Club puts Hungarian into practice

Looking across the room, the sight is not unusual — a dozen or so people chatting around a few small tables near the front of the Pourhouse Café.

Upon closer inspection, however, one may recognize snippets of Hungarian being exchanged as students and Bloomington residents sip cups of coffee.

Presented by IU’s Hungarian Cultural Association, the weekly Hungarian Language Coffee Hour is a chance for new and native speakers to practice the language.

“It’s an ongoing tradition we’ve had for many years,” said senior Sara Takacs, president of the association. “We always try and put in our best effort to speak Hungarian as much as possible.”

Jason Vincz, a graduate student at IU’s Russian and Eastern European Institute, took his first Hungarian class at the Summer Workshop in Slavic, East European and Central Asian Languages as an undergraduate.

He started attending the coffee hours last year when he took an advanced Hungarian course with Valeria Varga, a Central Eurasian studies professor. Attending the coffee hour is an informal part of the course, but it is also an additional chance to speak the language, he said.

“I read better than I listen, and I listen better than I speak,” Vincz said. “That’s the point of this, to work on oral expression and comprehension.”

For students who test out of Hungarian classes at IU because they are already fluent, the coffee hour is a way to continue speaking the language.

“I was born in America, but both my parents are Hungarian,” said freshman Claudia Varga, unrelated to Valeria Varga. “I’m a native speaker. (Varga) told me about this as a way to meet other people who speak Hungarian.”

The coffee hour is open only to people who speak or are learning to speak Hungarian.
However, the association has a variety of events each year, including a fall picnic, commemorations of the major Hungarian revolutions and a film series that anyone is welcome to attend.

“We really like having students who are interested in Hungarian come to our events, which are open to everybody,” Takacs said.