When I think about a country, a new place to live, it is important from the first moment that I go to a place where I can make myself understood from my own point of view.
There are two languages that I speak well: one is Hungarian, the other is English.
Hungarian
This is my native language. I love this language, and I believe it is a special and beautiful language. I am a believer in its cultivation and correct use in my own world, and I have often been very saddened by the degradation of the use of this beautiful language in everyday life over the past thirty years. I have gotten used to it, but to this day it still feels bad that most people can write two sentences with three or four spelling and/or stylistic errors. To this day, I do not want to get used to the habit, taken from English/German grammar, of receiving letters in the form “Dear István, I am writing because…” and not in the correct, “Dear István! I am writing because…” structure that complies with the Hungarian rule.
I believe that certain works, be they poems or books, cannot necessarily be well told in another language. For example, a foreign-language transcription of an Ady poem can take a lot of work, as can the paraphrasing of a good joke of Rejtő.
I am not a flawless user of our language. This can be noticed while writing. But I make sure that my writings contain as few errors as possible, according to my knowledge.
I don’t know much about our grammar, I am sure that I still have a lot to learn about this language, but that will probably only happen in another life.
Therefore, if you find an error in my writings, please bring it to my attention!
English
I learned English between 1990 and 1994, and have rarely studied since then. Whenever I had the opportunity to take a corporate English course, I always did. I was very lucky because I was taught by two excellent English teachers 30+ years ago. They didn’t just prepare me for grammar, they gave me usable vocabulary with teaching methods that resulted in me being able to use the language with confidence from the very first minutes. They taught me to dare to speak, no matter what my vocabulary or grammar was like. Speaking is one of my favorite tools anyway, so this didn’t cause any problems. Of course, we didn’t forget that my grammar also supported my great expressiveness. All of this gave me such a solid knowledge that I dared and could tell jokes to our visiting English teacher from Scotland when I was in second grade.
So, I haven’t had any problems with English since then. Over the past thirty years, I have had the opportunity to speak this language many times and with some minor or major omissions. I also watch movies in English. An important part of my music listening habits is understanding and analyzing song lyrics. I also regularly study in this language. I don’t usually read, to be honest, I have only read one book in English so far. I didn’t need more, there are so many Hungarian books waiting for me on my list.
I don’t really write outside of business correspondence, which I do on a daily basis at my current workplace, for example. But in the last three months, writing in English has come to the fore significantly with this blog. This post is the 50th in a row. And every piece of writing in Hungarian has its English counterpart, from the very first moment.
In this work, I use the advantages of today’s technology wisely. My method is to write the Hungarian entry and translate it into English using Google Translate either in the meantime or at the end. I read each sentence of the resulting translation and rewrite it as necessary. Based on my experience, there is not much need to make corrections to the translation. That is, if I did not review the result given by the program, the final result would still be usable in a very high percentage. But I am not satisfied with that, so I always spend enough time on the English version as well.
Duolingo
The Duolingo app is a pretty good friend of mine. To be honest, I’ve been using it for 1739 days as of today. That means I’ve been using it every day for 4.7 years, without interruption.
I’ve looked at the basics of quite a few languages in it. Of course, this only means that I’ve completed a few lessons at the very beginner level. I’m interested in languages, and this program provides a very easy way to get into a foreign language. I looked at the first steps in learning Finnish, Swedish, Japanese, French, Chinese, Polish, Italian, and Portuguese. The other day, a Chinese-speaking woman called me from a Hungarian phone number, or rather, a recorded message. It was good that I recognized the language immediately, and also that I understood the greeting immediately.
In recent years, I’ve started learning two languages more seriously. One is Russian, the other is German.
Russian
When I was a child, we were taught this language for 5 years in school. Yes, I am old enough to have it as a requirement. Looking back on my experiences at the time, I think that we were not even taught what a foreign language was. There were a few people in my class who understood what it meant to speak a foreign language, but the vast majority – including me – simply did not understand what it meant to think or express ourselves in another language. This bad habit continued even when we started taking an English course at the end of primary school. At the age of 14, we had to study from a book that I think was intended for kindergarteners. We had no chance at all with compulsory education at that time.
I started learning Russian on my phone about 4 years ago. I simply like this language and I thought I would learn it on my own. I got to a certain level, but I stopped maybe a year and a half ago. Now, before I wrote these lines, I completed a lesson and was happy to see that, albeit slowly, I was able to complete the upcoming tasks on Duolingo. I am sure that I will continue learning this language.
