Just not my style...

I just realized something. Yes, I know, really stupid of me, not to get it earlier, but better late than never, huh?

I will never be a polyglot in the normal meaning of the word, because I don't have the tenacity. One just needs to look at this blog to get that.  Last year I made two posts. TWO. I WAS SUPPOSED to take the 6-week challenge in Russian, but... that was about it. I think I managed one week this time around. :-D
(One thing that did me in was the Russian keyboard. I went to https://www.keybr.com/ and got it all set up nicely, but then the program had me typing the same 4-5 letters day after day, never gave me any new letters, and I gave up. Not fun.)
2016 I got into Korean. That lasted a couple of months, I think...
2015 I posted my 52 in 52 plan at the beginning of the year, but if you look at the entries, most of them are empty. 
2014 was also a slow year.
One thing to notice about statistics is that I post mostly during January (New Year's promises... every year I wish I will do better and actually stick to something.) and April (Because of my birthday. Every year I am reminded of my "50 languages by 50" goal.)

It would be wonderful if I just had the determination and perseverance. I mean, one can learn anything in 15 minutes a day, if one just does it for a longer time, like a year or so. The longer one persists, the more one learns. And I have been studying languages for some 40 years now. Had I only stuck to it, it would be more probable than possible that I indeed spoke 50 languages by now.
I do love languages and I learn them easily enough...
I'm OK with my bad pronunciation (good enough to be understood, but is never going to be good enough to pass as a native.)
I am kind of proud of the Finnish influence in my language. I use languages as I use Finnish, and Finnish is very elastic. I know it's a bad habit, but... as long as I am not working with the language, like being an interpreter, translator, or teacher, I don't see the problem with that.

But, anyway, I have decided to allow myself to be just as "airy" as I am and not be serious with my languages. So I will be studying 20 languages side by side 2-3 times a year for 1-3 weeks, and what sticks, sticks, and that's good enough.

So, today's "20 languages" were:
Láadan (conlang)
Russian
Maltese
Spanish
French
High Valyrian (conlang)
German
Welsh
Chinese
Korean
Danish
Japanese
Turkish
Tegirenai or Tigerian (conlang)
Vulcan (conlang)
Walloon
Mari
Karelian
Toki Pona (conlang)
Hungarian
Arabic
Hebrew

I got irritated by the way someone pronounces Láadan, it sounds so... unnatural, forced, fake. So I studied about how to pronounce it.

Russian didn't get much love, I read the "word of the day", and that's it.

Maltese got more love. Still the same problem as every day. *sigh* I managed to find a forum, but it's a disgusting ultra-nationalist, racist forum, and I don't want to learn what they say. I want to learn nice things. I have also decided that I really need to learn the verb basics. This is too difficult, trying to figure out the verb forms without the support of grammar. :-D

Spanish got some proper studies, though if the studies at Duolingo count as that, I don't know.

I started reviewing my 5000 French words. I still remember pretty much, and the last time I looked at it was 2016! I had an experiment going on there, learning the 5000 most common words 100 words a day, and I got to 2900 words.

High Valyrian... it's mostly a joke. It is offensive that there is a course on High Valyrian on Duolingo, BUT NOT ON ARABIC.

I got some German brushed up. I know surprisingly much of German. On the other hand, I should. German is one of the languages I can actually read. It's still like B-level, but still.

Started brushing up my Welsh as well. Though I like the Goedelic branch more.

Continued with my Chinese. Right now that's about the most serious I am with languages. I decided to just jump in and so far it's going great. I am holding the reigns tight and not letting me go gathering information, it's really hard as it is, but I really want to learn the language and not just wish I knew.

I was reminded of how much I like Korean dramas and decided to brush up on my Korean as well. Relearned the letters.

Min mand er dansk, og jeg vil kunne tale dansk med ham. So I started the Danish course at Duolingo as well. I have given up on trying to pronounce it well, and just try to repeat it as it sounds in my Finnish ears. My husband has told me my Finnish accent is great for Danish. :-D The fact that Danish has more vowel sounds than Finnish has ANY sounds - bah. What ever. :-D

Now, that video with the woman speaking Korean, Chinese, and Japanese was inspiring, so I have added Japanese to my list as well. I am going to use Heisig's Remembering the Kanji, so I would like to learn the basics of Chinese and Japanese transcribed... At least until I know the letters. There's quite a lot of them. :-D It's not like with Korean or Hebrew.

