How to Learn Any Language 6
How to Learn Any Language 6How I Married Hungarian
You don’t launch into the study of a new language casually, but it’s not quite as solemn a decision as an American man proposing to his girlfriend after an evening of wine and light jazz. It is, however, something like an Ottoman sultan deciding to take on another wife. It really is like a marriage. Something in you actually says, “I do!” and you decide to give it time and commitment that would ordinarily be invested elsewhere.
My pledge never to try to learn Hungarian was shattered by Hungarian heroism, Soviet tanks, and my agreeing to help Hungarian refugees resettle in Greensboro. I wasn’t the only journalist who stayed on that story long after history moved on. Every journalist I know who got involved in any part of the Hungarian Revolution became attached to it.
I started in Munich in the transit refugee camp for those fleeing Hungarians who were destined to go to America. I buzzed from one refugee to another like a bee to blossoms, drawing as many words and phrases as I could from each and writing them down.
The U.S. Air Force gave its Luitpol barracks over to the Hungarians, who promptly plastered their own signs right on top of the English signs on all the doors. The door that once said “Doctor” suddenly said “Orvos.” The door that once said “Clothing” suddenly said “Ruha.” And so on. It was easy to tell who among the Americans and Germans at Luitpol were genuine language lovers. They were the ones who were not annoyed.
The Hungarian relabelling of everything at Luitpol actually gave me my most explosive language learning thrill. When I went searching for a men’s room, I found myself for the first time in my life not knowing where to go. You don’t need Charles Berlitz to take you by the hand to the right one when the doors read “Mesdames” and “Messieurs,” “Damen” and “Herren,” “Se駉ras” and “Se駉res,” or even the rural Norwegain “Kvinnor” and “Menn.”
No such luck prevailed at Luitpol. The two doors were labelled “N􀃜k” and “Férfiak.” I looked at those two words, trying not to let my language lover’s enthusiasm distract from the pragmatic need to decipher which one was which relatively soon.
My thinking went like this. The k at the end of both words probably just made them plural. That left N􀃜 and Férfia, or possibly Férfi. Something came to me. I remembered reading that Hungarian was not originally a European language. It had been in Asia. The Chinese word for “woman”, “lady”, or anything female was n
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