Hunglish
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Hunglish refers to any mixing of the English and Hungarian languages as a result of linguistic interference. This most often involves ungrammatical or awkward English expressions typical of Hungarian learners of English, as well as English words and phrases imported into the Hungarian language. The term is a portmanteau of Hungarian and English. The word is first recorded in 1978.[1] The word is most popular in North England, especially in South Yorkshire.
As the prominence and influence of the English language in Hungary increases, Hunglish has also come to refer to the indirect effect of English on the modern-day Hungarian language.[2] Some Hungarians believe this effect to be a negative one, claiming that English influence causes Hungarians to make grammatical, orthographic, and stylistic errors in their own mother tongue, and that traditional Hungarian expressions and terms are being crowded out by ones derived from English.[3] Other Hungarians see this phenomenon as a natural process of linguistic interaction, and believe that features imported from English into Hungarian should be regarded as linguistic developments, rather than grammatical errors.
Characteristic mistakes of Hungarians speaking English include:
- Use of verbs with inappropriate prepositional phrases (e.g. "emlékszem rá" = "I remember on him," "játszani akarok" = "I want to game"). A wide variety of grammatical cases are used in Hungarian to express verb objects; these cases are then mistranslated based on common English translations in other contexts.[citation needed]
- Failure to capitalize proper nouns or adjectives (e.g. "angolórám van hétfőn" = "I have english class on monday"). Many English proper nouns are considered common in Hungarian (such as days, months and languages); the grammar has no concept of proper adjectives at all. [citation needed]
- Omission of the word is (e.g. "a nevem Gábor" = "my name Gábor").[citation needed]
- Ungrammatical use of reflexive pronouns (e.g. "jól érzem magam" = "I feel myself good" rather than "I feel good").[citation needed]
- Use of third-person pronouns in the wrong gender (e.g. "az anyám pénztárcát vett magának" = "my mother bought himself a purse"). Hungarian has only one third-person pronoun, ő, used for both male and female genders. This can be extended to related pronouns, e.g. maga = himself/herself/itself. [citation needed]
- Failure to use the continuous aspect and the imperfect tense, which do not exist in Hungarian (e.g. "aludtam, amikor megérkezett" = "I slept when she arrived" rather than "I was sleeping when she arrived", or "már voltam ott" = "I was already there" instead of "I have already been there").[citation needed]
- Overuse of the definite article the and underuse of the indefinite article a/an (e.g. "a türelem erény" = "the patience is virtue" rather than "patience is a virtue" or "az anyám tanár" = "my mother is teacher" instead of "my mother is a teacher").[citation needed]
- Confusion around the use of "many" and "much", both being represented by the word sok. Similarly, both "fewer" and "less" can be translated as kevesebb.
- Use of "so" instead of "such a/an", e.g. "olyan jó vicc volt" = "it was so nice joke" instead of "it was such a nice joke".