Turkish I noticed was on Duolingo as well, and I like the Turkish TV dramas as well, so - let's brush that up a bit, too.

Now, the inventor of Tigerian was expressing himself on Láadan, and as tigers are my spirit animals, I went to see what this Tigerian is. I don't think it's going to get much attention from me in the future though.

They had Vulcan on Memrise, and because I identify myself with the Vulcans, I thought I could just as well learn the language :-D

They also had Walloon, and I suspect our family might have some Walloon roots, though... maybe not. I think I look a bit South European... could be possible.

I was just looking into Mari. It is a Finno-Uralic language, and it would be interesting to learn some of that, just for the nationalist streak in me - and to save the endangered languages

Karelian is on the list because I am writing in Swadesh lists of the Finnic languages on Memrise.

Toki Pona is still waiting. I don't think it will take much time to learn enough of this language to be able to use it. It fascinates me a lot.

I was rereading this blog again, and I just love Kati Wolf. So Hungarian.

I have such difficulties with Maltese, so I decided to learn Arabic to be able to learn Maltese. (Now, Arabic is one of the "brush up" languages, so it's not like I'm beginning from zero here either.)

And my Jewish husband is into his Jewish studies right now, so Hebrew got up on the list.

Challenge 52 in 52: Hungarian

Ahogy rám nevetsz, nekem az volt fontos, nem a kinézeted,
’Hogy rám nézel, egy pillanat, de máris megigézel,
Az érzelem, mi legbelül van, nem a mellemen,
Én éreztem, tudod más nem kellett volna többé nekem!

Neked a rózsaszín kell, a tömeg lány!
Nem én vagyok a lány ott benn a fejedben,
Nem én vagyok a tucat és az eszetlen,
Ha tudod jól, hát mért nem hagysz már el?

A jófiút a fehér lovon kérhetem,
Te csak tönkreteszed teljesen az életem,
Nem én vagyok a lány, aki neked kell!

Sírtam én, hogy te mást bámultál, így rúgtál belém,
Álmodban mással mászkáltál oly boldogan,
A vasalt haj nem kell, sem ezüst póló csillogó kövekkel,
Én más vagyok, nekem a lazaság számít, nem a tűsarok!

Neked a rózsaszín kell, a tömeg lány!
Nem én vagyok a lány ott benn a fejedben,
Nem én vagyok a tucat és az eszetlen,
Ha tudod jól, hát mért nem hagysz már el?

A jófiút a fehér lovon kérhetem,
Te csak tönkreteszed teljesen az életem,
Nem én vagyok a lány…

A mesékben harcol értem a hercegem,
De te csak játszottál, én elhittem neked...

Nem én vagyok a lány ott benn a fejedben,
Nem én vagyok a tucat és az eszetlen,
Rájöttem, s már én hagytalak el.

Kőből van a szíved, nagyot tévedtem,
Mikor elhittem, hogy te lehetsz a végzetem,
Nem te vagy már az, aki nekem kell!

(Itt a vége, fuss el végre!) Nem, nem, nem! Tűnj már el!
(Itt a vége!) Tűnj már el!
(Itt a vége, fuss el végre!) Tűnj már el!
(Itt a vége, itt a vége, fuss el végre!) Nem, nem, nem! Tűnj már el!
(Itt a vége!) Nem, nem, nem!
(Itt a vége, fuss el végre!) Tűnj már el! Tűnj már el!

Ah.

I started to transcribe the Comte... and gave up. I got the first line right. I heard things in the second line that weren't there, and missed part of the third line... I took a word as several, and even though the sentence made sense, it was not what was said. Then I took several words as one, and the sentence didn't make any sense.
Anyway, I now know what my biggest problems with transcribing French is :-D

I can see the benefits of this method, and won't throw the idea into garbage, because there's nothing wrong with it. I just don't know enough French to do that.

I have lazily studied Hungarian, but considering that I had already "met" the language, I count this week as a failure in the 52 in 52 challenge. I really should know more Hungarian by now.

