The language of the school is English, however learning a few basic Hunagarian terms is fun and can broad your linguistic horizon. This page gives you some basic information on the language and helps you take the first few steps!
Hungarian for beginnners (by Péter Kunszt)
The native language of Hungary is Hungarian. Hungarian is a Uralic language (more specifically an Ugric language) unrelated to most other languages in Europe. The Hungarian name for the language is magyar. Majority of Hungarians do not speak foreign languages well, but in restaurants, hotels etc. you get by quite well with English. As the lake Balaton is a popular destination for tourist from all over Europe, the situation is better. Several shops, restaurants and even local people understand German or English. Balaton is an extremely popular destination for German tourists, so almost everything is advertised also in German.
Hungarians will be EXTREMELY impressed by people knowing just one or two words in Hungarian so, if you want to make new friends, just learn these:
written - American English phonetic pronunciation - meaning
szia - seeya - hi (for friends, people of similar age) jo napot - yo nah-pot(british pot 'o') - hi, good day (for strangers and all) jo reggelt - yo rag-galt - good morning, try to roll the r viszlát - vee-sluht - see you, bye köszönöm - kuh-suhnum - thanks, thank you víz - vheeze - water (flat) ásványvíz - ash-vain-vheeze - mineral water bor - bor - wine (always roll the r if you can, the "o" is the british closed o) sör - shur - beer (the ö is like the u in 'burn', roll the r) pálinka - pah-link-uh - hungarian fruit brandy (comes in many flavors, try e.g. abricot (barack - buhr-atsk)) kenyér - kah-njeer - bread (the j is not like in joe but like in njet) étterem - eeht-tahram - restaurant állomás - uh-lowm-uhsh - railway station> a bit on writing: hungarian is very phonetic once you know the rules.
There are many 'double letters' like 'sh' in English, and some exceptions to regular pronunciation, like the 's'
s - sh c - ts cs - ch like in cheek g - always the g as in garfield r - always rolled like the italians do or as in scottish :-) sz - s (so e.g. laszlo is pronounced just lah-slo) z - zee with a voice like in wheeze zs - soft j, like the french "je" dzs - j j, ly - y ny - ny or (like the nj in the russian njet) gy - like the 'dy' in 'i bidyou' ty - like the ty in 'i letyou'
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