Foreigners in the Hungarian business and workplaces
We talk a lot about how many citizens of our country take up jobs in foreign markets, but much less is said about how people from abroad integrate into local organizations and companies in the Hungarian market.
Nowadays, almost every domestic company with major international connections has employees from abroad. But just as it is often not easy for a Hungarian to fit in abroad, foreigners also often struggle with the very first problem, and that is the Hungarian language.
I talked to Andrea Kállay, who works in this field, about this problem.
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For 15 years now, you have been teaching foreigners the Hungarian language within the framework of your own business. I know you are also a teacher, but where did the idea come from? Have you experienced for yourself that this is an area that is not well attended to and that there is a shortage?
I started teaching English in 1988, at the age of 18. For a long time, I only worked as a teacher and language teacher in an elementary school, where I first came across the subject of Hungarian as a foreign language (MID) in 2000, within the framework of a continuing education program at ELTE University. I really liked this topic even then, but after taking this short course, I didn’t really care about it.
8 years later, after the birth of my three children, I thought that I would start my own business, so I added MID education to my activities in addition to English. In 2008, we did not have so many foreign workers, but they began to discover Budapest more and more as a possible work area.
My first student from Germany was Susi, who came to us with her husband and 3 children, and wanted to acquire language skills that can be used in everyday life. At that time, we did not have so many opportunities to use IT tools, and all information on websites was only available in Hungarian or with a very lame Google translation. With Susi, I realized that it wasn’t enough to just help them learn the language, I also got involved in many other areas of their lives: we waited for the postman together, took care of office matters, the children’s driver’s licenses, or I hired a painter and a water bed installer for them. If I couldn’t be there in person, I interpreted the conversation over the phone.
The situation is now much easier: with the advent of smartphones and the wide coverage of the Internet, many applications help the lives of foreigners.
Now, only those arriving with school-aged children face difficulties due to the shortcomings of the Hungarian school system, as we are not at all prepared for the education of foreign-speaking students.
Why the Hungarian language? We know that if someone important lives here, but English is basically the language of business, can’t so many people just get by at home? Or are they curious and would like to learn?
Foreigners think about this completely differently than Hungarians. They believe that in order to get to know the culture, population, and „feeling” of a country, they need to know the language. Many people choose a Hungarian pair or want to communicate with their colleagues in their native language, but there are those who want to exchange a few words with their neighbours: Marika néni and Pista bácsi. They like to shop in Hungarian in small shops or order in Hungarian in restaurants. They really enjoy hearing words from the conversation going on around them.
What types of people did you meet? Obviously, IT is unavoidable in almost every production and office chain, but were there special fields and professions where Hungarian became the accented language or was necessary?
During the 15 years, I had many different students. At first, it was more like families, but later came individual employees who worked for different supermarkets. If the companies supported learning Hungarian, they found only one language school that specialized in teaching MID to adults: it was the Magyar Iskola (Hungarian Language School), founded in 1991. To this day, they are the largest such training institution. We have become partners, they send those people to us who are looking for courses for kids, as they only have accreditation for adult education.
Of course, several waves of refugees came to us: Iranians, Pakistanis, Venezuelans, Afghans, Ukrainians and Russians, many of whom also have degrees, so they found their calculations at the multi companies. More people come here to study at university, e.g. from China, Yemen, Africa, and then they get stuck here.
How do foreigners see companies operating in Hungary? The people, the processes, the company culture? Do you think there is such a thing as a „typically Hungarian corporate culture”?
It all depends on where they are located. I think “multis” are the same everywhere: you have to work a lot; the expectations are high. Hungarian companies rarely hire foreign workers; they mainly find their place in education as native speakers.
Mostly smaller foreign companies settle here completely, that is, they bring our own employees with them. Larger factories are bringing in workers from Ukraine, or now more and more people are coming to us from the Philippines.
Do you prefer individuals or families to find you? What is the difference between a person coming with a family or someone who wants to get by alone?
An interesting situation has developed: those who arrive alone prefer to move to the city centre, and at first they do not consider it so important to learn the Hungarian language. They love party places, ruin pubs, concerts and hustle and bustle.
Families choose the Buda side. Moms usually don’t work, but take care of the children, dads take care of official affairs and work a lot. Our MIDschool HUNGARY school offers courses for all members of the family. We work with our own developed curriculum, and we prefer those students who want to acquire knowledge for everyday life at a slower, more accessible pace. If someone wants to acquire more intensive and deeper knowledge of the language or grammar, we send them to our partner school: Magyar Iskola.
I think that COVID and the Ukrainian crisis greatly affected this area as well… How do you see these processes, what did you experience?
In our profession, the only positive benefit of COVID has been the proliferation of online education. It existed in the past, but we actually only used it for students living in another country or continent, who could not attend attendance classes due to the long distance and time difference. I currently have several online classes, e.g. at the request of aid organizations, and I also work in attendance education. But clearly the ratio has shifted towards online classes.
The Ukrainian crisis mainly put a heavy burden on the schools, as children came to us in droves. Obviously, people coming from the territory of the “Old Hungary” have an easier time, but they also have problems with Hungarian grammar. The Hungarian state provided support for this: e.g. the school where I teach part-time also has two Ukrainian-speaking colleagues, so they provide learning support for the refugee children who study with us for a certain monthly fee.
What are your plans, what do you want to develop further?
Due to my situation, I would like to focus more on families, and here, too, mainly to solve the problems of children’s MID education, thinking in a unified system, providing more opportunities in schools during the learning period. There are plans to develop additional teaching materials, e.g. an intermediate-level MID state graduation exam preparation textbook, or a simplified grammar textbook. Under the leadership of my university teacher Ildi Schmidt, we also want to support teacher training.
And as usual, I have thousands ideas in my head… 😀
Thank you very much for the conversation.