BTW, Hungarian food is amazing too. Here's a couple of food blogs in Hungarian.
- nemisbéka
- lila füge
- chili es vanilia
and here a recipe site

I wish people stopped saying "I was in this and this country, and they thought I was native speaker of the language!"
No-one has ever told me I sound like a native Finnish speaker, and I bet no native speaker of ANY language has heard anyone ever told them that. If they have, it's not many, and it's not a compliment... especially if South Americans say you sound like Spanish... I might be wrong about this, but I have got the impression that South Americans think Spanish Spanish sounds awful.
Nevertheless, the goal with studying languages should be understanding, not perfecting your accent.

Hungarian cases

Ok, Hungarian cases

Here's a video about remembering the Czech case endings

Here's what Benny has to say about Czech cases:

"When I was told that there were 7 cases for each word with a different option for singular and plural, I was worried that I would have to learn 14 “words” for each individual word. This is not the case. All we need to do is change the end of the word. It does take a bit of getting used to that you have to remember if you are changing that last o to an a and which case to use etc. but if you do enough exercises... This is something that you can get used to! In fact, it soon becomes quite natural!"

and this is what he has to say about Hungarian cases:

"One of the first things you will hear when someone is describing Hungarian to you is that it has “over twenty cases” (exact number depends on the source). This is pure hogwash. [Noun case] is just a fancy name for “the preposition gets attached to the end of the word”. So while in Czech, any case requires you to know (or at least extrapolate) up to fourteen possible combinations per word (which luckily follow patterns) for each case, Hungarian just has two or three, which are almost always totally obvious.

You could call it the “dative”, but it’s actually the “to/for”... ...in Hungarian you just add “-nek” or “-nak” to the end. Which one you use only depends on the vowels in the word.

So Csillának adtam egy könyvet is I gave a book to Csilla. “In” Budapest is written as Budapesten. These “cases” don’t influence articles or adjectives and are a short list to learn, which you’d have to learn anyway in other languages as prepositions.

It takes some getting used to when you attach them to the end of the word rather than the beginning, and the only other trick is that if you use a demonstrative (“this” or “that”) it also gets attached to the word this/that. But that’s about it!"

"There is a terminology problem with Western approaches to Hungarian grammar. There are actually only three cases in Hungarian--nominative, accusative, and possessive. All the other things which some old-fashioned grammarians call "cases" are not cases at all but suffixed postpositions. For example, let's look at the noun kutya 'dog'. The nominative is kutya, the accusative is kutyát, and the first person singular possessive is kutyám. These are the three cases.

There are quite a few suffixed postpositions. For example, kutyában 'in the dog', kutyából 'out of the dog', kutyába 'into the dog', kutyán 'on the dog', kutyára 'onto the dog', kutyáról 'off of the dog', kutyának 'to the dog', kutyánál 'at the dog', kutyához 'toward the dog', kutyától 'away from the dog', etc. These are the things that old-fashioned grammars called "cases"."
-Taivo

Hungarian reference gives this list of cases/postpositions

-t - accusative - direct object of verbs

-nak/nek- dative - indirect object of verbs (for, to)

-ba/be- illative - into, to

-ban/ben - inessive - in, inside

-ból/ből - elative - out of, from

-hoz/hez/höz - allative - towards, to

-nál/nél - adessive - at, by

-tól/től - ablative - away from

-ra/re- sublative - onto, to

-n- superessive - on, in

-ról/ről - delative - from, from off; about

-val/vel - instrumental - with

-ért - causal-final - for, because of

-ig - terminative - until

-kor - temporal - age, -time, -hood, era

-vá/vé - translative - turning into

-féle - kinds of

I find it easier to understand the meaning of prepositions and cases when I go through another language I know, like Finnish, my mother tongue, or English.

I have also noticed that my husband finds it easier to learn the cases if he understand the Latin grammar names, because that explains when the case is being used, and gives him some help in translating the case to concepts he understands.
So -

SOME NOUN CASES

* Nominative is "nominating" - naming. It's the "name" of the word, the basic form, the one mentioned in every dictionary.

* Accusative is "accusing" - pointing to the origin or cause.
Accusative is the case of object.

