“The Hungarian language in the Italian (Sicilian) mouth”

Abstract

In the course of teaching the Hungarian language to native speakers of Italian, a series of difficulties appears,nattributed – among other factors – to the differences in grammar, pronunciation, and also orthography betweennthe two languages. As for grammar, the speaker of an inflected language (Italian) is obliged to change to annagglutinative system (Hungarian), where the different suffixes added to the base word bear grammaticalnrelations. This paper focusses on issues in phonetics and orthography, by presenting a didactic experience of anbeginner’s level Hungarian language course that took place in Palermo (Italy), with the participation of twelvenItalian students. The paper describes the learners’ linguistic development, with a focus on the alphabetical and the phonological system. The description of the learners’ language and the comparison of the two languages in the afore-mentioned respect serves the purpose of identifying the greatest challenges for Italian learners of Hungarian in pronunciation and spelling.