German
When I was in elementary school, I learned German on my own from a German textbook for adults, and then I attended a course at my dad’s workplace. This was the heroic era, we still learned with the help of a cassette recorder. I remember that I was doing quite well in German when I stopped and focused on my high school English studies. A year and a half ago, I stopped learning Russian and started learning German. With the help of a private teacher and Duolingo.
I really enjoy learning this language, especially when the English-French-Latin-German parallels come into my view. I’ve been interested in Latin since I was a child. Despite the fact that I never studied the language, I try to know the expressions and sentences that belong to the general education and scientific world. French has come up tangentially every now and then, and I also think this language is very beautiful. And with this knowledge, it is a great experience for me when a related word shines through from one language to another.
Knowing these two languages, a few weeks ago I decided that when I was on the other side of the world, I would try to find people who would be willing to teach me their own language through conversation. Be it Russian, German, or Thai.
Other foreign languages
In the entry titled The Decision, I already mentioned Árpád-Zárug Zita Harkányi’s book: How to travel the world on 3533 forints a day?. In it, I read the good advice that I will never forget. The writers told me about their experience of preparing themselves with general phrases in the language of the country before arriving in a country.
My older daughter brought me this book yesterday. I didn’t even remember, but it is a dedicated book.
It was an interesting experience to take out and flip through this book first, so that I already had some of the knowledge in it. I think I will write a full entry about this, after I reread this book soon.
This book has a reference to a travel dictionary – compiled by the authors. I checked to see if this page was still available. Fortunately, it is. I think that with these lists and the help of AI, I will compile a list of what I should learn before arriving in each country.
You can see Árpi and Zita’s lists here.
In the first steps of my current dream, I formulated that I would like to go to places where I can express myself, where I can make myself understood with what I have. That is, practically with English and Hungarian. A few weeks ago, I specifically thought that I did not want to deal with language learning right now, I have enough other tasks besides that.
This has changed in me by itself now. If nothing else, I plan to learn at least a basic vocabulary before arriving in the given country.
Vasco Translator
And this is where the device that I first heard about two and a half weeks ago comes into play. The device is called the Vasco Translator M3. A good friend of mine, who speaks less of the language of the country he will be living in, probably next year, recommended it to me. He introduced the device by saying that he had chosen this one after reviewing the devices available on the market. I usually trust the opinions of my friends who I know are serious about the issues that interest them, so this recommendation is enough for me to stop worrying about this issue. I decided to get one.
Until I heard about this device, I thought that I would use my phone where I could not speak English. I quickly type or say what I wanted to say, and Google Translate translates it and plays it on the phone. Since I have been thinking about using this device, several arguments have come to mind, the main one being that the phone was not invented for this. That is, it is not a target device. I tried to imagine the situation where I have to take out my phone with bags in my hands at the fish market, unlock the screen, start the application, type a text (with both hands), or press a button, wait and press a button again, it seems quite a hassle. The target device will definitely be easier to use.
What really convinced me was the language learning option in the translation machine. Maybe this machine will bring exactly the learning simplicity that is needed for language learning.
The product description contains very nice information:
- Would you like to understand 90% of the world’s population? You can do it with this translator! Understand 76 languages in speech, text and from photos. You can even translate phone calls and chat messages. All this with a translator that fits comfortably in your pocket!
- Unlimited and free internet for translations. All translation services require an internet connection to work properly. This can be a problem if you are traveling abroad. Fortunately, our devices have a built-in SIM card that offers free and unlimited internet for translations.
- This real-time translator breaks language barriers! Feel confident at work and relax on vacation, as you can easily communicate with people who speak a foreign language. Voice translation in 76 languages, photo translator in 76 languages, language learning app with 28 language courses.
Another interesting thing is that by selecting any country in the submenu showing internet coverage on the product page, I can immediately see the names of the – I think the main – internet service providers there. I consider this a useful database for planning trips.
I stopped writing here and ordered the device. I am curious to see what it will be like to use it, what an experience it will be to learn with it. It will probably arrive tomorrow.
I won’t be lost
I think – as they say – they won’t sell me anywhere in the world. I trust that English will help in many places. Where it doesn’t, Vasco will be there. And my last hope is that I like to do Activity.