Chicken paprikash and easy-going people: a Korean student’s impressions of Hungary

After three years in Hungary and a successfully passed language exam, Han Seunghwa shares her experience with the Hungarian language and her impressions of Hungarian people.

Han Seunghwa arrived in Hungary in 2017 to study International Business Economics at the Budapest Business School with the Stipendium Hungaricum scholarship. This is a popular programme that allows international students to pursue their Bachelor, Master’s, or PhD studies at a higher education institution in Hungary.

Similarly to other exchange students, Han took the opportunity to learn Hungarian after she arrived here, and now, after a successful language exam, The Kim Family has done an interview with her about her background and motivations.

When asked about her choice, Han says that she selected Hungary because her partner is Hungarian, and she finds that “Hungary offers just as many opportunities to foreign students as other European countries”. She started learning Hungarian also because she wanted to be able to communicate with locals. Now she is still a student, but once she gets her degree, she plans to stay and work in Hungary.

Complicated grammar but familiar sounds

Han is a very devoted language learner. Apart from the help she receives from friends and in language classes, she often watches dubbed movies with English or Korean subtitles. She spends around 30 minutes a day practising the language.

Given her goals of staying in Hungary, she decided to take a C1 (advanced level) exam in Hungarian. She already has some experience in exam-taking, as she has successfully completed the B1 (intermediate) level. She says that even if the oral exam took shorter than the written one, she found it way more challenging than the writing part.

To the question of what is the greatest challenge in the Hungarian language, her response is the grammar: it is very complicated, and there are a lot of irregularities.