"I pick an apple"

The apple is the object and would therefore be in accusative case in languages that has accusative case.

* Dative is "dating" - a little like accusative, as it indicates the indirect object of a verb.
I think it's easy to remember from German "für mich" - or in English "to me". When ever you would use "me" if I was the person, "indirect object" of the action - "He gave the apple to me" - you use dative.

* Genitive comes from the Latin word for "to beget" - like genes, genetic and gender. It "marks a noun as modifying another noun". Usually it is used to mark possession, but there are other uses for it too, expressed with the preposition "of" in English.
(doomsday (doom's day) - day of doom)

* Possessive is not really a noun case, but as English doesn't use genitive in any other way than to express possession, it is named possessive when speaking of English.  It's one of the few postpositions in English that are written together with the word. The ' here is not replacing part of another word like in it is -> it's but it's a case ending that has morphed. It used to be -es. , but a possessive suffix: apple's - John's

but again it shows very clearly in personal pronouns:
adjective possessive - noun possessive
my - mine
thy - thine
his/her - his/hers
our - ours
your - yours
their - theirs
this remains in words like it -> its and who/whom, which -> whose

* Vocative is a funny case. It expresses that you are talking to someone :-D
Compare "I don't know, John" and "I don't know John".
In first sentence, John would be in vocative in languages that uses vocative, in the second sentence it would be in Accusative.

* Locative

- Lative is a case which indicated motion to a location. It doesn't have anything to do with latent, but with la, which in Latin is to carry, to lift, to bring.
- Separative is a case which indicates motion from a location. In most languages the name ablative is used.

- Ablative - out of, from (ab-lative)
- Allative is the generally used term for lative case. - onto (ad-lative) indicating the target place of movement onto something
- Illative - into (in-lative) indicating the target place of movement into something
- Elative - out of (ex-lative, indicated the origin place of being carried or brought out of something)
- Sublative - under, below, onto, to (sub-lative) indicating the target place under surface, in Hungarian "under surface" is more freely interpreted
- Delative - from, from off; about (de-lative, indicating the origin place of something being removed

- Adessive - on (ad-essive, indicates the state of being on or at something or someone.)
- Inessive - in (in-essive, indicates the state of existing, being inside something)
- Superessive (super-essive) indicates location on top of, or on the surface of something (super - over, above, on top)

* Essive indicates the state of being, existing - "when being an X", "as an X". In Finnish you can use this as locative as well, for example 'kotona' is the essive of koti, home, and when I say "minä olen kotona" I don't mean I am being a home, but that I am at home.

* Translative (trans-lative) indicates a change in state of a noun (becoming X, changing to X, turning into X)

The ending is -vá / -vé after a vowel; assimilating to the final consonsant otherwise:
Lót felesége sóvá változott - "Lot's wife turned into salt"
fiává fogad "adopt to be one's son"
bolonddá tett engem "He made a fool out of me."

* Instrumental or instructive
indicates the noun being the instrument of doing, by which means, with what

* Commitative - comes from the Latin word comitātus "to escort, to accompany" (com-), but I have always thought of German "komm mitt" come with :-D
- when someone does something with someone - with his wife, with a hammer

* causal-final case expresses the meaning "for the purpose of, for the reason that"
It is formed by adding the ending suffix -ért to the end of the noun:
kenyér "bread" >kenyérért
elküldtem a boltba kenyérért - "I sent him to the store for bread"

* Terminative case is a case specifying limits of time and space - until, for, as long as, within...

The Hungarian language uses the '-ig' suffix.

a házig: "as far as the house"
hat óráig / hatig: "until six o'clock" or "for six hours" / "six hours long"
száz évig: "for a hundred years"

It is not always clear whether the thing in terminative case belongs to the interval in question or not.

A koncertig maradtam.: "I stayed until the concert (ended or started?)"
Mondj egy számot 1-től 10-ig!: "Say a number from 1 to 10."

* temporal case expresses time, age, era

In Hungarian language its suffix is -kor.

hétkor "at seven"
hét órakor "at seven o'clock"
éjfélkor "at midnight"
karácsonykor "at Christmas"

This is one of the few suffixes in Hungarian to which rules of vowel harmony do not apply - it's always -kor.

