I'm curious how many group members are native speakers and how many are learning. I'm still a struggling beginner. (I'm something of a language junkie, and my husband's background is Hungarian.)

Can anyone recommend some books that are relatively easy reading? Are there any Hungarian authors who write for young adults?

I was born in Budapest, so can't comment on how hard it is to learn Hungarian. I like learning languages through books, and never use a dictionary, but let my brain make the necessary connections. This method has the drawback that when I am starting and have to translate for other people, it is very difficult for a while, since there are no connections between the languages word networks, just the relationships between the words within a given language. This effect disappears after a while...

Also, I will think of some Hungarian books to recommend you, but what I do is actually to read a book in the foreign language that I already know. The advantage is that I know the gist of the story, or even remember the dialogs, and can choose fairly well the type of book that I fancy (unless it is too uncommon to be translated). The likelyhood of slang, or neologism, or other rather local linguistical content is also lower, since the translator will have to adapt to the author, and follow the original text.

The book I use like this is "Three men in a boat" (yes, to say nothing of the dog)... I think I have it in 6 or seven languages. Everywhere I go I pick it up for fun, and read at least a few pages.

And of course, there are several authors that write for young adults. I still have my entire collection of Delfin (Dolphin) books, which were published in the '70s for teens. I will be glad to fish for some recommendation there...

Az üzenetet módosította a szerzője, szept. 8, 2006, 10:42am.

Mi jó ötlet, to read a book in a new language that is already familiar in one's own. I will have to see if one of my favorite novels is translated into Hungarian. Köszönöm, David!

Hi, I'm Hungarian and I found my way here via Slashdot ;

Easy reading, well, I'm a native speaker so I cannot really tell, but here are my youth SF favourites:
* Tőke Péter: Nyevigák
* László Endre: anything, really. He has a whole series of novels that are based on radio dramas. ("Szíriusz kapitány")
I literally grew up on these, so they're suitable for children (easy reads) but they are not boring and, er, insulting to your intelligence. I learned what a geosynchronous orbit was from one of the Szíriusz titles :

Some of these have been scanned and are floating around on Teh Intarwebz :P

***

We should get FSZEK or OSZK listed on the Add Books page (under "choose from 60 other sources"), does anyone know how to go about that? I didn't find anything in the FAQ... but then again, it's 3 AM, so I'm not exactly at peak performance ATM.

Hi, it's nice to see that audacity : ) I suggest you the Winnie the Pooh (translated by Kosztolányi, Dezső), lot of people says that it's more better in Hungarian as in English (maybe you should try when you're intermediate).

(Unfortunatelly, there is no Hungarian Winnie the Pooh (Micimackó) posted on LibraryThing. It'll be compensated ; )

prezzy: Simán megoldható (az OSZK-s mindenképpen, az FSZEK-esek szar Corvinát használnak), csak neki kéne ülni ; )

Many thanks for the recommendations. Winnie the Pooh was among my childhood favorites, so I will enjoy rediscovering my old friends via Hungarian. I will try Töke Péter and László Endre, too. (Sorry, my keyboard refuses to make long ö's.)

daniel.takacs: most arra gondoltam, lehet h jobb lenne valami könyvesboltot, mint az Amazon, mert akkor szép színes borítók is lennének automatikusan ;) Most elkezdtem beaddolni a norvég könyveimet, és ott futottam bele ebbe a HATALMAS problémába; norvég könyvtár van a listán, de egyrészt nincs meg nekik minden - pl. scifi témában... - másrészt meg ha már vebkettő, akkor legyen szép színes :P De halvány segédfogalmam sincs, melyiket lehetne, nem értek hozzá, hogy ezek az online boltok milyen formátumban meg hogy tárolják a könyveik adatait. Miért nincs amazon.hu? *hüpp*

Az üzenetet módosította a szerzője, jan. 2, 2007, 4:17pm.

