Learn Hungarian - The Hypnotic Way
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Against all odds... maybe because you moved to Hungary - and even though you get by with English, you may think that it would be nice to integrate more locally... or you may have a Hungarian partner - whose family and local friends speak nothing but their native tongue... you may be drawn to the linguistic challenge... or simply fancy getting the T-shirt... and hence, thought of learning Hungarian. But isn't it notorious for being soo hard to learn?
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It may be worth a try... just for the T-shirt
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In truth, Hungarian isn't more complicated than most other languages. In fact, some of its features - like the lack of gender and having only one past tense - make it in many ways simpler. However, it feels so hard to learn because it is utterly different from any language that you are likely to be familiar with. (Think, for instance: Punjabi may sounds like unrelated to English, but it is at least on the same language tree. Hungarian is not on the tree of the great Indo-European languages. It is a small bush growing nearby.) Therefore, if you want to learn Hungarian, you have to think differently. Totally differently.
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As a hypnotherapist, I'm used to asking the question: How do we think? How does the mind do certain things? How does it gain confidence? How does it overcome fears and phobias? Or: How does it learn new languages?
As someone who grew up bilingually (with Hungarian and German) and as a daughter of a language teacher, I naturally became interested in finding out how hypnotherapy could help with language acquisition. My mother had taught Hungarian as a foreign language for fifty years, and I was six years old when I first sat in her classes and asked whether I could teach, too. (She said, "Yes," by the way, and I became the youngest teaching assistant at the University of Halle, in Germany). Her methods were excellent and showed me that it was indeed possible for foreigners to become fluent in Hungarian - but her students also had a lot more time than the average learner today. (They took 4-5 hours of Hungarian lessons per day, for a year.) I began to develop a method that would work within a realistic time frame for modern learners.
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𐳘𐳀𐳎𐳀𐳢
𐳢 = r 𐳎 = gy
𐳀 = A 𐳘 = m This is the word "magyar" written in the ancient székely-magyar runic script (róvásírás).
To read it, you have to go "backwards," (from left to right) - which is very much how you need to learn Hungarian to begin with. The endings of the words often carry the most meaning! |
The Hypnotic Method
As a result, HypnoHungarian was born: a system that combines traditional teaching methods (at times, it can be nostalgically old-fashioned) with insights from modern hypnotherapy and NLP (neuro-linguistic programming):
- It takes you step by step into the language, beginning with the smallest units of the language sounds, building towards words, simple sentences, then short texts and conversations... gradually, so that you never feel lost or overwhelmed.
- It uses hypnotherapeutic techniques of relaxation and visualisation, so that you build the language from within. Hungarian becomes a new mental construct, where you don't have to rely on your native language. (Translating in your head - first thinking in your mother tongue, then translating it into the foreign language - is the worst enemy of fluency. It's a bad habit that's very liberating to give up.)
- Don't worry: You will not be taken into any "weird" states of mind, where you lose your awareness or give up control. This method only requires a state of focused relaxation, a mild or no trance at all (as you wish). It's about learning how your mind works and utilize that to acquire your new language.
- You will get a good grasp of essential grammar and language structure. Experience has shown that the adult brain learns best if both the rational mind and intuitive learning are engaged. You will therefore not "sleepwalk" through your lessons, but rather receive all the essential knowledge that you'll need to pick up more of the language in real life, outside of class.
- It uses hypnotherapeutic techniques of relaxation and visualisation, so that you build the language from within. Hungarian becomes a new mental construct, where you don't have to rely on your native language. (Translating in your head - first thinking in your mother tongue, then translating it into the foreign language - is the worst enemy of fluency. It's a bad habit that's very liberating to give up.)
- Don't worry: You will not be taken into any "weird" states of mind, where you lose your awareness or give up control. This method only requires a state of focused relaxation, a mild or no trance at all (as you wish). It's about learning how your mind works and utilize that to acquire your new language.
- You will get a good grasp of essential grammar and language structure. Experience has shown that the adult brain learns best if both the rational mind and intuitive learning are engaged. You will therefore not "sleepwalk" through your lessons, but rather receive all the essential knowledge that you'll need to pick up more of the language in real life, outside of class.