* Partitive case (from partitivus, the same root as party, part,
denotes "partialness", "without result", or "without specific identity". It is also used in contexts where a subgroup is selected from a larger group, or with numbers.

More about Hungarian noun cases and postpositions

VASTAG CSABA - Visz az út

Volt néhány hosszú tél, de talán túl vagyunk a nehezén
Vágatlan furcsa film, tele harccal a szerepekért
Ma már tudom, van úgy, hogy folyton zuhog, csak dörög az ég
De jól tudom, minden percben ott a remény
Az életünk egy nagy utazás, van, hogy tévedünk, ha éget a láz
De ha ébredünk, ugyanúgy fáj a magány

Mond hova visz az út, hova sodor el a szél vágyaim tengerén
Mond ki az, aki vár, ha a csónak partot ér
Mond hova visz az út, hova sodor el a szél vágyaim tengerén
Mond, vársz e rám, a szívem hazatér

Bolyongtam céltalan, tudom volt pár keserű éj
De a hűvös pirkadat hozzád mindig hazakísért
Ma már tudom, van úgy, hogy folyton zuhog, csak dörög az ég
De jól tudom, minden percben ott a remény
Az életünk egy nagy utazás, van, hogy tévedünk, ha éget a láz
De ha ébredünk, ugyanúgy fáj a magány

Mond hova visz az út, hova sodor el a szél vágyaim tengerén
Mond ki az, aki vár, ha a csónak partot ér
Mond hova visz az út, hova sodor el a szél vágyaim tengerén
Mond, vársz e rám, a szívem hazatér

Mindenem csak a szenvedély
Gyere, nyújtsd kezed, ne menj, ne még
Veled százszor újra kezdeném
Jöjj már
Tudom nem csak emlék mi benned él
Én is küzdök, én meg a messzeség
Tudom szebb holnap vár ránk

x2: Mond hova visz az út, hova sodor el a szél vágyaim tengerén
Mond ki az, aki vár, ha a csónak partot ér
Mond hova visz az út, hova sodor el a szél vágyaim tengerén
Mond, vársz e rám, a szívem hazatér

Wolf Kati – Szerelem, Miért Múlsz

This should have won the Eurovision song contest 2011.

Én nem tudtam, hogy az ember mindent túl él.
Én nem sírtam pedig engem eltörtél.
Vártam, hogy a nap többé nem kel majd fel.
De hajnal lett újra és indulnom kell.

Refrén:
Szerelem miért múlsz, szerelem miért fájsz?
Szerelem hol gyúlsz, szerelem hol jársz?
Hol vagy, hol nem, a szívemben miért nincsen csend?
Szerelem miért múlsz, szerelem miért vársz?

Most bánat ráz, átjár egy régvolt láz.
Hát lépnem kell, itt rám dől minden ház.
Az érintés emlékét így tépem szét.
Társam már nincs más csak a száguldó szél.

Refrén
Szerelem miért múlsz, szerelem miért fájsz?
Szerelem hol gyúlsz, szerelem hol jársz?
Hol vagy, hol nem, a szívemben miért nincsen csend?
Szerelem miért múlsz? Szerelem miért vársz?

(Még húz) Húz
(Még vonz) Vonz
(Még fáj)
(Még húz) Még húz
(Még vonz) Még vonz
(Még fáj)

10 lépés, 100 lépés távolság kell.
Nem számít merre csak el, tőled el.
Mit mondhatnál, mit mondhatnék?
Elkoptunk rég, szemeinkből nézd, hova tűnt a fény?

Refrén
Szerelem miért múlsz, szerelem miért fájsz?
Szerelem hol gyúlsz, szerelem hol jársz?
Hol vagy, hol nem, a szívemben miért nincsen csend?
Szerelem miért múlsz, szerelem miért vársz?

(Válj szabaddá! Szállj világgá!) Szerelem hol jársz?
(Válj szabaddá! Szállj világgá!) Szerelem hol vársz?
(Válj szabaddá! Szállj világgá!) Élnem kell! Kell egy új remény!
(Vágy repíts fel! Új remény kell!)
Szerelem miért múlsz?

