Mini language lesson #13 – Hungarian proverbs, sayings

Do you know the satisfying feeling that rushes through your body and soul after you’ve successfully used a proverb in a certain language? Okay, this might be a bit of an exaggeration, but we all enjoy the admiring glances we get when we’re able to incorporate the sayings learned at language classes into everyday speech. To help you achieve this feeling of success, we collected some useful Hungarian proverbs and sayings ;).

Proverbs form an important part of all languages because they mostly originate from historic times and folk culture. They spread as a word-of-mouth until they become indispensable elements in the given language. Let they be wise thoughts or funny expressions, proverbs mostly express some kind of commonplace truth or adages you would hear from your grandparents.

One of the characteristics of proverbs and sayings is that they are repeated quite often and are used willingly. This is why they are not too hard to memorise, once you’ve reached a certain level in your language studies. We are well aware that the Hungarian language is as complicated as anything, but hopefully, you’ll find the following proverbs useful.

Keep in mind that we are not linguists in any way, we’re just as dazzled by the curiosities of the Hungarian language as foreigners are. So this series doesn’t aim to explain the etymology of words, it’s more a fun take on our language. We try to bring Hungarian closer to you with witty learning cards made by Daily magyar, a language-enthusiast person, whose posts give an insight into the complexity of the Hungarian grammar. But don’t worry, it’s all done in an easy-going way, so that it can make learning fun.