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Talk:Hungarian phrasebook

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Hi all

I bumped into this article and although I found it very well written, I spotted a few inaccuracies, or a few things I would call inaccuracies, mostly in the pronunciation section. I was going to sort them out but since English is not my mother tongue (Hungarian is), and I do not really trust myself, I thought I would just open a discussion page and let you guys correct them if you feel like.

So here they are:


"a like 'o' in "old" (a very deep "o") → [SYMBOL: å]" WHEREAS "ó like 'o' in "so" → [SYMBOL: oa]"

I find this piece of information very confusing. To the best of my knowledge (and correct me if I am wrong) these two English words have the very same phoneme /əʊ/ (Received Pronunciation) or /oʊ/ (General American), the latter not being very far form the actual phoneme for "ó" found in standard Hungarian, and almost the same as found in certain Hungarian dialects. The "a" sound (IPA /ɒ/), however, has nothing to do with it. The closest sound for Hungarian "a" would be /ɒ/ as in RP "not".

"i like i in "hit" → [SYMBOL: i]"

This is misleading again. "I" is absolutely the same as "í" (see next entry in the article) , only, it's shorter. The word "hit", for instance, does exist in Hungarian (it means "faith") but it is pronounced more like English "heat". If you try to say "faith" in Hungarian and pronounce it as English "hit", you will be understood much less likely than if you said "heat".


"dzs like 'dg' in badge → [SYMBOL: j]" WHEREAS "gy like 'j' in major or 'de y' in made your → [SYMBOL: dj]"

Completely wrong. What is, I wonder, the differece between the "dg" of "badger" and the "j" of "major"? Absolutely nothing. The truth is that while "dzs" is a voiced postalveolar affricate /dʒ/(accurately exemplified here by the word "badge"), "gy" is a voiced palatal plosive /ɟ/, the closest known sound to the English ear of which would be the one found in French "adieu". And since the article cites German and Spanish examples, why not cite a French one here?

"ty like 'tch' in batch → [SYMBOL: ty]" - same problem as above. "Ty" is articulated in the very same place as "gy", the difference being that "ty" is voiceless. You can hear a very similar, or actually the same sound at the beginning of British English "tube".

Honestly, this ALL should be in IPA. Arbitrary systems are rather confusing, even with explanations, as they ignore dialects of English. 20:36, 20 June 2007 (EDT)

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