Personal Narrative: My Experience In Hungary, Hungary And Hungary

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Budapest, Hungary It was a balmy afternoon when I sat down in one of the outdoor cafes in Budapest, Hungary. Right from the beginning I felt at home in Budapest. As one of the twin capitals of the former Austria-Hungary empire, Budapest felt like a majestic world city in many ways. Many things just made sense. The one big exception was the language. The Hungarian language is not related to any other European—or pretty much any other—language. Unlike, say, Spanish or Italian, which are members of the Latin family, and are relatively easy to learn, Hungarian is on another level completely. For instance, the word for “police,” which is the same or very similar in most European languages, is very different in Hungarian (Rendőrség). “Excuse me, would you…show more content…
“I doubt that. I’m not a stranger to learning languages. I know a few languages myself. I learned Portuguese in around 6 months. But I already spoke Spanish before. And Portuguese is an easy language. So, I doubt I will learn a language like Hungarian in that span of time.” “Okay,” he replied. “Okay, what?” I demanded. “Nothing. If you feel that it’s a ‘hard’ language, then that’s how you feel. That certainly doesn’t mean that your experience will be equal to my experience or anyone else’s experience.” “When I came to Hungary, I realized that I needed to learn Hungarian. This is not France and people don’t speak French. Of course, I could speak English, but I want to speak the language of the country. I also want to read the literature.” “So, I studied and learned Hungarian. It wasn’t as easy as taking a shower in the morning, but no one ever told it was ‘hard’” “That sounds simple,” I replied. “I wish life was so simple.” “To tell you the truth, I’m not sure what hard means. When we were babies, we found it hard to walk, now look—it’s no longer hard.” While he was explaining, he kept making a pronounced hand gesture as though he was trying to explain something very complex. He smiled
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