Oldal 44 [44]
HUNGARIAN-ENGLISH LINGUISTIC CONTRASTS. A PRACTICAL APPROACH
dark /l/ - are unknown in Hungarian. Velar /n/ has a different phonemic status:
in English it is a phoneme, in Hungarian it is an allophone of the phoneme /n/.
Several Hungarian consonants (such as the consonants denoted by the
letters c, gy, ny and ty) do not exist in English. They are matched by phoneme
combinations in words like rats, stats, that’s, due, duty, duke, new, nude, nuke,
tube, tune, Tudor, but phonetically these combinations sound different, and
they do not constitute phonemes in their own right (cf. Hungarian dér and
gyér, in and iny). Most importantly, geminate consonants do not exist in En¬
glish. In this case we have a convergent phenomenon, which, according to the
hierarchies of difficulty developed by CL, is not supposed to cause significant
difficulty. In this case, however, it is spelling that complicates the picture: since
double consonant letters are used in English (pronounced as single consonants),
Hungarian learners may pronounce them as geminate consonants. This is
spelling interference, not phonological, and is relatively easily overcome by
learners, except in words of Latin origin that exist both in English and Hun¬
garian, and which Hungarians tend to pronounce with geminate consonants
as in their native language: illegal, irregular, immature, etc.
3.3.1 Phonetic differences
There are phonetic differences in the articulation of some consonants: /d/ in
English is alveolar, in Hungarian dental; the affricates /tf, d3/ are fricatives in
Hungarian, while in English combinations of stop + fricative (perceived by
Hungarians as geminate). Aspiration in the pronunciation of the voiceless
obstruents /p, t, k/, as mentioned above, is a phonetic feature not paralleled in
Hungarian.
3.3.2 Distribution
The distribution of some consonants also shows differences: English /3/ does
not occur in initial position; clear /l/ is in complementary distribution with
dark /t/; /r/ in British English occurs only in prevocalic position and is dropped
in postvocalic and final position. Permitted consonant sequences are also
different: consonant sequences such as spl- or -mplz (examples), or -ks@s (sixths)
do not occur in Hungarian, while final /ng/ and /mb/ do not occur in English
(ring, comb).
3.3.3 Phonological processes
The phonological processes affecting consonants also show considerable differ¬
ences. Assimilation in Hungarian is regressive (i.e., a following consonant has
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