Pimsleur Challenge – You picked Hungarian

April 5, 2012 by 9 Comments

Thanks to everyone who took the time to vote on this blog and on my Facebook page.  My Pimsleur challenge language will be Hungarian.  I will start my 30-day challenge on 15th April and tweet each day (Internet access permitting as I have some trips during that time too) and update here and on Facebook also.

Some people have asked me a few questions about the challenge and I would like to address them in this post.  I have paraphrased some also, so please forgive the lack of quotation marks.  🙂

Can I join you in the challenge? 

Yes, please do and let me know how you’re getting on with it.  I would love to hear from you and all about your experiences.

Are you going to be able to just use Pimsleur? 

It will be tough to not use any other resources, but I am going to try to stick to just Pimsleur for this challenge.  The point is to see how far it gets me in just 30 days.  Also I am studying other languages at the moment, so I don’t have the spare time to dedicate to an intensive study of Hungarian right now anyway.

You made negative criticism of Rosetta Stone and I bet you think Pimsleur will be no good…so what’s the point?

Rosetta Stone is a very different beast.  That said, if I were to say that I didn’t have any preconceptions, I’d be a liar.  Of course, I do.  However, I want to see if the claims the course makes are on the money or not.  Does it do what it says on the tin? I have not been through a Pimsleur course yet, so I am genuinely intrigued.  Also, I don’t feel happy to make comments until I have tried it for myself.

Will you carry on with Hungarian after the challenge?

Hungarian is also a Balkan language, so there is a fair chance that I will continue learning it in the future too.

If you have any other questions that I have missed here, please do let me know and I will do my best to answer them.

If you sign up for italki and buy a coupon for language lessons through them, you can use the Promo Code below at checkout to get $5 OFF your order! So a $10 coupon costs you just $5! Use Promo Code: RICHARD

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This post was written by Richard

9 Comments

  • tfigueira says:

    Hi Richard,

    First, I wish you an enjoyable learning time. Second, I would like to know if you’ll follow the instructions of Pimsleur Method entirely, because, so far as I know, in that method its recommended listening one audio by day. So, my question is, you’ll follow that scheme or you will listen the most number as possible of audios in one day? Of course its depends of the version of The Pimsleur Method you’ll use…. but I would like to have some idea of how you’ll be working with it.

    Tks

    • Thanks!

      I aim to use the course as prescribed by Pimsleur, so just one lesson a day. I will try to get the most out of it that I can. My hope is to get a hook into the language for future study. 🙂

  • Good luck with the challenge! 🙂 I’m especially interested in it as my native is Hungarian. 🙂 BTW: it’s not Balkan language, it’s totally a separate breed. 🙂

    • Your feedback would be fantastic. When I say it’s a Balkan language, I mean it’s a language spoken on The Balkans as it is used in Serbia too. There are many diverse tongues on the peninsula and I would love to speak them all! 😀

  • stibbshoo says:

    I’m sure a person with your experience and motivation will have no problems completing the course, especially considering your familiarity with an agglutinating language like Turkish. Some months ago I did the Pimsleur course for Hungarian (first for me as well) and encountered few bulwarks before reaching the end. The only issue I had was with spelling, reading, and writing which, although there were a few lessons present in the booklet, I found to be somewhat unclear and lacking in emphasis.

    By the way, if you ever think of taking up a more intensive study of Hungarian in the future, I might be able to suggest some helpful resources to you.

  • Jimmy Mello says:

    Hello Richard,
    As I have said before I would quite like to join your challenge, and I created a post in my blog to announce this and share my opinions with my readers, the link of the post is the following: http://brazilianpolyglot.blogspot.com.br/2012/04/how-about-learning-hungarian.html
    I really hope we learn a lot Hungarian within the next 30 days.
    Talk to you soon.
    Best wishes,
    Jimmy Mello

  • Christian says:

    Hi, i would like to know how this challenge went? is Pimsleur a great tool for learning languages? because im learning russian with Pimsleur. Thanks and bye!

    • Sorry for taking so long to reply to you here. Did you see the final result on the later blog about Hungarian? I made a video showing what I could do after the one month course. 🙂

  • Arian says:

    Hello, Richard! I was wondering if you had any opinions about Rosetta Stone. Do you reccomend it above Pimsleur? In that case why? Jag är interesserade av att lära italienska och franska. 🙂 Tack för svar! 😀

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