Tóth József (szerk.): Nyelv, kultúra, megértés: új kutatási módszerek a humán tudományok területén
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2. Nyelvhasználat és interkulturalitás
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Hungarian as a foreign language in Fiume at the beginning of the 20th century – An evaluation of the course book Grammatica ungherese e libro di lettura by Emerico Donáth • Áron Szijártó
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6. Discussion

6. Discussion

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

The first part of the book contains seven lessons, which chiefly focus on the pronunciation of Hungarian letters. Although the main theme of the first part is pronunciation, this objective of the lessons often becomes vague. Except for the sixth lesson, criterion 4 and 5 are not met. The lessons partly meet criterion 1, 2 and 3. They partly enable prioritising the language structure and try to approach grammar in a deductive way but the structure of the lessons is hard to follow. The lessons develop reading skills because when the learner reads exercises with Hungarian sentences, his or her reading skills will develop, however, without tight connections between the sentences, the focus will remain almost exclusively on the structure of the sentence. As the objective is blurred, the lessons are not appropriately prepared for intensive reading and cannot be adjusted to a learning style made up of analytic, closed and concrete steps.
 

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

Example 1 (p. 9)
 

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

In example 1, it is unclear why it is important to include the explanation of the comparative and the superlative form as the lessons mainly focus on letters and their pronunciation.
 

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

Example 2 (p. 10)
 

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

One can see in example 2 that lesson 6 partly meets criterion 4 and 5 as it at least visualises the comparative forms of Hungarian adjectives, thus, making the lesson more learner-centred and appropriate for intensive reading. The author may have introduced the comparative already in lesson 6 as he had believed it to be an appropriate place to integrate practising the pronunciation of double consonants in Hungarian along with rules of the comparative. However, in the first few lessons, the usefulness of an attempt to incorporate these two is questionable.

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

The weaknesses and the strengths of the second part of the book are more varied. The second main principle of the grammar-translation method, that is, the idea that every word of a language has a translation equivalent in the other language frequently turns out to be contradictable. For instance, in lesson 11 Hungarian “nővér” is rendered into Italian as “sorella”. If the female family member is indicated by “nővér” and “sorella”, the Italian “sorella” can stand for younger sister and elder sister, whereas, the Hungarian “nővér” can only stand for elder sister. The English word “nun” may be implied by the Hungarian and the Italian word but the learner can easily get confused not knowing which meaning is meant. This is what DeGroot (2013) refers to by “shared meaning aspects”. Without comments, it will be impossible for the learner to understand the difference, and it will negatively affect the learner’s motivation.
 

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

Example 3 (p. 20)
 

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

Example 4 (p. 52)
 

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

It is also disputable whether it can make language acquisition harder when certain vocabulary items are not introduced in a unified manner. The verbs of the word lists in Hungarian and Italian are usually presented as infinitives, nonetheless, as example 4 shows, there is a discrepancy between the Hungarian “van, vagyon” and the Italian “è, essere”. The Italian “essere” is in the infinitive as opposed to the other three verbs that are in the third person singular form.

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

In the lessons, criterion 5 is usually not met since even if the reader’s learning style is made up of analytic, closed and concrete steps, the lessons are not well-structured enough, which makes learning tough and demotivating. Furthermore, larger grammar topics are integrated into one lesson with very little practice and without any opportunity for self-correction. We can encounter such an instance in lesson 12, where “il complemento di termine (dativo)” (the dative) and “il tempo futuro” (the future) coappear. In lesson 14, “il passato remoto” (similar to the English Past Perfect) and “il futuro perfetto” (similar to the English Future Perfect) appear together. In lesson 17, “il modo imperativo” (the imperative) and “congiuntivo” (the conjunctive) can be found within the same lesson. The title of lesson 32 is “Verbi fattitivi e passivi” meaning “causative and passive verbs”, which refers actually to two topics that should be learned in separation first.

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

Throughout the book, it seems that the author unconsciously attempts to get the reader to read constituents of the language in an intensive way, still, little aid is provided for intensive reading. It is also problematic that it seems as if the author treated the learner as a linguist or as someone with previous knowledge of Hungarian grammar. Therefore, the course book possibly did not gain much success as considering the learner is highly-educated narrows down the target group.

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

Example 5 (p. 39)
 

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

There are some parts of the book where grammar is outlined in an adequate, structured, comprehensible and learner-centred way. By means of tables like in example 5, the learner can synthesise the most important points of conjugation. Such tables can often come in handy, even if the teacher teaches communicatively. Moreover, there are some sonorous example sentences like in example 6. Learning how to express possession in Hungarian this way with the grammar-translation method might be successful as the melody of the two languages are likely to help the learner recall them more easily. However, here we can find an issue with the translation of the Hungarian “barátom” (meaning “my friend”) into the Italian “dell’amico” not containing the possessive adjective in first person singular.
 

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

Example 6 (p. 68)
 

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

As Table 1 and Figure 1 demonstrate, except for criterion 5, there is little difference between the total scores as reflected in the lessons of the book. Criterion 5 was met in only around 28% of the cases, which proves that even though such a language course book presupposes and prescribes a learning style made up of analytic, closed and concrete steps, actually, the book itself is not appropriate for that. The most frequent number in the table is 0.5, so generally, the criteria are partly met, which implies that although we can discover the characteristics of the grammar-translation method, it is for the most part not adequately applied.

Jegyzet elhelyezéséhez, kérjük, lépj be.!

Rončević and Blažević’s (2019) findings presuppose low popularity of learning Hungarian as a foreign language in the Austrian-Hungarian Fiume, and the analysis of Donáth’s (1904) course book shows that a contemporary Hungarian as a foreign language course book could not contribute to increasing the number of speakers of Hungarian in Fiume, either.
 
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