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My best friend George (Gyuri) from college is Hungarian and I've picked up a few words (mostly cuss words) from him. One of the hardest parts for an English spe

My best friend George (Gyuri) from college is Hungarian and I've picked up a few words (mostly cuss words) from him. One of the hardest parts for an English speaker to learn about Hungarian and Finnish is that the length of a sound (how long you articulate it) is significant. Finnish uses doubled letters for this, Hungarian uses accents (a vs á, o vs ó, etc.) for vowels and doubled letters for consonants. I've gotten to where I can hear the difference when listening to George speak Hungarian but it took some effort.

usrnm 1y ago
> One of the hardest parts for an English speaker to learn about Hungarian and Finnish is that the length of a sound (how long you articulate it) is significant I'm not a native English speaker, but I'm pretty sure it exists in English as well.
- messe 1y ago
  Only some dialects of English have contrastive vowel length.
- friendly_chap 1y ago
  Absolutely, think "lick" vs "leak". I think the author means Hungarian maybe uses very similar looking letters to denote this (ie "lik" and "lík"). In Hungarian also every vowel comes in pairs of short-long: a-á (what vs high), e-é (ever vs eight), "o-ó" (moss vs most), "u-ú" (put vs you), "ö-ő" (fur vs ... well long version has no English equivalent I think but German does: schön).
  - bmacho 1y ago
    a-á and e-é are not short-long pairs. a is /ɒ/, á is /aː/, e is /ɛ/, é is /eː/. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_phonology#Vowel_examples https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_phonology#Vowel_exam...
    - MarkusQ 1y ago
      From your source (page up a bit): "Hungarian has seven pairs of corresponding short and long vowels. Their phonetic values do not exactly match up with each other, so ⟨e⟩ represents /ɛ/ and ⟨é⟩ represents /eː/; likewise, ⟨a⟩ represents /ɒ/ while ⟨á⟩ represents /aː/.[14] For the other pairs, the short vowels are slightly lower and more central, and the long vowels more peripheral." So yes, they apparently are "short-long pairs".
      - bmacho 1y ago
        No, not in the sense we are talking about it.
        MarkusQ 1y ago
        Not in the sense _you_ are talking about perhaps? Typically, when people talk about "long" and "short" vowels they are referring to a combination of duration and pronunciation (e.g. English "bat" vs. "bate"), and that appears to be the case here as well. If you are interpreting the terms differently, I'm not sure what sense you have in mind.
        bmacho 1y ago
        > Typically, when people talk about "long" and "short" vowels they are referring to a combination of duration and pronunciation (e.g. English "bat" vs. "bate"), and that appears to be the case here as well. Finnish vowels and most Hungarian vowels come in short-long pairs that - only their lengths differ, their pronunciations do not (meaning: IPA denotes them with the same letter but with or without a colon) - their lengths are *phonemic*, that is they are *said to be* different phonemes, they are *perceived as* different phonemes, and there are example words that differ only at them You can observe this property in the table I've linked for i, o, ö, u, ü [0]. You can find minimal pairs for them at [1]. (Note that [1] groups these vowel pairs as "Vowels with length difference: I – Í | O – Ó | Ö – Ő | U – Ú | Ü – Ű" which does not include A - Á and E - É.) A-á and e-é are not such pairs. They differ in pronunciation (see the IPA in [0]), and their lengths, while are somewhat defined, never contrast (no minimal pairs for them). Also you can pronounce any of these four with arbitrary length, it will stay the same phoneme. [0] : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_phonology#Vowel_examples https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_phonology#Vowel_exam... [1] : https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Hungarian_minimal_pairs https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Hungarian_minimal_pa... edit: I find your previous quote 'misleading'. I would say 'wrong', but it avoids to say anything factual. At least in out of context--the rest of the wiki page clarifies everything.
- volemo 1y ago
  Sure does! “Beach” and “bitch” differ only in vowel length in some accents, IME.
- rootbear 1y ago
  Vowel length is generally not semantically significant in English. Vowels are lengthened before voiced consonants, for example, and we don’t even think about it. Compare “cab” and “cap”. As noted here, some Hungarian vowels, such as ’a’ and ‘e’ do change sound when lengthened, but some don’t. Those are the ones that are harder to distinguish for speakers of languages like English.
- borroka 1y ago
  This is an important sign when someone who is not Italian speaks Italian. The double consonant, for example in the word bello/a, indicates a longer “l” sound, but English speakers in particular do not hear the longer sound and therefore pronounce it as belo/a. Or, when they are told about the longer sound, they pronounce it in a caricatured way as bellllo/a.
yencabulator 1y ago
I've yet to hear a non-Finn get doubled consonants right, ever. Kukkakaali. Ikkuna. Somewhat easier but still challenging is getting the wovels in the right place. They're just different, and the barrier is as hard going the other way but Finns have more practice in speaking English than the other way around. It's similar to the idea that it's very very hard to learn a tonal language if you grew with non-tonal languages.