Kedves mindenki, akcióba lendültem és elkezdtem nyávogni, hogy legyen OSZK.
http://www.librarything.com/talktopic.ph...
Nyávogjunk többen, és akkor talán sikeres lesz.

I whined as well on the topic you linked about the addition of the Hungarian source. Let's cross our fingers... :)

In the meantime you, prezzey, should invite your Hungarian friends to use LibraryThing anyway. Books, and covers can all be added manually, too, and the more there are users, the more we all benefit!

Hi, I'm also Hungarian and a Librarian although right now I am at home with my little son.
I grab the covers usually from bookline.hu. I guess the problem using a Hungarian online shop for LibraryThing lies in the fact that all online bookstores use their own programs for inventory and shopping and you need a standard language (like MARC used by OPACs) to be able to import stuff to web application such as this.

OSZK has Z39.5, which is the protocol LibraryThing accepts. But they don't have covers :( Hmm, maybe someone should start a decent Hungarian bookstore which uses Z39.5... ;) (Completely unrelated, but I just *need* to state it: even though I am a regular customer at Bookline, their website DRIVES ME UP THE WALL.)

I just add Hungarian titles manually. It takes longer, but oh well.

I have a ridiculous amount of Hungarian books. (They fill two flats and annoy a whole family to no end.) I've completely given up on entering all of them by hand, after seeing how much time a single shelf takes (and I don't even upload pictures). *sigh* especially now that I'm not living in either of those two flats permanently! But my dorm room is filling up slowly but surely, too :O

davidorban:
I've already talked two friends into it!

I found Roger Lancelyn Green's 'Robin Hood' in Hungarian in Irok Boltya in Budapest -I don't know if it's available in England.

A friend asked me to create an account for him, and sent me his books list as an Access file.. I didn't realize that I needed to have the ISBN field in them to upload. Is that true? He is distressed... :)

Tiresias:
there are also quite good webstores with LARGE percentages off listed price: eg. alexandra.hu offers your bilingual-edition Robin Hood at -25%. You might need to haggle with them a bit over shipping to foreign countries, though.

davidorban:
I'm not so sure about that, I've bumped into Hungarian books added by others which had their ISBN missing before... so it's definitely possible *somehow*, or maybe it was possible at one point and they've patched it up since?

Prezzey: thank you for the tip. I hope you are enjoying your time in Vienna - if you are still there. Budapest and Vienna are the places I like to be most; I go to Vienna once a year to stay with a friend, and Budapest three or more times a year (again, staying with friends in Buda). I was interested to see you are studying cognitive psychology - I am doing an MSc in Psychotherapy (in London), including recent neuroscientific research. I started to learn Hungarian because of working with a Budapesti holocaust survivor, at a Jewish Care home in London. She has now died, but I have gone on with Hungarian, which I find fascinating, made friends in Budapest...as one of them said, 'Budapest is her legacy to you'. My Hungarian course at Univ. of London has finished, and I will have to try to find some alternative - perhaps one of the intensive courses in Budapest, if I can get away from work for so long...

Tiresias:
Wow, it's amazing that you're learning the language! You have all my appreciation :)

I've just returned to Budapest yesterday morning... and talk about coincidences, I had to use the subway station at Kossuth Sq. (I don't think I've done so in years) and I noticed a statue of.... Tiresias. (After some brain-wracking, I think I remember reading that when it was first set up, blind people were really annoyed by it because it was inconveniently placed and it was very easy to bump into. But I've never actually seen it before and had completely forgotten about it.)

I'm unaware of your age, but try perhaps Magda Szabo

Does Zsabo suits you?

I've done the same thing that davidorban suggested- I'd read Harry Potter and the Chronicles of Narnia in english multiple times, so when I had the opportunity, I picked them up in Hungarian and read them. Even if I didn't understand every word, I still fit together the pieces of what I remembered from reading them previously and what I did understand and learned something new every time I sat down to read.