I started
learning Hungarian this week after six months of living with the hope that I’d
magically be able to converse with locals, despite an absolute lack of effort. This is not completely impossible, to an
extent. It is actually quite common to
pick up large amounts of language passively.
For example, I know that “tolni” means push. In my first week here, I had a man yell it at
me as I found myself unable to open a door.
At first I freaked out, wondering what type of insult “tolni” could
mean; I’d at least worked out that he was yelling at me because of my clear
stupidity of not being able to open a door, but after a second or a minute—
time ceases to move in these freak-out moments— I noticed that there was a
small sign above the handle, saying the same word. Naturally, I continued pulling on the
door. The man said it again and I
figured I should take a new strategy, pushing the door. That worked; the door opened. I turned back to the guy, slapped my forehead
gently with my palm and exclaimed with a laugh, “Tolni!”, as if I was merely
unobservant or stupid, not foreign.
Honestly
though, besides knowing the words for nearly every vegetable one can find in
this country (the markets have clearly marked signs above each bin), my
Hungarian is about nil. This is not
purely from laziness. When I first
arrived, I had every intention of studying Hungarian for an hour every
day. I believe that when one plans to
live in a country for four years, they should at least learn how to say to a
cashier, “Hey, what do you think of this particular cheese?” As it stands, I can look at the cashier and
say, “Cheese?” After just a day or two
here, realizing I needed flashcards just to say thank you (köszönöm) and that
the language has anywhere between 12 and 33 vowels (I swear they add more every few days, just to confuse me), I gave
up on any serious study of the language.
Especially considering that even when I know the word, even seemingly
simple words like sör (beer), I am incomprehensible to Hungarians. This is a common source of frustration to
many of foreigners that live here.
There is a fantastic bakery near my flat. Often in the morning, I’ll wonder down with
my artist/”I-just-woke-up- and-want-some-bread” hair, point to a bread roll and
exclaim, “Egy Zsemle!” They give me a
strange look as if I’m speaking some strange language and offer me something
completely different. I’ve observed the
signs. There is only one thing in the
entire store that has a name even resembling Zsemle and that’s Zsemle. So, even if I had managed to say something
like music or bill or SIM-card, one would think in this context, that I was
probably talking about the object to which I was pointing. It’s like working at a store that cuts keys
and having somebody come in and ask for kois.
I’d like to think that I wouldn’t spend two minutes glaring at the
person, wondering why they think they can buy a fish at my key store. Thankfully, the baker woman speaks English
and we quickly drop any pretence that we’ll be able to communicate in Hungarian,
and she just asks me what I want. These
are not confidence building events.
So when
Babilon offered me Hungarian lessons on a teacher’s discount, I figured I
should participate. The first lesson was
dedicated to introductions, numbers, and most importantly, pronouncing the
different letters. In just a few
minutes, I discovered a reason why the baker couldn’t understand me: I couldn’t
even say the word for one correctly. I’d
been saying “Egy” like egg-ee, when the “gy” is just one letter pronounced like
the last sound of the English word “edge”.
Turns out I kept walking into the bakery saying something like “sky-music”. If somebody asked me for sky-music in my key
store, I’d probably call the police.
However,
just taking Hungarian classes doesn’t make it an easy language. I find that learning to count to ten in most
languages is a simple process, taking little more than few minutes, but in
Hungarian, it took me a good part of an afternoon. They follow a logic I don’t understand. In most languages, when you learn 1-10, the
rest is quite easy. Not in Hungarian. After ten (tiz), it seems simple enough,
eleven is tizenegy, twelve is tizenkettő, or simply ten-en-one, ten-en-two,
etc. Twenty though, is húsz, which isn’t
derived from their word for two at all! But
at least it can follow the same formula, twenty-en-one, right? Unfortunately no, it is huszonegy. Thirty is harminc, but after forty, the rest
gets much easier, if you can remember which ones end with ven or van.
Another
oddity is that the third person seems to have optional verbs or optional subjects,
depending on the sentence. So, once
I know a few more words, I still won’t know who anyone is taking about or what they
are doing.
I was
able to use my Hungarian immediately.
Last night, Michelle and I went to see Django Unchained. The cinema had assigned seats, and when we
reached ours, a woman had turned mine into her personal wardrobe, stashing her
coat, candy, sodas, boyfriend’s gloves, scarf, and given this is Hungary, probably
her small dog as well. I didn’t know how
to say, “Um, would you mind placing your things someplace else? It is a Saturday night and the show is sold
out, so unfortunately, there are no spares seats in this theatre for you to
store your personal belongings.” But, I did
know the verb for “am” and the word for nine, my seat number. So I meekly remarked, “kilenc vagyok!” or
simple “nine am I”. There is the slight
possibility that I proposed the philosophical statement, “nine exists”, but
either way, the woman seemed to understand and spent the next ten minutes transferring
her massive pile of things out of my seat.
