I. Hungarológia
Survey
We asked representatives of the field how they interpret the concept and interdisciplinary frames of Hungarian studies and its relationship with the mediation/teaching of Hungarian as a foreign or second language (including Hungarian as a language of origin and as a surrounding language) today, in the first quarter of the 21st century. This survey presents the views of the scholars who responded to the question.
Writing Between: Hungarian Affinities in Contemporary Irish Poetry
There are some significant contemporary Irish poets, such as W. B. Yeats, Dennis O’Driscoll and Hugh Maxton/McCormack, who have been in engagement with Hungarian poets and writers, for instance, Antal Szerb, Jenő Dsida and Ágnes Nemes Nagy, as well as George Szirtes. The question of how cultural and poetic exchanges between Irish and Hungarian writers have developed throughout the twentieth century is in the heart of this essay. Its aim is to reveal some of these relations by analyzing specific works of authors mentioned here. The originally English essay was translated by Anna Branczeiz
II. A magyar mint idegen nyelv
The teaching of target language civilization and the development of intercultural competence in Hungarian as a foreign language course books – with an outlook on the B1 level Origo language exam
In this paper I present the cultural contents of two Hungarian as a foreign languages coursebook series: MagyarOK I–II–III. and Halló, itt Magyarország! I–II. I analyse how the teaching of cultural contents helps to develop communicative competences and in what ways it can contribute to developing and maintaining intrinsic and extrinsic, as well as performance motivation. Furthermore, I present the cultural knowledge and cultural know-how that is required at a level B1 language exam and in everyday life in the target language environment
Everything is connected – functional categories, part and whole, belonging and possession in the system of language usage
Functional-typological comparison can be very useful in language teaching: it explores with a comparative approach the system of language usage instead of applying rigid formal descriptive grammatical categories. In the introduction, the paper clarifies the interpretation of functional categories and supports the suitability of the Hungarian language for the role of tertium comparationis. The exposition places the grammatical category of possession in the system of predication types and explores the significance of the blurred line between process and state. It specifically delves into action-based possessive structures. It answers questions which cannot be clarified by formal grammar, with the tools provided by cognitive semantics, and thus resolves the position of the genitive in the Hungarian case system. Discussions that use thematic roles can be effectively applied to comparing languages of different types and origins, and can be well applied in language teaching and translation
The verbal inflections of Hungarian in grammars from the 16th century till nowadays
This paper offers an overview of the terms used to designate the verbal inflections of Hungarian in grammars from the 16th century until today. Keywords: definite and indefinite verbal inflection, agreement between verb and object, grammatical terms
III. Kontransztok
Metaphors and the human body
Lakoff and Johnson (1980) call attention to the fact that metaphors constitute an elemental part of everyday language use. They propose that instead of single metaphorical expressions, cognitive structures in the mind must be considered in metaphor research. The meanings of metaphorical expressions can be deduced on the bases of conceptual metaphors that can have several linguistic realizations across the source domain and the target domain. The human body is an ideal source domain to conceptualize non-literal meanings in languages. In this paper I compare 197 Hungarian and Italian body metaphors in an attempt to answer the question whether these two languages use the same body metaphors or if they represent wholly different conceptualizations.
Contrastive analysis of Hungarian and English phraseological units containing the word ’mother
In the paper I present a contrastive analysis of Hungarian and English phraseological units containing the word ’mother’, and I outline the benefits of these units for second language teaching. My main target is to reveal the compliance of the collected expressions on the semantical level through phraseological connections. Since the expressions under investigation „relay (…) generally applicable observations, facts of life, social values, (and) cultural experiences” (Császári 2013, 47), the exploration of the semantic motivation behind them may be extremely useful for language learners in reconstructing two (or more) cultural systems. In language learning, linguistically expressed cultural elements such as the ones analyzed in this paper may play a major role in the way students perceive the target language and the target language community whose world view such phraseological units offer a glimpse into.
IV. Ismertetők
A teacher’s guide to teaching Hungarian (review)
This is a review of a new book series called Magyarnyelv-tanári segédkönyvek, published both as regular books and in online pdf format, by Károli Gáspár University (KRE) and L’Harmattan Press. The aim of the series is twofold. On the one hand, the publications target the students in the University’s teacher training program for Hungarian as a foreign language: they provide the teacher candidates with various course materials (readings, ideas for teaching, tasks, topics and questions for discussion, self-check tests) to assist their learning. On the other hand, the series serves the higher purpose of gathering, presenting and making openly accessible the specifics of the field in an up-to-date form. At present, the book series comprises 14 volumes, published over a two-year period 2018–2019. The paper reviews these 14 volumes – with the hope that new volumes will follow soon.