-------------------------------------------------------

didn’t know man can survive anything
I didn’t even cry though you shattered me
I was waiting for the sun never to rise again
But the dawn came anew and I must go on

Love, why do you pass? Love, why do you hurt?
Love, where do you collect? Love, where do you go?
Where are you, where not, in my heart why there’s no clam?
Love, why do you pass? Love, why do you wait?

I’m torn by grief now, a past fever is haunting me
I must take a step, here every house on me falls
This is how I rip apart the memory of your touch
I no longer have a companion other than the blowing wind

Love, why do you pass? Love, why do you hurt?
Love, where do you collect? Love, where do you go?
Where are you, where not, in my heart why there’s no clam?
Love, why do you pass? Love, why do you wait?

(Still pulls) Pulls
(Still draws) Draws
(Still hurts)
(Still pulls) Still pulls
(Still draws) Still draws
(Still hurts)

Ten steps, a hundred steps, a distance needed
No matter where, just away, away from you
What could you say, what could I say?
We wore out a long time ago, see in our eyes, where did the light go?

Love, why do you pass? Love, why do you hurt?
Love, where do you collect? Love, where do you walk?
Where are you, where not, in my heart why there’s no calm?
Love, why do you pass? Love, why do you wait?

(Break free, fly into the world) Love, where do you go?
(Break free, fly into the world) Love, where do you wait?
(Break free, fly into the world) I must live, I need a new hope
(Longing, give me wings, I need a new hope)
Love, why do you pass?

Week 4: Hungarian

Hungarian is one of the languages I have studied earlier, and it's related to Finnish, so with it I plan on getting better.

There are some 14 million Hungarian speakers in the world, of whom about 10 million live in Hungary.

The Hungarian name for Hungarian is magyar (said about the same as mud-yar or [ˈmɒɟɒr] phonetically.

Hungarian is an Uralic or Finno-Ugric language, related to Finnish, as mentioned, but not as close as Estonian and Sámi. More like a distant cousin. There are similarities, but a Finnish speaker doesn't understand much if any Finnish. I have a feeling Finnish is easier for Hungarians to understand.

There is a Hungarian script or runes called Rovás Script

Experimental runic make-up by The Painted Mask

Now-a-days Hungarian uses Latin aphabets with some additions... so they have 44 letters in their alphabet.

The "missing" letters are what is called "foreign", that is, only used in borrowed words.

Here's a video on how to pronounce them, and here's another that gives examples of items beginning with the letter, and how they are read.

It looks much more complicated than it really is. But - just as comparison, Finnish has 27 letters, of which 8 are foreign (B,C,F,Q,W,X, Z and Å) - so in practice, we have 19 letters, Hungarian 40. :-D

About the six golden sentences... Apple is alma, to give is ad, John in Janos and it is a/az or e/ez... the rest...

THE FOLLOWING SENTENCES ARE MY TRANSLATIONS, 
MORE OR LESS EDUCATED GUESSES, 
NOT ACTUAL, CORRECT HUNGARIAN, 
SO DON'T BELIEVE THIS IS 
THE WAY OF SAYING THESE THINGS IN HUNGARIAN, 
OKAY?

The apple is red.    Az alma piros
I'm about 90% certain of that.

It is John’s apple.  Az a alma Jánosé?
The confidence dropped immediately. Hungarian doesn't have genetiv case. It has 18 cases, but not one of the most usual ones :-D

I give John the apple.
én adok... adom... János... nak... er... alma...az alma... almat? Én adom az almat Jánosnak? It should be dative... but Jánosnak doesn't sound right. It's probably because Jánosek is a last name. But is any part of the sentence correct to begin with? Except that alma is an apple and János John.

We give him the apple. - Mi adjuk neki azt ???
he/she gives it to him - ő adja neki azt... azt neki ??? Oh, why is Lang8 down?

I don't give John the apple. - Nem adom azt Jánosnak - or?

I must give it to him.   én kellem adni azt neki?
I want to give it to her. én akarom adni azt neki?

Let's see if I do any better in the end of this week :-D

Anyway, Hungarian is an agglutinative language, it uses postpositions, it has 18 cases, give and take, two types of articles (definite and indefinite), adjectives has three cases and do NOT agree with the noun, the verbs too have two conjugations (definite and indefinite), two tenses (only, thankfully) and three moods, two numbers and three persons. The biggest problem is the conjugations... there appears to be a lot of rules and exceptions on when and how to use them, so - just to learn by heart.

