Learn Hungarian from Italian, Free, at PBC Languages
Hungarian for Italian speakers: real sounds, real false friends, real progress. Free 1:1 exchanges plus native teacher classes at PBC Languages.
Create your free accountNo card needed. Exchanges between members are always free.
Italian speakers actually have an advantage most people don't expect: Hungarian spelling is almost as phonetic as Italian's, so once you know the rules, you read words out loud correctly on the first try. The catch is the extra letters that don't exist in Italian: gy, ty, ny (that last one is just the Italian 'gn' sound, so it's free), cs (like the Italian 'c' in 'ciao'), sz, zs. And then there's vowel length and vowel harmony: 'hat' (six) and 'hát' (back) are different words, and endings change their vowel depending on the word they attach to, something Italian simply doesn't do.
Vocabulary is where it gets tricky, because Hungarian isn't a Romance language, so there are almost no free cognates the way Italian has with Spanish or French. The few Latin-based words that did creep in through history can trick you: 'templom' looks like 'tempio' but means 'church', not 'temple' in the classical sense; 'firma' looks identical to the Italian word for 'signature' but in Hungarian it means 'company' or 'business'. On the other hand, international words like 'pizza', 'posta', 'bank' or 'kultúra' land safely and give you quick wins early on.
Where Italian speakers usually stumble hardest is grammar structure: Hungarian has no gender (no il/la, no un/una to worry about, that part's actually easier), but it replaces Italian prepositions with suffixes stuck onto the noun, and verbs conjugate differently depending on whether the object is definite or not, a distinction Italian has no equivalent for. It takes deliberate practice to stop mentally translating 'in the house' and start thinking 'house-in' (házban). This is exactly the kind of pattern that clicks faster in conversation with a native than by memorizing a table.
Words you will actually hear
| Here | Elsewhere | What it means |
|---|---|---|
| templom | tempio | False friend: templom means 'church', not 'temple' in the classical/Roman sense. |
| iskola | scuola | Both come from Latin 'schola', so the sound similarity is real and helps memorization. |
| kávé | caffè | Different word shape but same root word (from Arabic via Turkish), easy to guess by ear. |
| posta | posta | Identical, safe to use as-is with no surprises. |
| firma | firma | False friend: in Hungarian firma means 'company/business', not 'signature'. |
| gimnázium | ginnasio | Partial false friend: gimnázium is a general secondary school (like an Italian liceo), not a gym and not identical to the Italian school stage of the same name. |
| kultúra | cultura | Close cognate, safe and easy to recognize in writing and speech. |
| opera | opera | Identical, no surprises, works the same in both languages. |
| bank | banca | Recognizable cognate; just drop the article gymnastics Italian requires. |
How it works here
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Sign up and say your level
Two minutes. If you do not know your level, we place you in the first class.
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Pick a class or an exchange
Classes are led by a native teacher. An exchange is with another member: half the time in their language, half in yours.
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Join by video, nothing to install
From your phone or your computer. If you cannot make it, cancel and get your place back.
Questions about this
How long does it take for an Italian speaker to hold a real conversation in Hungarian?
There's no fixed number, and anyone who gives you one is guessing. What we see is that the case suffixes and the definite/indefinite verb conjugation take longer to feel natural than the vocabulary itself, so steady weekly practice with a teacher plus regular 1:1 exchanges moves you faster than sporadic study.
Is the one-to-one exchange actually free?
Yes. You trade time, not money: half an hour in Hungarian, half an hour in Italian, with another member who's learning your language. Nobody pays anybody, it's a straight swap.
What level do I need before joining?
For the small group classes with a native teacher, absolute beginners are fine, the teacher structures the session. For 1:1 exchanges, having some basic Hungarian survival phrases first helps a lot, since your partner is a fellow learner, not a teacher trained to adapt to zero level.
How exactly is the exchange time split?
Thirty minutes are spent speaking Hungarian, with your partner helping and correcting you, then you switch and spend thirty minutes speaking Italian while you help them. It's a clean half-and-half split, timed so neither language dominates the session.
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