I’m proud to boast that in the last fifteen years of adventuring around the globe, in my efforts to be culturally sensitive, but also to make myself understood, I’ve made it compulsory to learn the foreign equivalent of ‘yes’, ‘no’ and ‘thank you’. At some stage I’ve been able to recite these words in German, French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Japanese, Indonesian, Cambodian, Thai and Vietnamese. But, after spending close to four days in Budapest, Hungarian is notably absent from this list.
I should have known I was bound for failure when on the first night I asked the waiter how to say ‘thank you’. He told me, I repeated it. He laughed and told me again. I repeated it. This went on for sometime, but, after about six to seven goes, I was confident enough to teach the rest of the table what I’d learnt. Then, on the way out, the normal practice is to thank the waiter. He smiled at me encouragingly, but…nothing. I had learnt this word not five minutes before. I couldn’t remember a single syllable. A smile and nod (and decent tip) had to suffice for my very patient and slightly bemused teacher.
When learning specific words in foreign languages, I usually find it handy to give them an English ‘sounds like’ equivalent. As an example, let’s take the name of my local metro stop in Budapest; Keleti Payaudvar. The best I could come up with – Kelti Palaver. For starters, Kelti isn’t even a word in English, and secondly, what language deserves to be associated with a palaver? It’s a joke word in any language. But perhaps this example isn’t sufficient to demonstrate the complexity of Hungarian. So, here are a few more to contemplate; Vörösmarty utca, Szabadságtelep, Szépvölgyi út. You get the picture right?
In order to amuse myself on public transport, I often spend time trying to interpret the advertising billboards. Normally you can make out what some words could mean by the accompanying picture. There was one ad that had me transfixed for four days. It looked a little like this; a sort of country chateau positioned off into the distance, a couple, early 40s, positioned to the foreground, towards the left hand corner. Couple with a very large bird of prey (I’m guessing falcon) in their hands, upside down, with its right wing pulled out into a full span. What in god’s name could this be about? The words were totally indecipherable, so, I only had the picture to go on. Here are some possibilities I came up with; ‘Secure your retirement; Buy into falcon farming today!’ or, ‘Falcon world; come see Zéöpkgtui the falcon with the world’s biggest wing span!’
So, in order to lend some authority to this theory, back at the hotel, I began typing in such google gems as ‘incidence of falcon farms in Hungary’ and ‘bird of prey theme parks in Hungary’. It’s only when I (unsurprisingly) came up with nothing that I realised this exercise was futile in helping me understand the language better. So, I googled what any keen linguist would; ‘how much are z’s worth in Hungarian scrabble’. Answer; four. (They are worth ten points in English by the way).
*Warning, post contains no mention of nudity. This is because this post was supposed to be about Budapest’s thermal baths, but, with a distinct lack of nudity on offer, there was not that much of interest to say (other than they are very nice and I would recommend them). Then the post was going to be about the food in Budapest, but the overwhelming desire to pun my way through references to being ‘hungry in Hungary’, got too much to bear.
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