"Mit csinálunk novemberben és decemberben?"

Translation: What are we doing in November and in December?

[_paranoia_]

Is it my imagination, or is the speaker dropping the k sound in csinálunk?

[Shamarth]

It's there only faintly because of the n's on both sides. The "n" and "k" of "csinálunk" practically merges into a "ŋ" sound (like in the English word "sing"). Hungarian doesn't like consonant clusters, so similar things happen quite often.

If you listen to "mit csinálunk", you can hear that a separate "t" isn't pronounced either. It merges with the "cs" of "csinálunk", so a stressed "cs" is pronounced instead ("miccsinálunk").

[mizinamo]

Or egészségedre = egésségedre rather than egész-ségedre.

[_paranoia_]

Egészségedre I'm quite familiar with. :-) I usually can hear a "k", if faintly, in the "unk" ending, but couldn't hear it at all here. It sounds like it might be ok.

(But I'm trying to be a good beta tester here!)

[Shamarth]

Yes, it can usually be heard well, here it's the "n" of the following word that causes it to disappear. :)

[AGreatUserName]

The "és" is also pronounced like "ézs" because of the following "d" :-)

[RyagonIV]

Húsvétnek dekorálunk!

[iRBiS]

That would be really weird considering that that holiday only comes four months later. Először Karácsonyra készülődünk!

[kenguruhu]

The k isn't even there softly. The audio sounds like it is saying "csinálom".

[pYewR9MH]

It still sounds that way today

[Nab918927]

That's what I hear as well. They need to take a page from the German course and add a slow down button.

[RyagonIV]

Nab, the voice lines cannot be slowed down since they are actual recordings, not a text-to-speech software that most other courses use.

[Nab918927]

That's a pity. Was this course developed before the other courses (before that software was available)?

[mizinamo]

I think it's a matter of text-to-speech software being available for some languages but not others.

TTS was not something Duolingo developed; it's an off-the-shelf component sold by other companies, and they don't sell them for all languages in the entire world.

Also, different TTS engines give different results; perhaps there are TTS engines available for Hungarian but none was deemed good enough for the course.

[Nab918927]

I wonder if they have looked into software that slows down recordings with out changing pitch. I've used it sucessfully for years to learn music.

[Kevin778512]

Can anyone explain the rule for using -ben vs. -ban at the end of the month word? Thanks!

[Shamarth]

It's something called 'vowel harmony', which makes the vowels of the suffixes match the vowels of the word they're attached to. In this case it's the 'backness' of the vowels that matters, that is, whether your tongue is in the front or in the back of your mouth when you pronounce the vowel.

Front vowels: e, i, ö, ü and their long pairs

Back vowels: a, o, u and their long pairs.

Most suffixes will have two forms, one with a front vowel (like '-ben') and one with a back vowel (like '-ban'). You just need to check whether the word you attach the suffix to has front or back vowels and you'll know which form to use. :)

So 'december' becomes 'decemberben' and 'január' becomes 'januárban'. 'November' contains both front and back vowels, but since the last two are both front ones, the suffix will be '-ben'. The same is valid for 'februárban', just the other way around.

[BariskaElise]

the voice does not clearly pronounce the word as "csinálunk". It rather sounds like "csinálom". Maybe you would want to make a new recording of this sentence