We’ve started planning our trip round Eastern Europe this summer and
I’ve just learned about Hungarian. Well that’s us done for. So most Hungarians today are Magyar – and the language isn’t Indo-
European , I believe, but Finno- Ugric, distantly related to Finnish
and Estonian. Go to a bar and make a stab at ordering a wine by asking for a ‘vino’
and you’ll get a blank look. The Hungarian for ‘wine’ is ‘bor’, I
believe. I once worked with an Indian guy who knew some Sanscrit and I
discovered that counting 1 to 10 in that ancient language wasn’t too
dissimilar to couting 1 to 10 in Welsh. Don’t know how much I can rely
on a vague familiarity with rudimentary Welsh to help me through the
strange languages of the East…
I’ve just learned about Hungarian. Well that’s us done for. So most Hungarians today are Magyar – and the language isn’t Indo-
European , I believe, but Finno- Ugric, distantly related to Finnish
and Estonian. Go to a bar and make a stab at ordering a wine by asking for a ‘vino’
and you’ll get a blank look. The Hungarian for ‘wine’ is ‘bor’, I
believe. I once worked with an Indian guy who knew some Sanscrit and I
discovered that counting 1 to 10 in that ancient language wasn’t too
dissimilar to couting 1 to 10 in Welsh. Don’t know how much I can rely
on a vague familiarity with rudimentary Welsh to help me through the
strange languages of the East…