Hungarian postpositions and Polish secondary prepositions – a comparative approach to language teaching

Abstract

Hungarian is a prepositionless language. Polish, on the other hand, features two groups of prepositions: primary and secondary. The Hungarian equivalent of Polish primary prepositions is the synthetic case, e.g. Łódźban ‘in Łódź’, while the equivalent of secondary prepositions is the postposition, e.g. az anyámnak köszönheően ‘thanks to my mother’, az egyetemmel szemben ‘opposite of university’. There are three postposition groups in Hungarian language, including those connected with: Nominative case, e.g. a professzor szerint ‘according to professor’, oblique cases, e.g. az úton keresztül ‘across the road’ and those which contain possessive affix, e.g. az anyám dacára ‘in spite of my mother’. Understanding and mastering both language systems poses a major challenge to learners. Despite genetic and typological variability, there is a very high degree of equivalence in the structures of both languages, both in lexical and grammatical systems.