Hungarian word order is free, as the cases indicate what is being talked about. (John has an apple and an apple has John are two different sentences, but when you say Jánosnak az alma van or az alma van Jánosnak - because the word without ending is the one doing things. (Naturally depending if I guessed it right.) And in Hungarian you say "an apple is with/by/at John", like in Finnish and Russian etc.
The most used is SVO.

Hungarian has a "a four-tiered system for expressing levels of politeness"
I don't know what it means, yet, because that's not something most people learn as the first thing about a foreign language. Well... we did it in German, but there it's really easy. The Hungarian system is difficult even for Hungarians. I suppose a foreigner can use the "non-native" card aka "idiot" card. ;-)

Now, Hungarian is a bit different as Ugric language, and that's why there are a lot of different theories of the Hungarian origins. Some say it's not Ugric/Uralic language at all, but Turkic/Altaic.
There is the legend of the stag that supports the Sumerian Origin theory, and also the Hunn - Hungarian connection (In the legend, there were two brothers; Hunor (forefather of Hunns) and Magor (forefather of all Magyars). But - the origins of Hungarians is so far back in the history it's hard to say anything definite.

Here's Wikitravel's Hungarian phrasebook with a lot of good and useful phrases.

THE FOLLOWING SENTENCES ARE NOT CREATED BY ME AND SHOULD BE CORRECT :-D

Hello!: 
- Formal, when addressing a stranger: "Good day!": Jó napot (kívánok)! [joːnɒpot kivaːnok].
- Informal, when addressing someone you know very well: Szia! [siɒ] (it sounds almost exactly like American colloquialism "See ya!" with a shorter "ee".)

Good-bye!:
- Viszontlátásra! (formal) 
- Viszlát! [vislaːt] (semi-informal),
- Szia! (informal: same stylistic remark as for "Hello!" )

Excuse me: Elnézést! [ɛlneːzeːʃt]

Please:
- Kérem (szépen) [keːrɛm seːpɛn] (This literally means "I'm asking (it/you) nicely", as in German Danke schön, "I thank (you) nicely")
- Legyen szíves! [lɛɟɛn sivɛʃ] (literally: "Be (so) kind!" - This is the more common form)

Sorry!: Bocsánat! [botʃaːnɒt]

Thank you: Köszönöm [køsønøm]

Yes: Igen [iɡɛn]
No: Nem [nɛm]

I do not understand: Nem értem [nɛm eːrtɛm]

I do not know: Nem tudom [nɛm tudom]

generic toast: Egészségünkre! [ɛɡeːʃːeːɡynkrɛ] (literally: "To our health!")

I love you: Szeretlek [sɛrɛtlɛk]

Help!: Segítség! [ʃɛɡiːtʃeːɡ]

numbers:
1 - egy
2 - kettő
3 - három
4 - négy
5 - öt
6 - hat 
7 - hét
8 - nyolc
9 - kilenc
10 - tíz
11 - tizenegy
12 - tizenkettő
13 - tizenhárom
14 - tizennégy 
15 - tizenöt
16 - tizenhat
17 - tizenhét
18 - tizennyolc 
19 - tizenkilenc
20 - húsz
21 - huszonegy
22 - huszonkettő 
23 - huszonhárom
30 - harminc
40 - negyven
50 - ötven
60 - hatvan
70 - hetven 
80 - nyolcvan
90 - kilencven
100 - száz 
200 - kétszáz
300 - háromszáz 
1000 - ezer
1,000,000 - millió

very straightforward here too. I would say "tizen" is the same root as "toisen" and "toista"

Here's Verbix, the verb conjugator, for Hungarian verbs

Colors

black - fekete
white - fehér
gray - szürke
red - piros , vörös  (piros is more orange red, the one learned first, vörös means "blood red", scarlet. They are considered in Hungarian to be two different colors.)
blue - kék
yellow - sárga
green - zöld 
orange - narancssárga
purple - lila 
brown - barna

Here's a good guide to Hungarian and grammar, written by an Englishman for English speaking audience.