Learning Hungarian Magyar Like a Baby

I am trying to learn Hungarian. It’s a difficult language, one of the hardest in the world, but I’m going to Hungary this summer with my best friend (who’s Hungarian), and I’d like to be able to communicate somewhat with her family and friends there. Also, having a best friend that speaks it is a huge perk in the friendship, so how could I not take advantage of it?

Though I have a friend whose native tongue is Hungarian Magyar, I’d still prefer not to bother her too often (and I have a lot of questions!). That is why I started involving myself in language exchanges. Over the weekend, I signed up for membership at several language exchange sites, and started communicating with some native Hungarian speakers.

I didn’t quite know how to begin, because most things that I had questions to could be answered online. So then I asked if there was a good method for learning, and my partner responded with a simple answer, though it had some profound implications at the time: study some childhood nursery school-type rhymes.

I hadn’t thought about that since I was a little child, though it was immediately clear how this could benefit me. Naturally, as a completely new beginner, I have no knowledge of the language I am trying to comprehend and learn. What better way to learn it than the same way a teacher or parent would teach a child? I’m sure that there are nursery rhymes and poems that you’ve learned as a child that you still retain memory of. Though most are fun and innocent but lack much educational benefit, there are several that I’m sure you’ll agree which were fundamental to grasping a basic concept (like an alphabet song or such).

So, my language exchange partner set me up with this poem/rhyme that is to teach the numbers 1 through 10 in a fun way:

Yeah, the translation sounds like gibberish to me, too (might as well not even translate it), but isn’t this an awesome way to memorize the numbers 1 – 10? Here’s a video sounding out the poem in Hungarian Magyar:

Christian “Krzysiek“ Eilers is a twenty-something who constantly likes to look at the next flight out of JFK. His life goal is to visit every country in the world; as a young adult working full-time while also taking classes, he often settles on visiting the near countries of Central and South America and the Caribbean, knocking these off the list as it is less of a financial strain than Europe or Asia. Caffeine is his vice, and if he doesn’t have a coffee in his hands, then it’s probably a green tea. A native of New York City, when he is not traveling, he can find an abundance of cultural influences right in his own city, enough to keep him satisfied until the next country’s beckon cannot be ignored any longer.