Customer Reviews

Teach Yourself Hungarian Complete Course Audiopack

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I am learning Hungarian ( for about 1 year ) & French ( for about 5 years ). This book with the CD's is great. I would like to get some other learning materials, especially with more vocabulary, but my approach in French has been to buy every CD I could lay my hands on & learn them. Teach Yourself Hungarian has been very helpful, especially since I have a native Hungarian who has been helping me. The units are very easy to follow, but I especially like the beginning because the first tracks on the first CD are the alphabet & pronounciation tips; VERY HELPFUL! Learning this alphabet has been a challange, so I go through that track every day & I'm noticing my Hungarian friend isn't laughing quite as much as before........although that may be due to boredom & not any improvement on my part. The introduction is also well done with some good tips on how to approach learning Hungarian although the tips apply to any language. Baldgog vagyok, viszlat!

Like the rest of this series, this book is intended for self study. This is not the best way to learn a language (get a tutor) but for many people it is the only practical way. For this task, this book is very useful, and the audiopack essential.

The course begins with pronunciation and spelling. The spelling is fine, but I thought the pronunciation part of the tapes should have been longer, with more repetition and drilling.

The next group of chapters emphasizes practical language skills for a tourist in Hungary -- restaurants, stores, public transportation, asking directions, and so forth. This is well designed, with useful choice of vocabulary and grammar. The only thing I'd change would be to add a section on ice cream flavors, since the local ice cream is so good!

The last part moves into a real langauge course. The book and tapes are still thoughtfully designed, but at this level it's really hard to make progress in the language -- you need a teacher or informant so that you can speak. The book has written exercises, and I've made some progress in reading Hungarian, but a book like this can only do so much.

Still, the program as a whole works. I've been able to speak and understand Hungarian in predictable set-piece environments such as restaurants, train stations, and shops. Both the book -- and the beautiful language and fascinating people -- have made me want to do more.

My mom's entire family is from Hungary. She speaks it and I've grown up learning little words and phrases, but about three months ago I decided to seriously start learning the language.

This book is a god-send. I could have little conversations with my mom after chapter 1!!!!!!!!!! This book is great!!! Buy it if you're serious about learning the language. If you're just looking for tourist information, this book will defidently help, but you could probably find something cheaper.

A previous reviewer had it right: difficult, confusing at times, but right on. I have the advantage of having visited Hungary for a total of 3+ months, so have some understanding of some things. Studying this book, which is carefully titrated in its introduction of new elements of the language, has been wonderful--answering my questions about it in an orderly way. I use the CDs on my computer so I can easily go back to a section and repeat it. I notate in the book where the accompanying CD sections are and I keep a separate sheet--sort of a table of contents for the CDs. Otherwise I would feel very lost in associating the book and the CDs together. So there are demands made on the user, but it is well worth it.

This is probably the best book/audio course in Hungarian available. It is more comprehensive than many of the other books available, more like a high school or college textbook than a hurry-up tourist resource. Though the learning curve of this course is pretty steep at first, it is never user-unfriendly. I would like it if the audio in the package could be expanded to 4 CDs instead of just two, so that more of the content of the book was in audio form. If you are looking for something lighter to cram for a 2-week vacation to Budapest, "Colloquial Hungarian" might be a good way to go... but overall I would say this is the best set available. Can't beat the price either.

The Hungarian learning program is well-presented and well-written. THe dialogues are concise and aidful enough to allow the learner to understand the language much easily. The audio CDs is a must for the program as this is a language which requires careful listening and imitation of the sounds.
Overall, the vocab. is sufficient and the grammar tools provide a great feedback on allowing the learner to either have a thorough knowledge or the language or learn it all together.

This is an amateurish approach to language learning. The text is full of mistakes, beginning with the pronunciation of Hungarian (the long "a" sound is NOT pronounced like "u" in "but" but rather like "a" in "father"). Many vocabulary items are not listed in the dictionary, so it's impossible to know which endings to use with them. The dialogues are much too difficult, the exercises are stupid (little crossword puzzles), and the vocabulary is rarely useful. Chapter 3, for example, presents over 70 vocabulary items connected with food to be memorized, including "chestnut cream" and various styles of pancakes and sausages--needlessly complex and very discouraging. The text called "Colloquial Hungarian" is much better.

