There was a native speaker, and everyone switched to Polish and I
felt like crying. I didn't wanna speak in front of people. But you have
To start somehow and practice being brave so this is part of learning
languages as well I think
Hello Sziszi! How are you, I'm good how are you?
I am so good I'm super super happy to finally meet you in person,
crazy though talking to you. I know it feels funny! Could you please
introduce yourself to people who might not know you?
So Hi everyone, I'm Szilvia,
but everyone calls me Sziszi.
I'm from Hungary, and I'm a Hungarian language teacher.
How many languages do you speak? Which ones are you learning?
I speak English, I know it's boring, and
Polish.
A little bit of Russian. I don't use it actively so I don't know
it's so hard to tell what would you consider "knowledge" but I would say
that I speak Russian. And I started to learn Spanish a few months ago.
Amazing. And what got you into learning Polish? that's quite unique
It started 10 years ago. First, I went to bilingual High School, and
we had to choose a second language, besides English,
and I took Russian. And then
when I applied for university. I wanted to go on with Slavic languages.
- so, I had Russian and Polish - Amazing, Ok, wow
And how did you decide to start teaching Hungarian?
I was thinking of what to do with all the languages that I know
because the only thing I knew when I finished high school was "okay I
love learning languages but what today to what it?" And I finished
my bachelor and I was still thinking
about a Polish major and Russian minor But still what should I do? Then I realised
that it can be a good idea to be a Hungarian as a foreign language teacher
because languages just make me understand my students
better.
Do you think that's true that Hungarian thought the hardest
languages in the world?
No, no. I refuse!
Haha! Why not?
I think that every language
Has its own difficulties and it just depends on the person
I don't like these generalisations to just take it
as a fact that it's the most difficult one. And I have
students who speak perfectly beautifully so it's totally
possible.
Hungarian grammar is a bit tricky.
Um,
what advice do you have for someone who is coming from maybe an English
background, trying to learn a language with such a complicated
grammar?
So my advice would be not to give up.
It might be tricky at the beginning. It might be very weird
and strange. Those vowel harmony rules, but after you get through
that part that seems very strange, then the same thing will come back.
And, and it has a logic. So, it's just weird in the beginning but don't
Give up if you're learning. Again, and it's really possible to get!
Are there any similarities between Hungarian and maybe Polish?
There are some in the structure, actually. For example, verbs with
prefixes. We have those and they have it in Polish as well so,
This way of thinking and tenses could be similar. Tenses,
We only have present and pas
yu can make future tenses as well
if you really want to but
using just the present conjugation can mean future as well as between
Both languages. That's cool. I think Chinese does that too
Learning Spanish, was that tricky for you or is Spanish very simple?
Is everyone says that it should be easy right?
Conjugations are tricky for me, like verb tenses
a lot of people say that because I speak Polish then Spanish is going to be easy,
But I'm having a really hard time with the tenses. And as I told you
in Hungarian we have two tenses. And in Spanish they have,
I don't know how many, but like just like in English, too many. Yeah,
English is weird. What's your method for learning
Spanish grammar? Are you using a book Or how do you
remember all of those?
I have a book
To be honest I haven't really Learnt any grammar so far. I haven't made 75 00:05:20,909 --> 00:05:27,959 A plan. But I have a book and it explains things in Hungarian. And
I have language exchange partners And when something comes up
When I feel like, Okay, I'm really struggling with this one,
I have no idea
how to say this, then I check it In a book. I check
that specific
grammar thing. And I just read it and try to make sentences
through examples.
How did you meet your language partners?
One of them was actually my student.
Oh cool! She's from Mexico and I wanted to learn Mexican Spanish.
And, at the beginning she was my student and then after a month
I was like, Okay, don't you want to be language exchange partners instead?
And she's a teacher as well Oh good, yeah
I think it's easier when someone is either a teacher or language
learner themselves, to be able to explain grammar. When people ask me
to explain Afrikaans grammar sometimes it's tricky for me, then
I have to turn on my brain and think "how would I learn this language?"
There is a different way of thinking when you've learned the
language yourself.
Exactly. And with teachers I think The best thing is that they
know how to talk to you. So, even if you just started learning a
language they can use words that after the lesson you're like, omgosh
I speak Spanish. Even if you don't.
