SAY IT IN HUNGARIAN by Juliette Victor-Rood, Ph.D. Assistant Professor o f German The Pennsylvania State University DOVER PUBLICATIONS, INC. New York Copyright © 1983 by Dover Publications, Inc. All rights reserved under Pan American and International Copyright Conventions. Published in Canada by General Publishing Company, Ltd., 30 Lesmill Road, Don Mills, Toronto, Ontario. Published in the United Kingdom by Constable and Company, Ltd., 10 Orange Street, London WC2H 7EG. Say It in Hungarian is a new work, first published by Dover Publications, Inc., in 1983. Manufactured in the United States of America Dover Publications, Inc. 180 Varick Street New York, N.Y. 10014 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Victor-Rood, Juliette. Say it in Hungarian. (Dover “say it” series) Includes index. 1. Hungarian language—Conversation and phrase books— English. I. Title. PH2121.V5 1983 494´.51183421 82-12947 eISBN 13: 978-0-486-14830-4 TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction Pronunciation Everyday Phrases Social Phrases Basic Questions Talking about Yourself Making Yourself Understood Difficulties and Misunderstandings Customs Baggage Travel Directions Boat Airplane Train Bus, Subway, Streetcar Taxi Renting Autos and Other Vehicles Auto: Directions Auto: Help on the Road Auto: Gas Station and Auto Repair Shop Parts of the Car (and Auto Equipment) Mail Telegram Telephone Hotel Chambermaid Renting an Apartment Apartment: Useful Words Café and Bar Restaurant Food: Seasonings Beverages and Breakfast Foods Soups Salads Meats and Meat Dishes Poultry Fish and Seafood Sauces Vegetables, Starches, and Side Dishes Fruits Desserts Sightseeing Worship Entertainments Nightclub and Dancing Sports and Games Hiking and Camping Bank and Money Shopping Clothing and Accessories Colors Materials Bookshop, Stationer, Newsdealer Pharmacy Drugstore Items Camera Shop and Photography Gift and Souvenir List Cigar Store Laundry and Dry Cleaning Repairs and Adjustments Barber Shop Beauty Parlor Stores and Services Baby Care Health and Illness Ailments Dentist Accidents Parts of the Body Time Weather Days of the Week Holidays Dates, Months and Seasons Numbers: Cardinals Numbers: Ordinals Quantities Family Common Signs & Public Notices Index Appendix: Common Road Signs INTRODUCTION Hungarian is spoken by about 13 million people, mainly in the central Danube Valley. Aside from being the national language of Hungary, Hungarian is spoken by substantial communities in Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia. Other Hungarian speakers are scattered throughout the world, including about half a million of them in the United States. There is little difference between dialects in Hungarian, and the phrases in this book will be understood by Hungarian speakers everywhere. Hungarian is a member of the Finno-Ugric branch of the Uralic family of languages, and is therefore unrelated to the familiar languages of Europe. Its closest relatives are the Vogul and Ostyak languages of Siberia, and it is more distantly related to Finnish and Estonian. As you might expect, then, Hungarian grammar is quite different from that of English and other Indo-European languages, and Hungarian has always been considered a difficult language to learn. Say It in Hungarian will enable you to communicate in a part of Eastern Europe where few people speak English. NOTES ON THE USE OF THIS BOOK The words, phrases and sentences in this book have been selected to provide for the communications needs of the traveler or foreign resident in Hungary, and they have been divided into sections corresponding to the situations likely to be encountered in travel and in daily life. The entries which consist of vocabulary lists have been alphabetized according to their English headings, with the exception of the sections on food and public notices, which have been alphabetized according to the Hungarian entries to facilitate reference to menus and signs. The index at the back of the book serves as a handy English-Hungarian glossary, and helps you to locate quickly a specific word or phrase. With the aid of the index or a bilingual dictionary, many sentence patterns included here will answer innumerable needs. For example, the place occupied by “six” in the sentence I shall wait for your call until [six] o’clock. may be filled with another number in accordance with your needs. In other sentences, the words in square brackets can be replaced with words immediately following (in the same sentence or in the indented entries below it). Thus, the entry These things [to the left] [to the right] belong to me. provides two sentences: “These things to the left belong to me” and “These things to the right belong to me.” Three sentences are provided by the following entries: How much does it cost [per hour]? —per kilometer. —per day. The substitutions taken from the same entry or the indented entries following a sentence will always be in the correct grammatical form. Since Hungarian nouns and verbs take a variety of endings depending on their context, those substitutions you supply yourself from the index or a bilingual dictionary will not always be in the correct form. However, Hungarians should have no trouble understanding what you mean. Please note that while brackets always indicate the possibility of substitution, parentheses have been used to provide additional information. They are used to indicate synonyms or alternative usage for an entry: Please have a seat. (OR: Won’t you sit down?) Parentheses may also be used to explain the nuances of a word or phrase. The abbreviation LIT. is used whenever a parenthetical literal translation of a Hungarian sentence is provided. When a word has different forms according to sex (like English “actor” and “actress”), the abbreviations M. and F. will be used to indicate masculine and feminine forms, respectively. You will notice that the word “please” has been omitted from many of the sentences in this book. This was done for reasons of space and clarity. To be polite, you should add the word kérem (KAY-rehm) whenever you would normally say “please” in English. The extensive index at the back of the book is especially useful. Capitalized items in the index refer to section headings and give the number of the page on which the section begins. All other numbers refer to entry numbers (individual entries are numbered consecutively throughout the book). PRONUNCIATION Although Hungarian has some sounds with which you are probably unfamiliar, you should be able to produce them with a little practice, especially when you hear spoken Hungarian and try to imitate it. To aid you in pronouncing Hungarian properly, we have provided a convenient transcription system and the explanatory chart which follows. Look over the chart carefully; the transcription should be read like English except for the special rules noted in the chart. With care, you will be able to make yourself understood in Hungarian before you have heard a word of it spoken. CONSONANTS HungarianTranscription Remarks Spelling b b Like the b in bear. c ts Like the ts in cats or tsetse. cs ch Like the ch in much. d d Like the d in dog. dz dz Like the ds in heads. dzs j Like the j in jam. f f Like the ƒ in ƒire. g g Like the g in get. gy dy Like the d-y sound in and you or the di sound in French “adieu.” h h Like the h in have. j y, hy Usually like the y in yet, never like the j in jam. At the end of a word after p, t, k, or r, j sounds like the ch in German “ich,” which is similar to an exaggerated pronunciation of the h in huge; this sound is transcribed hy. k k Like the k in skin. (k, p, and t are not aspirated [followed by a puff of air] in Hungarian, as they are at the beginning of a word in English). l l Like the l in law. ly y Same as the Hungarian j (like y in yet). m m Like the m in many.