HUNGARY: Language and culture

Steve Torok, born in Hungary, adds a new twist to hyphenated Americans. He says :"I prefer to be called an American-Hungarian!". To my frivolous suggestion that the language problem would be solved by speaking English loudly, he replies "The trick is to speak English loudly but to listen in all the other languages..." Sorry, Steve. It is too late for me to learn Hungarian. My reference work for languages is the massive, two-volume Compendium of the World's Languages by George L. Campbell, former BBC language supervisor. (Good for the BBC!. Did the Campbells and the MacDonalds speak the same dialect of Gaelic? Did they fight because they couldn't understand each other, or because they could? A question for George Sassoon). Anyhow, in the descriptions of over 1,000 languages, Hungarian comes between Hopi and Hurrian. We are told that Hungarian is spoken by between 12 and 14 million. The oldest document in a funeral oration. The historical account ends: "The social and economic transformation of Hungary from 1860 onwards brought the conditions for a tremendous upsurge in cultural creativity, and Hungarian may now lay claim to one of the world's great literatures". Too bad that this Finno-Ugric language is generally unknown. One more, and to my mind unnecessary translation of Marcel Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu has appeared; the "lost time" is spent reading this boring book. Had Proust written in Hungarian, he would be unknown. Or even in Spanish, or Portuguese. An essay on Hungarian literature opens: "Hungarian literature has ben relatively little known outside Hungary because of the difficulties of translating Magyar."

Ronald Hilton - 10/10/02