What do you know about Hungary and Hungarian ?

S P S   Thursday, June 02, 2005, 11:32 GMT
oops. 'quote' myself.

And by 'the English' I meant 'the English that I had used.'

Not wishing to be pedantic.....bocs !
KSa   Thursday, June 02, 2005, 13:23 GMT
What I know about Hungary is listed below:
1. Rather small country in eastern Europe
2. Hungarians' ancestors came to Europe from Ural region
3. Very specific and difficult language
4. Budapest - capital, considered as beautiful, I've never been there
5. Hajdusoboszlo (spelling is probably incorrect) - the only place in Hungary I visited, marvellous place, lot of swimming pools
6. There is a very specific geographic region in Hungary, "prairie-like", forgot the name
7. Hungarian people I heard about (sorry for incorrect spelling): Liszt, Bartok, Puskas (football player), Ferenc Molnar, Imre Nagy, Janos Kadar, Lajos Kosut
8. Rising 1848, rising 1956
9. Good wine: tokai

It is all that has crossed my mind in the past few minutes
jdkalnfi   Thursday, June 02, 2005, 15:14 GMT
i russian. i know nothing
Easterner   Thursday, June 02, 2005, 20:15 GMT
A reaction to an earlier post:

Stefaniel P Spaniel: <<Many of the Hungarians from Romania, Slovakia, Serbia etc. move to Hungary, usually to Budapest, to work. They find there that many people view them as foreign immigrants, and look down on them, despite all their fine talk about reversing the treaty of Trianon.>>

Alas, that's true, I experienced that myself 15 years ago, being originally an ethnic Hungarian from Vojvodina (the northern province of Serbia) and having to go through all the officialdom to get a residence permit for my studies in Budapest (some officials spoke a curious kind of broken Hungarian suitable for foreigners, even if they were ethnic Hungarians from the neighbouring countries - scary!). Some people in Hungary tend to get really xenophobic about each and everybody coming from outside the borders of present-day Hungary, probably because they consider them as a threat to their jobs. However, it is important to stress that such people constitute a clear minority.

By the way, S P S, may I ask where you live?
Easterner   Thursday, June 02, 2005, 20:28 GMT
KSa,

Bravo, more than the usual sterotypes that come to most people's minds when thinking of Hungary! The "prairie-like" region is called the "puszta". The most famous "puszta" region in Hungary is the Hortobágy (near the town Debrecen, in the east), formerly known for its fata morganas, and pictured as herds of horsemen rush through it in local "csikós" (or "tschikosch") costumes, including hats with ribbons on them. That is a familiar stereotype that is presented to tourists, but that is definitely just one of Hungary's many faces. I personally prefer the Pannonian region (Western Hungary), with its hilly landscape and its lifestyle still preserving something of the culture of Roman times, while the westernmost parts abound in monuments from Habsburg times - something Fredrik from Norway would like, judging from his earlier post :).
Sigma   Friday, June 03, 2005, 13:25 GMT
Beutiful women lol.
vincent   Friday, June 03, 2005, 13:45 GMT
that's a bit odd that plural in basque has the same form as in hungarian:

buru: head (indetermined)
burua: the head
buruak: the heads

and it is an agglutinative language like hungarian:

behiarenarentzat: for the one who's got a cow
Deborah   Saturday, June 04, 2005, 02:18 GMT
Dobos tort.