Yeah, I think teaching is really a special skill because you like you
said, you learn to talk to someone in a way that's simple enough for
them to understand but also them to feel like they're making progress.
How do you start learning a language from the beginning? So if
somebody were just to start out What advice would you give?
I think the most important, what really helped me, is to find a
language exchange partner. -Yeah. -That's what I would do
because then you can use the language right away. Or if you
don't want to find an exchange partner, then just just have a very
clear goal about
Why
why do you need that language. Because if you are don't start using
It right away it might be demotivating. Is that a word?
Yeah. Demotivating. Yeah.
Yeah, like you said it's important to use a language right from the start/
But what if someone is very shy or they feel like, "I don't know vocabulary
How do I speak?"
I think
it could be a good idea to talk to yourself. Because for some people
it's also very scary to hear their own voice. Six or seven years ago when I was
In Poland. We were with friends and there was a native speaker.
And everyone switched to polish and I felt like crying.
I didn't wanna speak in of people. But you have to start somehow and
You have to practice being brave. This is part of learning langs as well I think.
You have to practice being brave
When you were in that situation, could you understand the Polish that
people were saying but you were just scared to talk it?
Yeah, exactly. I mean I could have even answered, but maybe with bad
grammar and it made me really nervous like "omg they're gonna hear
something wrong that I said"
I think both you and I as language teachers and fellow lang learners
We know that people arenot really out there
trying to make fun of your mistakes or are laughing. And the fact that
you're learning their language is actually very heartwarming and
I've never really experienced people laugh at my mistakes I mean
maybe if it's like a really embarrassing mistake we'll laugh
together, but, um, but it takes a while to get there. Yeah, it takes a while
get to that point where you're like "Oh, people are actually trying
To help me"
Yes, exactly. I think it's, it might be very difficult if you have
A bad experience, then you
need to be even braver.
Yeah. Have you had any bad experiences with language learning?
I did, yeah, in Poland/
There were some situations when people told me "wow you still
have a lot to learn"
How do you get over that?
Um, with time. And I had a long break actually after I finished
university.
I haven't really
read or watched anything in Polish for like
one or two years.
But then it came back and I missed it
so much, so...
The same thing happened to me with Korean. Something happened that
just felt very angry towards the language. And then I I took a bit
of a break. But because I have been learning it for such a long time
already, probably the same amount of time you were learning Polish,
I didn't forget it, and I just went back like ah I had this really
Deep connection with the language. You can't escape it! Yeah it's true.
Like you're really old friends with the language. You can't leave. Yeah
Do you have any general tips for language Learners who are are just starting out
As we finish up?
Yeah, I think there's one more thing I want to say. I think
it's important to find a way to make it fun. And it could be different
for everyone so it might take a lot of time to figure it out
for yourself what's your like. For example I realised that I love
watching workout videos in different languages
that you do every day and it just becomes a habit and you're
listening to that language as well Every day
Oh workout videos! Yeah. Oh cool, I never thought of that. Yeah, that's
actually a good way to learn.
So to like that you know just to find something, and to do
something every day. And don't be like okay now I have three hours so
now I can study! Just try to study 10 minutes every day, or at least
three times a week. If you have a long break it's going to be very
very difficult. For this actually we made a language challenge with
another Hungarian teacher, a friend. We shared very interesting and
I think, exciting tasks every day for five weeks,
and we're posting it now every day. Those are really fun tasks
so if you don't have any idea of what to do when you study for 10min
Every day then you can follow some of those tasks we collected
For that.
So cool. Where can people find those tasks?
It's on my website it's www.hungarianwithsziszi.com but my
name can be a little bit tricky with the szi-szi. I'll post it in the
description. You have everything there you can post it in your
Instagram stories and then keep track of everyone else's progress
as well.
Fantastic. And where else can people find you on social media?
My Hungarian teaching account is @hungarianwithsziszi
And my language learning account is @ilovemyaccent
And I actually created that account
to show my students that it's OK to make mistakes and
to let them see that I learn as well
And that I talk
like a baby in Spanish as well so it's okay.
Oh, wonderful, thank you for sharing I will put all those links
in the description. Amazing. Thank you for the chat It was so so good
to get to know you.
Yeah.
I was so excited to meet you, thank you so much for having me.
Amazing. Thank you so much. See you, bye!!