Member-only story
Writing and Speaking in a Second Language
By Dr. Gabriella Kőrösi
I have been in the United States now for about 25 years. I was born in Hungary and my native language is Hungarian. I have an accent both in my speaking and writing. It has been interesting to hear from people from both camps. Some people embrace and love my accent. To those I usually tell: “There is not much I can do about this, my accent just comes with me wherever I go”. Others focus on the fact that the way I talk is more difficult for them to understand and get impatient. I still mix certain things like pronouns she and he it is not something that exists in my native language and even though I know their meaning I mix them up occasionally when I speak. The people who know me understand that that is not intentional, and I usually correct myself right away.
There are certain things that are very different between the Hungarian language and the English language. The major one is spelling. While there are no spelling in Hungarian. This can be difficult to grasp when I try to explain to people who grew up with English. In Hungary, we say everything the way we write it down with the exception of having a few same sounds with different letters. An example would be “j” and “ly”. These letters sound the same in the spoken language but are written differently. In school, we learn the exceptions that are written with the “ly” instead of the “j” letter. In English, everything is spelled and written very differently from how it sounds. To me, many words and sentences just do not sound or look right as they are written down. To my ears and eyes, they look wrong even after this many years.
I get different reactions to my accent from people. Some people show interest and want to find out or guess where I originally came from. People get excited if they guess close to where I am from. Only a few guess right and they usually either had visited Hungary before or already know someone who is Hungarian. I get questions about Hungary which can be hard sometimes since I have been gone so long, and a lot of things changed since I lived there. I get some jokes occasionally asking from which part of the south I am from. There are people who embrace and love my accent and they think it sounds great. There are some people who have more difficulty understanding me because of my accent…
