian phrasebook

Hi all

I bumped into this article and although I found it very well written, I spotted a few inaccuracies, or a few things I would call inaccuracies, mostly in the pronunciation section. I was going to sort them out but since English is not my mother tongue (Hungarian is), and I do not really trust myself, I thought I would just open a discussion page and let you guys correct them if you feel like.

So here they are:

Vowels

"a like 'o' in "old" (a very deep "o") → [SYMBOL: å]" WHEREAS "ó like 'o' in "so" → [SYMBOL: oa]"

I find this piece of information very confusing. To the best of my knowledge (and correct me if I am wrong) these two English words have the very same phoneme /əʊ/ (Received Pronunciation) or /oʊ/ (General American), the latter not being very far form the actual phoneme for "ó" found in standard Hungarian, and almost the same as found in certain Hungarian dialects. The "a" sound (IPA /ɒ/), however, has nothing to do with it. The closest sound for Hungarian "a" would be /ɒ/ as in RP "not".

"i like i in "hit" → [SYMBOL: i]"

This is misleading again. "I" is absolutely the same as "í" (see next entry in the article), only, it's shorter. The word "hit", for instance, does exist in Hungarian (it means "faith") but it is pronounced more like English "heat". If you try to say "faith" in Hungarian and pronounce it as English "hit", you will be understood much less likely than if you said "heat".

Consonants

"dzs like 'dg' in badge → [SYMBOL: j]" WHEREAS "gy like 'j' in major or 'de y' in made your → [SYMBOL: dj]"

Completely wrong. What is, I wonder, the differece between the "dg" of "badger" and the "j" of "major"? Absolutely nothing. The truth is that while "dzs" is a voiced postalveolar affricate /dʒ/(accurately exemplified here by the word "badge"), "gy" is a voiced palatal plosive /ɟ/, the closest known sound to the English ear of which would be the one found in French "adieu". And since the article cites German and Spanish examples, why not cite a French one here?

"ty like 'tch' in batch → [SYMBOL: ty]" - same problem as above. "Ty" is articulated in the very same place as "gy", the difference being that "ty" is voiceless. You can hear a very similar, or actually the same sound at the beginning of British English "tube".


 * Honestly, this ALL should be in IPA. Arbitrary systems are rather confusing, even with explanations, as they ignore dialects of English. 70.190.49.222 20:36, 20 June 2007 (EDT)

Pronunciation, symbols
What on earth are the "symbols" on the page? They're not IPA and I don't see why they're useful, so why don't we delete them all? Meanwhile, "a" being like "o" in "not" is absolutely wrong for speakers of American English ("naht"), so I substituted like "o" in "oat". Ikan Kekek (talk) 02:49, 8 August 2019 (UTC)


 * I haven't changed my mind about this. And Hungarian "a" should be represented as "oh", don't you think? Isn't it pretty much the same sound as Hungarian "o", or is it not? Ikan Kekek (talk) 12:41, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

Case system
I don't understand most of the explanations. Going into or in something sounds the same. It would be good to give examples of each case with translations. Ikan Kekek (talk) 03:00, 8 August 2019 (UTC)


 * I repeat this request. Give one sentence per case. Ikan Kekek (talk) 12:41, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

Vowel harmony
I did my best to copy edit the "basic" definition of the phenomenon. I'm not up enough on Hungarian to give any examples, but some examples are needed, because just mentioning a concept and giving a very general description of it could only serve to confuse people. While we don't need to give all of the rules, we should at least show some of the more common types of situations in which vowel harmony is needed and used, and show them how. I really hope a good Hungarian-speaker bilingual in English reads this talk page at some point and revamps this phrasebook into something really useful for English-speakers who want to learn how to speak and understand the language up to an advanced beginner level, with perhaps a few intermediate examples as needed. Ikan Kekek (talk) 11:05, 9 February 2021 (UTC)