Customer Reviews

Hungarian Verbs And Essentials of Grammar

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Excellent concise guide into some of the "why's" of the eccentricities of Hungarian Grammar, presented in such a way as to make memorization easy and fun. It's a pocket book that you can take anywhere, pick out on a train, and get a lot of Hungarian assimilation in as much or as little time as you have.

NTC's HUNGARIAN VERBS AND ESSENTIALS OF GRAMMAR is much like other books in the same series, giving of course first an explanation of verb conjugations and voices, and then an outline of grammar. This book is organized in a very logical way, and is very comprehensive.

However, as other reviews have shown, HUNGARIAN VERBS AND ESSENTIALS OF GRAMMAR is not for the beginner in the Hungarian language. This book is written as a reference guide for professional linguists or those who already speak the language. NTC also publishes a series of grammar guides geared towards students, but unfortunately there has yet to appear a Hungarian entry in that series.

Bottom line: if you're serious about Hungarian, HUNGARIAN VERBS AND ESSENTIALS OF GRAMMAR is worth buying. However, it provides only limited help to beginners because of its high-level style.

I couldn't disagree more with the previous reviewer, who criticizes this book for its alleged inaccessibility. As a beginning Hungarian student, I've been consulting this grammar from day one and have gotten quick answers to the questions raised by Teach Yourself Hungarian, which generally eschews the grammar approach. (I'll admit I have studied a number of foreign languages, but a person serious about Hungarian will need to learn some grammar early in the process or risk learning nothing at all.)

Torkenczy's book is clearly organized and concise. In fact, it is at times a bit too concise, leaving the reader with the impression that the writer has not explained the more subtle grammatical points of the Hungarian language. Nevertheless, for a BEGINNER (not the expert), the book is most practical. The EXPERT (not the beginner) would be better served by Hungarian: An Essential Grammar (Routledge Grammars) by Carol Rounds.

book tabulates, records, summarizes the grammatical rules of Hungarian. Pluses: can almost find a reason for any grammatical question, referring to why something is said a certain way in Hungarian, without having to refer to "...well because it's 'hagyományos' (evolved that way)". Also, grammatical concepts are well categorized. Minuses: some tables take time to interpret.

As someone who is taking formal Hungarian lessons, I've found Hungarian Verbs and Essentials of Grammar very useful. While it gives thorough coverage of Hungarian verbs and grammar, it should be used as a supplement to a language course. This excellent refernce books clearly describes the grammatical rules and notes the numerous exceptions. As a reference book Hungarian Essentials is well organized. This book has also been helpful in building my vocabulary.

I would highly recommend as a complement to this book Practical Hungarian Grammar. It was written by the same author and published five years later in 2002

Torkenczy's the Man. I don't see how anybody could master Hungarian without this book. Torkenczy has simplified Hungarian grammar to its core essentials, and provided lots of lists of verb conjugation and the like that are invaluable for the serious student.

But note that this should be used as a reference book and not as a textbook to learn Hungarian! My recommendation is to get this book only after about 8-12 months of studying Hungarian, depending on how serious of a student you are. Then read it cover-to-cover without stopping or re-reading. There will be much you won't understand, but don't worry about that now; just read it in its entirety to get an overview of all the forms and structures. Parallel to your normal studies, re-read it at least every 6-8 months, this time more in-depth, over and over until you feel confident that you know it all. It'll work!

The only major flaw with this book is that its a little TOO concise. There are some places where a bit more explanation would have served the book better. There are also a few grammar points not covered, unfortunately, such as the "-e" (whether or not) ending. The only other negative comment I would have is that there are too many specialized linguistic terms for the non-linguist learner.

But it gets 5 stars for its overall usefulness and indispensibility.

As a reference grammar for someone with either a grammar background or a decent linguistics background this book really cannot be beat. I don't know of any clearer explanations of the formal aspects of Hungarian morphology and elementary syntax,

On the other hand the subtitle "A practical guide to the mastery of Hungarian" is somewhat misleading. The book is primarily useful if you, (a) already speak Hungarian and just need some clarification on grammar points you may not know or have forgotten, or, (b) are one of those people who like to approach a language through a grammar-based approach.

This book would be somewhat difficult to use for those not used to grammar-based approaches. Inasmuch as grammar-based approaches have become less popular in language-training circles (possibly because they demand more of the students and teachers than do "sit-around-the-circle-and-sing-folk-songs" approaches) most language students looking for an introduction would be better off with _Teach Yourself Hungarian_ or some such book. Get this book after you have some basics under your belt.

Based on this I give the book three stars because I feel its actual usability for many is limited, even though for my own use I find it hard to imagine a better reference book of its sort.

Everything is included in this book, from conjugations to participles this book is marvelous. Some things may take awhile to understand and the book could use a couple more examples. Other than that this book is a must have for anyone learning Hungarian.

Hungarian is a very difficult lanugage to master. The language itself is Finno-Ugric (as opposed to Slavic or Germanic), which means that it is unlike any other laguage, with the exception of Finnish. To me, Hungarain grammar is the most difficult part of the language - there is no word for "I have" and the Hungarian language uses more liberaly the agglutination principle - i.e. possesives as well as other forms (saying you are going to or coming from somewhere, for example) are formed by adding a series of prefixes and suffixes to nouns or verbs.

I spent four months in Budapest and my introductory Hungarian class taught us mostly words and phrases and very little grammar. It was most frustrating for us because we would know how to say "polar bear" but we were unable to ask where certain objects were in a store. While vocabulary is certainly an important part of learning a language, in the case of Hungarian, grammar is far more essential in the mastery of the language, as the grammar structure is so radically different from our own.

Hungarian is often cited one of the most difficult European languages to learn. However, once you master the Hungarian alpahbet and the sounds, you will be able to "speak" Hungarian - unlike English, the Hungarian language has no silent vowels and what is written is what you say. Additionally, the accent of the word is always on the first syllable, making pronunciation a fairly simple exercise. Therefore, if you are just looking to learn a few words or phrases, you are probably better off buying a phrasebook or dictionary and learning the alphabet sounds. However, if you are really interested in learning the language, you need a good guide to grammar. That said, this is one of the best introductory grammar books that I have found.

This is clearly advanced material and not for the faint of heart. It's also pretty dry - reminds me of old English grammar books that were quite rote and abstract. Not particularly helpful for beginning Hungarian students.