Why Hunglish is useful and how to overcome it?
First, let us see what Hunglish is.
It is the combination of English and Hungarian languages.
By appearance, it is English, as they have English words in them.
In terms of structure, it is more or less Hungarian.
In other words, Hunglish is the language variant of English where more or less Hungarian sentence patterns carry more or less properly selected English words.
They are usually created by mirror-translation of Hungarian sentences into English, and so such sentences are more or less based on Hungarian sentence patterns.
It is not unique to Hungarian users of English, there are also Spanlish, Gerlish, Russlish, Uzbeklish, language variants, and whatever other nations venturing into learning English. It is certainly something to be praised, in that the ..lish writer is a brave person wishing to deliver his/her message in another language.
It marks the gradual advancement of the user in learning English, with its various stages of excellence, from beginner, intermediate, advanced and excellent level of competence in English.
The more beginner a learner is, the more his/her command of English is prone to be affected by his/her mother tongue in formulating his/her English sentences, as their mother tongue infiltrates into their English sentences.
What is okay in their mother tongue is not okay in English. Wrong collocations: nouns are used with verbs that are okay in Hungarian, German, Uzbek, etc. and that are not okay in English. Wrong prepositions, wrong complements, wrong sentence patterns. Dictionaries help them to select the right legal term for their mother tongue equivalent, so they are generally correctly selected. But the rest is prone to raise the eyebrows of a native speaker of English.
Hunglish, Gerlish, Frenchlish etc. sentences are English sentences that everyone feels have been written by a non-English native person. It just feels. Experienced readers can even determine from the sentence pattern the mother tongue of the person having written the text.
As s/he advances in his/her learning English, s/he would tend to avoid using sentence patterns of their mother tongue, and start using more and more often and more and more precisely the sentence patterns of the English language.
Learners of English learn English sentence patterns in reading and listening to a lot of authentic English texts. How? When they are exposed to authentic English to a considerable extent, the sentence patterns infiltrate in their minds. For example, when reading a lot of texts about court judgments, they will filter these texts in their subtle mind into the following English sentence patterns:
court + enters + injunction + enjoining + person + from verb+ing,
court + finds + that + subject + verb,
court + enters + judgment + allowing + person + to verb1,
court + enters + judgment + ordering + person + to verb1.
They are English sentence patterns, and when they use them, their sentences will be at the language level of UK and US legal professionals. Native pro excellence in legal English. No Hunglish, no Gerlish, no whateverlish.
The more such authentic sentence patterns are used, the less -lish their sentences will become.
The journey from Hunglish (Gerlish, Finnlish etc.) to excellence in legal English is through using authentic English sentence patterns.
Using legal English sentence patterns – the secret of native pro excellence in legal English.
English for your success in Law ©
A Practical Guide to English for Law.