You have finished the course. Congratulations! Learning a language never really ends, though, and the best way to keep improving now is to spend time with real Hungarian every day. Here is where to find it, and a checklist to see how close you are to C2.
Where to read and listen
- MTVA, Hungary's public media service. Its news channel M1 and its radio station Kossuth Rádió broadcast news and discussion all day, and much of it can be watched and heard online at mediaklikk.hu. The classical music station Bartók Rádió is good for calm, clearly spoken Hungarian.
- News websites such as Telex, HVG, Index and Magyar Nemzet. Hungarian media is strongly divided along political lines, so read more than one source.
- MEK, the Magyar Elektronikus Könyvtár (Hungarian Electronic Library, mek.oszk.hu), run by the National Széchényi Library. Thousands of books, including most of the classics, free to read online.
- Books. Start with István Örkény's Egyperces novellák (One Minute Stories): very short, very funny, and perfect for learners. Then try Ferenc Molnár's A Pál utcai fiúk (The Paul Street Boys), Magda Szabó's Az ajtó (The Door), Dezső Kosztolányi's Édes Anna, Sándor Márai's A gyertyák csonkig égnek (Embers), and Imre Kertész's Sorstalanság (Fatelessness), for which he won the Nobel Prize in 2002.
Dictionaries and language help
- Wikiszótár (hu.wiktionary.org), the Hungarian Wiktionary. It often shows full declension and conjugation tables.
- SZTAKI Szótár, a free online dictionary between Hungarian and English (and several other languages), widely used by Hungarians themselves.
- A magyar helyesírás szabályai, the official spelling rules of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. The current, 12th edition appeared in 2015.
- The Helyesírási Tanácsadó Portál, the spelling advice site of the Nyelvtudományi Kutatóközpont (Hungarian Research Centre for Linguistics). Type in a word or phrase, and it tells you how to write it correctly, for example whether two words are written together or apart.
- Magyar Nemzeti Szövegtár (Hungarian National Corpus), also from the Research Centre for Linguistics. It is a huge searchable collection of real texts. When you are not sure whether a phrase is natural, search for it and see how often, and how, Hungarians really use it.
Exams
- ECL, an international language exam system based at the University of Pécs, which includes Hungarian.
- ELTE Origó, the language exam centre of Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, which also offers Hungarian as a foreign language.
Language exams accredited in Hungary are held at three levels: alapfok (B1), középfok (B2) and felsőfok (C1). So, as with many languages, C1 is the highest exam level you are likely to take. If you pass felsőfok, you hold the top certificate, and the rest is up to you.
A C2 self-check
Read through this list honestly. Each "yes" is a sign that you are at or near C2. Each "not yet" tells you what to work on next.
| Can you... | Lessons |
|---|---|
| read a news article without a dictionary, and summarise it in Hungarian? | 22, 23, 26 |
| follow a radio discussion on Kossuth Rádió, including people interrupting each other? | 22, 25 |
| choose between -ban, -n and -nál, and between -ba, -ra and -hoz, without stopping to think? | 8, 11, 16, 20 |
| use the definite and indefinite conjugations correctly in fast speech? | 10, 19 |
| put the verbal prefix in the right place in neutral, negative, focused and imperative sentences? | 14, 21, 22 |
| say "my books", "Peter's" and "mine", with any case ending? | 19 |
| make polite requests, imagined "if" sentences and regrets with the conditional? | 21 |
| read long sentences full of participles in a newspaper or a novel? | 23 |
| write a formal email to an office, with the right greeting, phrases and closing? | 24 |
| switch between slang, casual speech and formal writing, and know which words belong where? | 25 |
One last piece of advice
At this level, the most important thing is quantity. Read every day, listen every day, and speak whenever you can. Don't be afraid of mistakes: Hungarians know how hard their language is, and they are usually delighted, and a little amazed, to hear a foreigner speak it. Sok sikert! (Good luck!)
Thank you for learning Hungarian with this course. Köszönöm, és jó olvasást! (Thank you, and happy reading!)