What do you know about Hungary and Hungarian ?

Laszlo   Thursday, May 26, 2005, 21:32 GMT
What do you know about Hungary and Hungarian ?
Brennus   Thursday, May 26, 2005, 21:47 GMT
The Hungarians started out as being two rather wild Asiatic tribes, Magyars and Kazars. At first, they were hostile to western Europe and it was France that primarily protected western Europe from their attacks just as it did with the Saracens. Since then, the Hungarians have become very Europeanized and ironically, along with the Poles, even protected Western Europe from future Asiatic invasions (Mongols and Ottoman Turks). We Anglo-Americans might very well all be speaking Mongolian or Turkish and practicing Islam were it not for their heroic battles. There is a saying that "the Hungarians have given the world two things: its most beautiful women and its most difficult language."
Not very much   Thursday, May 26, 2005, 21:48 GMT
Well, I don't know too much about Hungary, I admit. It was a time ago a part of Austria, later it bore a Communist dictatorship and a lot of porn actresses are from Hungary. ;)
Brennus   Thursday, May 26, 2005, 21:51 GMT
Kazars- excews plees - Khazars is better.
Amerikai fiu   Thursday, May 26, 2005, 22:41 GMT
Tudom, hogy a legszebb lanyok Pesten vannak es a legjobb borok Tokaj, Eger, es a Balaton videken teremnek. Azonkivul mi van meg?
Ed   Thursday, May 26, 2005, 22:44 GMT
The Khazars are actually Jewish, not Muslim. All Bukharian Jews are Khazar descendents.
Deborah   Thursday, May 26, 2005, 23:20 GMT
My only knowledge of Hungary from personal experience is from a few days in Budapest in 1970. My mother and brother and I arrived in the city center at night and tried to get directions to a nearby campground. We didn't know any Hungarian, and were unable to find anyone who spoke either English, French, Spanish, Italian, or German. As a last resort, my brother tried Russian and was met with cold looks. But then a young man rushed up and asked, "May I help you?" He told us (in very good English) that it was too late, too dark and too difficult to get to the the campground, and said we must stay with him and his family. So we did, for two nights, and he and his brother took turns showing us around the city.

Any impressions I have of the city, other than finding Buda to be very beautiful, are completely outdated, so I won't even bother talking about them. But I was very impressed by the generosity of this family, and by the intellectual brilliance (so it seemed to me) of the two members of the family we were able to communicate with, the young man who helped us out and his father, who happened to be a polyglot -- about 6 languages, I think.
Deborah   Friday, May 27, 2005, 00:33 GMT
I don’t know much about the history of the Hungarian language, but I’ve read a bit about the structure of the language. I had a dance teacher from Hungary who taught me to count to ten in Hungarian, and how to pronounce his first name (Gyula) correctly. Most of the people at this school settled for pronouncing it as it looks in English (with a hard G and a schwa for the A). One of the other teachers, who was from Brooklyn, NY, once said, “I don’t know why everyone makes such a fuss about his name — it’s perfectly easy: Jew-lah.”

Years later, I bought a book, to teach myself Hungarian, and got to the second chapter before I realized the Hungarian man I was interested in was not interested in me, and with that realization ended my desire to learn Hungarian. However, getting to the second chapter enabled me to figure out how to say “Magas es sovany vagyok (with an accent on the E and on the A in sovany).” I don’t even know whether this is correct — I’m trying to say “I am tall and thin.”

By the way, the man referred to in the paragraph immediately above (who was only born in Hungary and grew up in the US) is someone I remember as being one of the most intelligent people I've ever met. Is this some Hungarian national characteristic? ;)
Deborah   Friday, May 27, 2005, 02:25 GMT
I seem to be hogging this thread, but I really am leaving lots of time between posts.

I learned something interesting about the pronunciation of Hungarian and how it works with (and probably helped shape, I think) Hungarian music. (1) The first syllable of a word is always stressed. (2) An accent over a vowel doesn't mean that that syllable is stressed; rather, it indicates that the vowel is held out longer than a vowel without the accent. The Hungarian-American from the post above told me that the long vowels are ideally about 3 times longer than the short vowels. One of the distinctive characteristics of Hungarian folk music is the 16th note-dotted 8th note rhythm, which perfectly fits the rhythm of a stressed short-voweled syllable followed by a long-voweled syllable. I'll try to find a good example of this rhythm to link to.
Deborah   Friday, May 27, 2005, 07:02 GMT
OK, I found a Hungarian song that demonstrates the 16th note-dotted 8th note rhythm:
http://www.geocities.com/ifdc1/H_Somogyi_Karikazo.mp3

Slightly past halfway through the song is where it speeds up and you can hear (I hope) what I described.

I wish I could see the lyrics, to find out whether the dotted 8th notes coincide with the accented vowels.
nico   Friday, May 27, 2005, 07:12 GMT
I know Sandor Marai (is that correct ortograph) good writer !
Stefaniel P Spaniel   Friday, May 27, 2005, 09:51 GMT
You also might get the impression that all Hungarians are fervent nationalist chauvinists, but I assure you that all of my Hungarian friends are not, but they admit that a lot of Hungarians are. Especially the American Hungarians, who are full of, errr, themselves, just like American Poles. (Obviously not all of them).

Every country surrounding Hungary has a large Hungarian minority, since the First World War settlement, and you will also find Hungarians who harbour pathetic revanchist schemes and grudges. You will also find others who DON'T.

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.

Hungarian has many interesting dialects both inside and out of present day Hungary, and there are also the Szekelys in Eastern Transylvania, who consider themselves to be seperate people and language, although they are easily mutually intelligble.

There are plenty of other interesting things about Hungarians and there language, but there is also such a thing as staying on the internet too long.
nico   Friday, May 27, 2005, 12:05 GMT
Yeah about the poles, that's what said Witold GOMBROWICZ (pole philosopher and write)
Gjones2   Friday, May 27, 2005, 15:35 GMT
>What do you know about Hungary and Hungarian ?

Alas, not very much (I was much better at answering the question about Spain.) I know the basic stuff about modern Hungarian history (but almost nothing about the time before the Austro-Hungarian Empire). I'm old enough to have an early memory of the 1956 uprising, and what I read about it later impressed me. I know [understand 'know' in this post to mean 'believe I know', in case I get something wrong] that Hungarian is quite different from most of the languages around it. I remember from my stamp collecting days as a child that the name of the country doesn't look like 'Hungary' but begins with 'Mag...'.

Movies: One of my favorite romantic comedies is the movie "Shop Around the Corner" with James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan. It's set in Hungary, and I believe it's based on a Hungarian work.

TV: The Gabor sisters were of Hungarian descent, and Eva Gabor was on Green Acres.

Music: Wasn't Liszt Hungarian? (I confess that I sometimes get central Europeans mixed up.)

Art: I don't remember any Hungarian artists. There are probably some I've heard of, but I don't associate them with Hungary.

Sports: Monica Seles was from Serbia, but her family claimed to be of Hungarian descent.
Fredrik from Norway   Friday, May 27, 2005, 15:39 GMT
Yeah, I also recall this from my stamp collecting days: Magyar Posta!
It sounded a bit mystic and exotique, I remember...