I am very impressed with this book. The first section covers basic vocab and grammar needed by a first-time traveler. The accompanying CDs work very well to enforce what one learns. The chapters are well thought-out so that they include a coherent group of concepts that one could learn in about two days by going through each chapter with the audio once, then repeating the next day to solidify.
But what really wows my about this book is the advanced section. I purchased this book to brush up on my Hungarian after taking an intensive course in Budapest some years ago. The structure of the book & audio make it very easy to understand and to learn from.
My only complaint about the book is that, once you get into the advanced chapters, some concepts seem to be broken up oddly. For example, prepositions are introduced contextually (e.g., learning about those needed for street directions separately from those needed for expressing "I come from..."). But Hungarian has 9 different prepositions of place that correspond to English's "at" "on" and "in" and each has 2-3 forms depending on the vowels in the word it modifies. The book Colloquial Hungarian Complete Pack with 2 CDs, 2 Cassettes & Book in Clamshell Case teaches these as a single concept with a chart, then breaks down when to use each. I found that to be a more helpful way to learn. Verb classes for proper conjugation is another concept I would rather see addressed all at once, rather than broken out as each type is encountered.
Other than that, though, I find this book to be the best Hungarian language book I have found.

I bought this in preparation for a trip to Hungary. I'm fairly disappointed. Here's why:

1) The audio portion does not repeat phrases, so you constantly have to rewind, which is a hassle on an iPod, because if you don't press the button properly you end up going to the back to the beginning of the section. Also, there's almost no dead air at the tail of any audio section, so that if you want to hear the last phrase spoken in Chapter 3 and you don't hit rewind fast enough, it skips to the next chapter. Then you have to go back and then fast forward through 4 minutes of material to hear that phrase again.

2) The chapters -- at least the first few -- are not really cumulative. I think it would be more useful to start with basic building blocks (greetings, to be verbs), so that you can start building your own sentences. Instead, you get chapters by theme, starting with ones about talking to a passport agent, dealing with a businessman's secretary, and ordering in a restaurant. You end up scrambling to look up a long, hard-to-pronounce words that mean "cucumber salad" instead of learning more basic and useful words and phrases.

3) The audio portions jump around within each chapter. I think they do this so that you can read the chapter, and then listen to the audio and be quizzed. But I don't think that's how most people use these materials, so it's pretty frustrating. Especially if you're trying to use this on a long commute and having to turn the pages all the time while standing on a jerky subway train.

3) The speakers on the audio portion speak really fast. I do appreciate this, but it would be nice if they did at least one pass a little slower, at least in the early chapters, so you could match all the words to the sounds as you read along.

I bought this basically because I could not find anything with better reviews. So if you need something, you can definitely learn from this. But they don't make it easy.

I was only preparing for a holiday in Hungary. I did not expect to become fluent. Yet, I am glad I got this book and CD, instead of just relying on a little phrasebook. The conversations on the CD quickly became too complex, but the pronunciation section was invaluable.

The Hungarian language is too different from English to rely on phrasebooks alone. Most vowel sounds are unfamiliar to our ears and tongues. The supposed "phonetic" spellings in every phrasebook I encountered were unhelpful and even misleading. Without listening to (and practicing) the examples on the Ponifex CD, I would not have been understood. I do not know whether this is the best CD-and-book product on the market. I am just glad that I got one, so I could hear magyar spoken aloud.

Here is my advice if you are planning a holiday in Hungary: Alot of Hungarians speak some German, so if you know German then perhaps learning Hungarian is not even necessary. But if you don't know German, and you plan on exploring outside of Budapest, I highly recommend a CD-and-book combo such as this one for practicing before you leave. Then just take any phrasebook with you for reference. And have a great time!