Hungarian without Tears

It’s really rather strange how many Hungarian words I remember from 35 years ago. I never learnt the language properly, but picked up a considerable smattering as I grew up — a necessary task if I was to hack into the secret conversations my mother thought she was having with my aunt. Hungarian, friends, is a kind of good news bad news story.

The good news is that there's only a comaratively small vocabulary of Magyar words, and once mastered it’s amazing how they stick in the memory, even after 35 years. I probably acquired them at an impressinoable age, along with what some call a passable accent. Some words are amazingly easy to remember — a bar? “barás.” Easy!

The bad news is that the structure of the language, being Finno-Ugaric, ignores many customary Indo-European conveniences. Let me illustrate. I have been looking at grammatical notes extracted from some tome in the Cambridge Unversity Library as an earnest undergraduate in 1976, when, in the first flush of youth, I had illusions I would be able to master this lot someday.

My notes indicate there are in fact Eighteen Cases in Hungarian marked by enclitc particles (as aganst virtually none in English). So almost every noun declines as Nominative, Accusative, Dative-Genitive, and Ablative. Easy if you’ve done Latin. But then, according to my undergraduate notes, things hot up. You’ve got another fourteen cases to go — Instrumental, Causal-final, translative, terminative, essive-formal, essive-modal, inessive, superessive, adessive, illative, allative, sublative, elative and delative. Oh, and Labio-dental Fricative. No, actually I made that last one up becaue I am being silly, but if you think Hungaran is short of cses, it might be worth a whirl.

Got that? Let me illustrate (remember s = “sh” and zs = “s” — and remember how to pronounce “cs“ and “gy” which are separate letters from a now lost alphabet). This is our simple word for a bar, almost the same in Hungarian:

1. barás — The Bar (subject)
2. bart — The Bar (object)
3. barásnak — To the Bar
4. barástól — From the Bar
   
5. barással — With the Bar
6. barásért — For the Bar
7. barássá — Into the Bar
8. barásig — As far as the Bar
9. barásként — as the Bar
10. barásul — by way of the Bar
11. barásban — In the Bar
12. baráson — On the Bar
13. barásnál — At the Bar
14. barásba — In the General Direction of the Bar
15. barásra — Onto the Bar
16. baráshoz — To the Bar
17. barásból — Out of the Bar
18. barásról — About the Bar
    

Now, remember, even very stupid Hungarians have to have this stuff off pat. No wonder they knock spots off us at Maths, and pack the Economists’ think-tanks, Dentists’ surgeries and Financial Capitals of the world. No wonder they follow you into revolving doors and come out ahead. Easy when you’ve mastered the case structure of their language.

Surveying the height of the grammatical mountain I failed to scale with any confidence in 1976, when I actually had a few spare brain cells, I retreated with the gang this evening to a delightful pavement restaurant in Pest, where they make paprikás csirke just like my late lamented Aunty Helene, with Gnocchi, and was transported. The summit remains elusive, and I fear I will not be jabbering away in Hungarian for a while yet, if ever. Budapest is still Divine.

Beware the Words of Weasels

A rather fun conversation before lunch involved trying to explain various senses of the term “orthodox” which is beginning to do the rounds of some quarters of the communion. Properly, of course, it refers to the Holy Orthodox Churches, whose agreed designation it has been since the 11th Century at least. Now it’s beginning to be used with a slight curl of the upper lip as a badge of rigid right wing conformity to type.

With all such terms, even “Christian” or “Methodist,” you have to ask “who says you’re / they’re one of those?” If the only answer is, “I do, along with my close compadres,” you can be pretty sure you're being sold a pup. Similarly there are words like “revisionist” which seem to play the same role in right wing parlance that “fundamentalist” does in left wing banter. You can pretty much bet your bottom dollar that they are merely hostile name-calling, no more. If you hear them used, you can just ask the person using them to put their brain into gear and try and articulate what or who they really mean, and on what basis.

The only way to stay sane and be courteous is to pass a rigid self-denying ordinance that “I will only use of other people designations they use of themselves.” This could helpfully be supplemented by a simple Bart Simpson Blackboard resolution: “I will not hi-jack other people’s labels to spite my enemies.” If all that came out of this Lambeth were a few people resolving along these lines, that would be grief to the weasels, and joy to the world.

Religion, Arts and Science — branches of one tree? (Einstein)

Bow Brickhill is a fascinating ancient village, now part of Milton Keynes Unitary Authority. The Church was abandoned due to dwindling congregations about 350 years ago, but rebuilt in 1757, and flourishing today Just about the only place in the village from which you can see it is the churchyard, though!

1879 gave the world the light bulb and Albert Einstein — also Bow Brickhill Primary School. I visited when it chose to become a Church school in 2004, and it's really flourishing, under Jane Bellamy's able leadership.

From the front, it looks like a classic Victorian village school, with gables and a school motto from Proverbs 19:2 — It is not good that the soul be without knowledge.

Go round the back, though, and all you see is the new state-of-the-art reception and infants area, making it look like a brand new school! When building the new rooms, the governors were careful to make sure everybody got a better learning environment, with Interactive whiteboards and furnishings down the Victorian end, pending more major building works.

This school is also doing some great language work with an inspiring and able member of staff who's a linguist. This means the children can play with languages and learn at an age they're not self conscious, and actually enjoy it. This has got to be infinitely better than waiting until 11 to pass go, as has so often been the case elsewhere. In a globalizing world language has got to be a key skill, and it was good to be with children who were really getting ahead and enjoying it, in a fantastic learning environment.

Why men don't listen and women can't read maps

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