29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
old-fashioned, but still one of the most useful textbooks, September 26, 1997
By A Customer
This review is from: Hungarian Basic Course (Hippocrene Language Studies) (Paperback)
Originally published in 1962 by the US Foreign Service Institute to help Cold-War-era diplomats learn Hungarian (thus the emphasis in the reading selections on press conferences and embassy cocktail receptions), this is still rated by students as one of the best textbooks available. Although the topical content and the grammatical explanations are both quaintly old-fashioned, this is the only textbook currently in print that has enough drills and exercises to enable a student to learn Hungarian outside of a classroom setting.
For more thorough grammatical explanations, students can supplement this textbook with an up-to-date descriptive grammar of Hungarian: _Hungarian_ by I. Kenesei, R.M. Vago & A. Fenyvesi (Routledge, 1997).
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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The best ever language book, April 23, 2000
This review is from: Hungarian Basic Course (Hippocrene Language Studies) (Paperback)
Very practical because it starts with conversation all in the present tense. Keeps incorporating what has been learned into each new lesson, thus helping learner retain the language. Conversation is practical, excellent for basic conversation. Find a Hungarian to read into a tape recorder so you can listen to the pronunciation.
This format should be copied by writers of other language books.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Expensive, but one of the best., February 10, 2005
From the introduction: "...follows the tradition of the Spoken Language Series, prepared under the auspices of the American Council of Learned Societies during World War II, but it also takes advantage of more recent pedagogic theory." The original series was developed to teach languages to soldiers fast. This course is designed for speaking Hungarian, not for reading.
Lessons begin with a five to six page conversation, Hungarian on the left, English on the right. The recording speaks the Hungarian and gives pause for repetition. Sentences are built word by word or phrase by phrase, then the sentence is read at normal speed. Only when the student has mastered this, can cover the Hungarian and give the English and vice versa does the lesson procede to pronunciation exercises (many are needed for Hungarian).
There follows the meat of the course, the exercises that make the student fluent in each point of grammar covered. The speaker says sentences in the affirmaltive, the students says it back in the negative, the the speaker says the sentence correctly, and so one with each point of grammar covered. Only when the student can do these easily does the course pass on to "narratives," half-page all-hungarian lreadings using all prelvious material studied.
This is the audio-lingual method and is still used by the State Department to teach languages to its staff.
The price is high, and Amazon appears to offer only the first of two volumes-the second covers lessons thirteen to twenty-four. However, the second volume and tapes can be found through www.booksinder.com.
The Foreign Service Institute has also published an enormous Humgarian reader-more that 400 pages-, and the Army's original Spoken Hungarian may still be available from Spoken Language Services, although its language pre-dates the communist government and is therefore outdated.
My personal favorite is "Learn Hungarian," published in Hungary but available in this country, with cassettes. For thoroughness in every respect it is unrivaled.
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