Cup Isn't Kop: Meet the Sound in 'Love'
English has a vowel that sits right in the middle of your mouth, unrounded and relaxed — Hungarian just doesn't have it. Borrowing your rounded 'o' instead makes words sound off.
Here's a sneaky one: the vowel in 'cup,' 'love,' and 'money' isn't your Hungarian rounded short a from 'kor.' It's unrounded, relaxed, and made with your lips completely loose — almost like you're too lazy to shape them at all. Hungarian speakers often round their lips slightly out of habit, which makes 'cup' drift toward 'cop' or 'cap' turns muddy. Try this: say 'ah' with a totally open, relaxed mouth, then let your lips go slack — no rounding, no spreading. Practice with 'love,' 'sun,' and 'come,' feeling how flat and effortless your lips stay. Record yourself saying 'cup' and 'cop' back to back and listen for the lip shape difference. This tiny adjustment — lips loose, not rounded — cleans up a whole family of words. Give it two minutes today, and you'll start hearing the difference before you even try to fix it.
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Sources (1)
- “Transylvanian Hunglish” Phonological Properties of Hungarian Accented English in Transylvania — Bálint Huszthy, 2022
- Transylvanian informants replace English open back vowels [ʌ, ɒ, ɑ] with the native vowel [ɒ], while Hungarian speakers use [a].
- Transylvanian speakers retain a higher frequency of English schwas and diphthongs compared to their Hungarian counterparts.
- The phonological differences stem from Transylvanians' heterogeneous linguistic environment involving substandard L1, local dialects, Romanian L2, and multilingualism.