hungary epitome of incomprehensibility Hungary is Zimbabwe all over again. Blather Zimbabwe, that is. (Re "misread" and its Blather Croatia.) What I mean is that I had a new dental hygienist for my tooth checkup today and I was curious about her accent. I was thinking of what it could be when she was flossing my teeth. Then there was a space of time when she was putting stuff away, getting ready for the dentist to come in. After asking a tooth-related question, I went, "This is irrelevant, but are you from Hungary by any chance? I was thinking your accent sounds like my friend's." "No, Poland." She didn't sound like she objected, and added something about having an accent and about eastern Europe (interesting in itself because some people prefer to say Hungary and Poland are central Europe). But I heard the "accent" part and hastened to say, "Oh, I didn't mean to make you feel self-conscious. I was in England recently - in June - so I spoke differently than everyone else. So that made me feel sort of self-conscious." Well, she didn't seem self-conscious to begin with, so why that word salad? (What_language_am_I_speaking? Salad. Radishes in particular.) I forget whether that was before or after I went all, "Oh, my mistake. I should know. Actually I'm studying linguistics now and Hungarian isn't in the Indo-European language family, so it isn't directly related to the Slavic languages." She: yeah, okay, I know that (but in a friendly way). Thing is, I really WAS thinking her accent sounded more Slavic, and Polish was one language I considered. That and Slovakian. But I feared that throwing my blind dart in that direction could hit a sore point: if recently Russian, she might be on the defensive because of Putin's current propensity to attack after Ukraine; if recently Ukrainian, she might expect and be sick of comments like "Oh, it's terrible what's happening there, isn't it?" So I picked Hungary as neutral territory. My words may be surreal radish salad, but my logic is impeccable. 220722 ... e_o_i WHAT is the word "after" doing before Ukraine? (The backstroke, perhaps.) Was the friend from Hungary real? Sort of, but I was thinking of a mix of two people. The first wasn't actually born in Hungary. Her parents were. She had a sister named Agnes, which leads us to the second: Agnes from youth choir, who once hosted a "pancake party" and said she preferred to call Christmas Yule because it didn't have religious connotations. (It sort of does, but I understood what she meant.) At least two encounters with her in adulthood: on the bus, where she talked about her metalworking, and later at the Dorval craft fair, where I was disappointed she didn't buy anything from my table. Best friends don't have to buy stuff - Julia stayed there for hours unresented - but acquaintances SHOULD feel the need to buy a card or soemthing to be polite. Impeccable logic again. 220722 ... kerry hungarian is so strange. it's a finno-ugric language like finnish and estonian, but being fluent in hungarian doesn't mean you'll have a clue how to navigate finnish or estonian. i only learned enough to survive grocery shopping, be generally polite in public, and tell people i didn't really speak hungarian. i wanted to speak it better but i am one of those people who finds it really difficult to learn other languages, things just didn't stick, besides the fact that words in hungarian get longer with suffix after suffix after suffix, and "sz" is pronounced like "s" and "s" is pronounced "shh." other words i remember: "sajnos" which means "unfortunately" and was a word we threw around a lot. "csigavér" which translates to "snail's blood" and is a response that basically means "chill out, dude." i'd love to go back one day and visit the town where my great-great-grandmother was born because i didn't even know about her for the semester i was there, but it's basically a fascist country now so who knows. at least i still have memories and pictures and a watch with no hands. 220722 ... e_o_i That sounds like a memorable trip! I went and reread the sajnos blathe; you captured a lot of depth in a small number of words, and all of it centering on one word. Reminds me too that languages aren't easy. At least, they don't come easily to me. (B- in the last German course; this time around, with a different prof, I'm hoping for B+ if I put in the effort.) Je parle français, but awkwardly, and I started learning it when I was 5 because it's the majority language here. Oh yes - I learned some Hungarian pronunciation for youth choir, to sing four folk songs arranged by Bartók, but I forget most of it now. "Nagy" means big or great, but the "g" doesn't make a consonant sound, so the word goes something like "neuy" if I remember right. 220905 ... e_o_i Oh yeah, and it sucks to have a dictator in power. Someone from Poland (not the dental assistant) was saying she was disappointed in *her* country electing a right-wing anti-immigrant government again (this was about 3 years ago), but at least there was opposition to that - at least there could be opposition. 220905 what's it to you? who go blather from