Hallo, Itt Magyarorszag!

Rating:
Summary: Great books
Review: These books, volumes I and II, are great for learning the language. I suppose the writer of these books is a fan of the "total immersion" school of language instruction, which I wholeheartedly support. I've taken and easily passed the middle level hungarian state language exam (both oral and written) as well as the upper level exam (oral only) and this book was my only written guide in terms of learning grammar and new constructions. I'm sure that those people who have studied languages before know that a good structured grammar/language course coupled with lots of speaking is about the only way for a non-native to correctly speak the language. In my experience (and trust me, I've met about a thousand and one people who think they speak a language properly -- I speak four), people who think they can learn the language solely by living in a country, because they are "fast learners and good at picking up languages" are delusional. Even so called "fluent speakers" who pick up a language this way make countless mistakes in their conversations. I progressed to a point where I could read newspapers and novels, write letters and watch tv and even be interviewed by Duna Televizio and Magyar 1 because I learned the grammatical rules properly and practiced speaking the language properly. These books were a great help in achieving a working, solid grammatical foundation on which to build my language skills. I've looked at almost all the books out there (or at least, that were out there in 1996) and none seemed to teach the language as painlessly and solidly as these books. The others were a little unnerving and didn't invite the reader to learn -- they contained too much technical archanery, and too many tiny exceptions that would throw the reader off track. Hallo, Itt Magyarorszag did a good job because it gave me the basic building blocks on which to lay all the crazy exceptions rather than throwing them all at me and having me figure out the general patterns.