During my meeting with my community partner last week we completed both the language and grammar books from the MagyarOK series. I enjoyed the structure of the books since they tightly correspond to each other, and cover the same topics in the same order just with the difference in vocabulary and the content of the exercises.
One of the most challenging topics that I have learned in the past week is the concept of the different prefixes which change the meaning of verbs. ‘Be-’, ‘ki-’, ‘fel-’, ‘le-’ are the prefixes that have the meaning of ‘in the direction to the object’, ‘in the direction from the object’, ‘up’, and ‘down’ accordingly. Usually, you add those prefixes to verbs such as ‘menni’ (Eng. ‘go to somewhere/something’) and ‘jonni’ (Eng. ‘come from somewhere/something’). For example, ‘bemenni’ would mean ‘go to somewhere’ with the emphasis on the action that one is heading towards some place/object. If you do not add the prefix, sometimes the direction of the action might be unclear. Another example - ‘felmenni’ means ‘go upstairs’. If you use this prefix, you do not necessarily have to use the words ‘stairs’ because it is already clear that one is going upstairs (using stairs). It was a little bit hard and challenging for me to understand this concept because neither in English nor in Russian do you have this kind of prefixes which provide an additional meaning to the verb.
In my last language learning journal of this semester, I want to reflect on one of the hardest grammar topics from Hungarian which I worked on a few days ago. Also, I want to acknowledge that I will be working on my understanding of this topic, as well as others. I think consistency and self-discipline are very important while learning a new language.
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