✈️🌏 I Went Back to Hungary! vol.3～What I Learned Through Language～

Hello! This is N, a teacher at Howdy Japanese Language School Nara. 😊
This is the final part of my series about my trip back to Hungary.

It was my first trip abroad in four years, and the most difficult thing for me was the “language.” 💬Hungarian has many grammatical inflections and is completely different from the languages of the surrounding European countries. French, Italian, and Spanish, which developed from Latin, have many similarities, and I’ve heard that more than half of English vocabulary comes from Latin or French. 📚

When I lived in Hungary, it was during the COVID-19 pandemic.
My daughter started attending kindergarten and became fluent in Hungarian, while my Hungarian didn’t improve at all. 😅
For me, Hungarian pronunciation and grammar were just too difficult.
I could manage greetings and simple questions, but when someone answered me in Hungarian, I couldn’t understand a thing. Haha! 😂
My daughter is now a true Kansai girl, and her Hungarian has become a distant memory too.
Every day, the two of us laughed together, saying, “We don’t understand anything!” 😊

I wondered, “Is this how my students feel when they first arrive in Japan?” 🤔
Thinking about my students and how hard they work, studying and working part-time jobs after only a short time in Japan, made me appreciate their efforts even more. 🩷 While I was away, I exchanged messages with a student who was back home in France, asking, “How’s the heat?” A student in Japan also sent me a message saying, “Sensei, how are you? Enjoy your trip!” These messages really warmed my heart. ☺️💕

Well then, thank you very much for reading my stories about Hungary. ✨

Viszontlátásra! (Goodbye in Hungarian) 👋