usrnm 1y ago

> One of the hardest parts for an English speaker to learn about Hungarian and Finnish is that the length of a sound (how long you articulate it) is significant I'm not a native English speaker, but I'm pretty sure it exists in English as well.

messe 1y ago
Only some dialects of English have contrastive vowel length.
friendly_chap 1y ago
Absolutely, think "lick" vs "leak". I think the author means Hungarian maybe uses very similar looking letters to denote this (ie "lik" and "lík"). In Hungarian also every vowel comes in pairs of short-long: a-á (what vs high), e-é (ever vs eight), "o-ó" (moss vs most), "u-ú" (put vs you), "ö-ő" (fur vs ... well long version has no English equivalent I think but German does: schön).
- bmacho 1y ago
  a-á and e-é are not short-long pairs. a is /ɒ/, á is /aː/, e is /ɛ/, é is /eː/. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_phonology#Vowel_examples https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_phonology#Vowel_exam...
  - MarkusQ 1y ago
    From your source (page up a bit): "Hungarian has seven pairs of corresponding short and long vowels. Their phonetic values do not exactly match up with each other, so ⟨e⟩ represents /ɛ/ and ⟨é⟩ represents /eː/; likewise, ⟨a⟩ represents /ɒ/ while ⟨á⟩ represents /aː/.[14] For the other pairs, the short vowels are slightly lower and more central, and the long vowels more peripheral." So yes, they apparently are "short-long pairs".
    - bmacho 1y ago
      No, not in the sense we are talking about it.
      - MarkusQ 1y ago
        Not in the sense _you_ are talking about perhaps? Typically, when people talk about "long" and "short" vowels they are referring to a combination of duration and pronunciation (e.g. English "bat" vs. "bate"), and that appears to be the case here as well. If you are interpreting the terms differently, I'm not sure what sense you have in mind.
        bmacho 1y ago
        > Typically, when people talk about "long" and "short" vowels they are referring to a combination of duration and pronunciation (e.g. English "bat" vs. "bate"), and that appears to be the case here as well. Finnish vowels and most Hungarian vowels come in short-long pairs that - only their lengths differ, their pronunciations do not (meaning: IPA denotes them with the same letter but with or without a colon) - their lengths are *phonemic*, that is they are *said to be* different phonemes, they are *perceived as* different phonemes, and there are example words that differ only at them You can observe this property in the table I've linked for i, o, ö, u, ü [0]. You can find minimal pairs for them at [1]. (Note that [1] groups these vowel pairs as "Vowels with length difference: I – Í | O – Ó | Ö – Ő | U – Ú | Ü – Ű" which does not include A - Á and E - É.) A-á and e-é are not such pairs. They differ in pronunciation (see the IPA in [0]), and their lengths, while are somewhat defined, never contrast (no minimal pairs for them). Also you can pronounce any of these four with arbitrary length, it will stay the same phoneme. [0] : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_phonology#Vowel_examples https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_phonology#Vowel_exam... [1] : https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Hungarian_minimal_pairs https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:Hungarian_minimal_pa... edit: I find your previous quote 'misleading'. I would say 'wrong', but it avoids to say anything factual. At least in out of context--the rest of the wiki page clarifies everything.
volemo 1y ago
Sure does! “Beach” and “bitch” differ only in vowel length in some accents, IME.
rootbear 1y ago
Vowel length is generally not semantically significant in English. Vowels are lengthened before voiced consonants, for example, and we don’t even think about it. Compare “cab” and “cap”. As noted here, some Hungarian vowels, such as ’a’ and ‘e’ do change sound when lengthened, but some don’t. Those are the ones that are harder to distinguish for speakers of languages like English.
borroka 1y ago
This is an important sign when someone who is not Italian speaks Italian. The double consonant, for example in the word bello/a, indicates a longer “l” sound, but English speakers in particular do not hear the longer sound and therefore pronounce it as belo/a. Or, when they are told about the longer sound, they pronounce it in a caricatured way as bellllo/a.

yencabulator 1y ago

I've yet to hear a non-Finn get doubled consonants right, ever. Kukkakaali. Ikkuna. Somewhat easier but still challenging is getting the wovels in the right place. They're just different, and the barrier is as hard going the other way but Finns have more practice in speaking English than the other way around. It's similar to the idea that it's very very hard to learn a tonal language if you grew with non-tonal languages.