As you may or may not remember, I play silly games on my phone. Connecting the dots or bursting bubbles, etc. And I was getting frustrated. While on the one hand, it was something to do, on the other hand, it wasn’t necessarily relaxing, and it was SUCH a time sink. Recently, all I could think about was how I was wasting time, but I didn’t want to work or write. I needed something to do in my time off.

But what?

A friend of mine recently expressed the exact same frustration I was feeling. Their solution was an app called Duolingo, which helps you learn languages.

Huh.

So I downloaded the app and at first, was trying to both relearn Hungarian as well as learn Spanish for the first time.

OMG. It’s so much fun to be relearning how to speak Hungarian! (The title of this blog post is just, “Hi! How are you?” in Hungarian.)

I have stopped trying to learn Spanish. My brain wasn’t happy trying to learn two languages at once. I am really, really enjoying the Hungarian though.

I was never fluent, back in the day. I did speak a lot of the language. Just before I left, I tested my ability. On a scale of 1-9, with 9 being fluent, I tested between 6 and 7.

I’ve known most of the vocabulary that they’ve introduced. There’s only been a couple new words. It’s just getting back into the practice of figuring out word order.

Hungarian is a post-positional language. Instead of prepositions like English, where you place words like above, below, with, etc. in front of the word, in Hungarian, you tack those onto the back of the verb, which is the very last thing in a sentence. Or if the post-positional modifier isn’t part of the verb, it frequently still goes at the end of the sentence.

I think that part of my enjoyment of this is that I’m really good at it. I’m relearning a language, not trying to start from scratch. The app is of course gamified to try to make the learning fun. I keep getting the award for getting 20 answers in a row correct.

Eventually, I’ll need to start speaking Hungarian with someone, get myself a tutor or something. I am not there yet. And I’m not doing that much. I’ve been at it for a week, working my way through the beginning levels. Not ready for anything advanced yet. Maybe come next year I’ll try to find someone to speak with.

In the meanwhile – back to the novel! Didn’t feel well yesterday so didn’t get much done. Though I’m tired this morning, am hoping for my usual 3000 words.

Szia! (And yes, in Hungarian, it’s the same word for both Hi and Bye.)