Gabor Fencsik wrote:
>
> On Fri, 18 Apr 1997, E.S. Balogh wrote:
>
> >      I met an American (he was a graduate student at Columbia at
> > the time) who did learn Hungarian so well that one couldn't tell. Once he
> > was standing behind me at a conference, escorting a Hungarian historian,
> > when he said something jokingly to me in Hungarian. I turned around and I
> > was astonished to find that it was the young American historian of Hungary
> > and not a native speaker. ESB
>
> I have had similar experiences with Americans speaking flawless Hungarian.
> As long as they stuck to short, simple, colloquial sentences, it was
> impossible to detect the slightest accent.  One was a (black) embassy
> clerk at the Budapest embassy.  I was also completely fooled once by
> an American descendant of Mayflower immigrants whose pronounciation
> was indistinguishable from a native Hungarian.  True, she was a
> Linguistics professor married to a Hungarian.  On the other hand,
> she had a great deal of trouble getting herself understood by
> Midwesterners, with her distintly New England accent...
>
> In general, I think the idea that Hungarian is especially difficult to
> learn is a myth.  Compared to English or German, let us say, it is just
> as easy to learn badly, and just as hard to learn well.  Besides, every
> two-year old can do it without visible brain damage, so how can it be
> all that difficult?
>
> -----
> Gabor Fencsik
Boy, you never tried! Ask my wife ( native German ) or ask my
children. It is the utterly different structure of the language...
M

MDtoCEO wrote:
>
> Okay.  Enough already.  I learned my Hungarian  beginning at 19 and by the
> time I left Budapest after two years I spoke not only fluently and
> natively (example to follow) but I also could do the Debreceni accent in a
> pinch.  Never could get the Erdelyi down, though.
>
> What convinced me that my pronunciation was as close to native as an
> American could get was the time I was standing outside one of those
> nyugati boltok, you know, where they only let westerners go in because the
> stuff inside was only for sale for western currency?  Well, I still LOOKED
> American, because some guy came up to me, his hands full of deutschmarks,
> and asked me in broken English to go into the store and buy him a TV with
> his money.  Out of sheer perversity, I answered him back in Hungarian and
> told him basically ( with all sorts of slang I picked up at Honved
> matches) to get lost, I was from Dunaujvaros and could no more go into
> that store than he could.  He asked me where I got my coat and I told him
> my brother lived in London.  "Lucky stiff," he said.  "Tell me about it,"
> I replied.  He apologized and left.  Possibly he was snowing me.  My bet
> is not.  I played the part of my Hungarian landlord on the phone way too
> many times to think that there was a conspiracy to lead me to believe my
> Hungarian was better than it was.
>
> If it's any consolation, I still don't say "bo:rto:n" natively, or "lyuk",
> for that matter.  And learning Hungarian was two years of suffering.
>
> Not that any of this proves anything, of course, but I'm sill curious what
> that bet involved if anyone won...
>
> Kristof
What are you refering to?

MDtoCEO wrote:
>
> Are there particular protestant churches you're interested in?  Or is the
> focus of your study the Reformatus churches?  I was in Hungary for my
> church in the late Kadar years, and have some information about church
> growth in general, but only from that mid-late '80s period.
>
> Kristof
What are you refering to?

Dear Colleagues,

Next week the Dalai Lama is coming to Washington to ask for the support of
President Clinton and it is not clear, if the president will receive him. If
you agree with the attached letter, please also mail one of your own, asking
him to do so.

Best regards: Bela Liptak

PS: The Danube news conference is at 3 PM tomorrow (Sunday) at 213 E 82nd St,
NYC.


XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

April 19,1997

President Bill Clinton
The White House
(E-Mail: )

RE: Meeting with Dalai Lama

Dear Mr. President,

The 1.58 million Hungarian-Americans feel a special respect for the spiritual
leader of Tibet, the Dalai Lama. It was right after the crushing of the
Hungarian Revolution of 1956 by the Soviets, that Tibet too was militarily
occupied by Red China. Today Hungary is free, but Tibet is still enslaved and
its people are subject to forced assimilation and oppression.

Dear Mr. President. The least you can do for the people of Tibet and for the
 Dalai Lama, this international symbol of peace and reconciliation, is to
formally receive him. Anything less would be taken as your betraying our
principles and caving in to pressure from Red China.

When receiving the Dalai Lama, please speak up NOT ONLY for the people of
Tibet, but also for all oppressed minorities on this planet and please
support their collective human rights, including their right to cultural
autonomy.

Respectfully yours,
prof. Bela Liptak
84 Old N. Stamford Rd., Stamford, CT 06905

At 08:18 PM 4/18/97 -0400, you wrote:
>At 09:30 PM 4/18/97 GMT, Agnes wrote:
>
>>I had
>>about a year ago a long discussion on this list, when everybody attacked
>>me when I dared to say that, even living in Canada for over 30 years and
>>working in large Canadian corporations, was unable to make Canadian
>>friends, and I am not alone with this.  In contrast, my Hungarian friends
>>in the US were all able to befriend Americans.  I also thought that the
>>whole thing is only a question of learning English, but it is not.  It is
>>a question of mentality.
>
>        Agnes, I remember that discussion and even remember that at that
>time I was on the other side, but now that you put it in a different
>way--that is, comparing it to the United States--I must agree with you. As
>you know I spent nine years in Canada after 1956 and I must admit that I
>didn't like it very much. Canadians in Ottawa, which basically meant
>descendents of Scotch-Irish immigrants from the nineteenth-century, were
>terribly buttoned-up, terribly self-satisfied, terribly isolated people who
>had a certain ideal human being in mind: a Scotch-Irish Canadian from
>Ottawa. If you were any different from that ideal there had to be something
>wrong with you.
>        Just to give you an example. The following story had to take place
>sometime in the beginning of the 1960s. The first time ever the coronation
>of the pope was shown on television. I am not a Catholic, I am not
>religious, but I thought it very exciting that we will be able to see the
>actual coronation on tv. I said so in the living room of a friend of mine's
>family. Reaction: the mother told me that now that I am a Canadian citizen I
>am supposed to behave like a Canadian. I.e., I am not supposed to show any
>excitement whatsoever at such things. (I am almost certain that her
>anti-Catholic feelings also had something to do with that great
>pronuncement!). In any case, I got terribly upset and I didn't spare words
>about my citizenship and my personality and where she can go with her
>Canadian temperament! I packed up and left with a cry something like: Yes, I
>became a citizen of this country but I didn't sell my soul!
>        I am happy to see that most Hungarians on this list seem to love
>Canada. They obviously blent in nicely and joined the chorus of
>anti-Americanism. Intellectually, I cab actually understand Canada's
>problems but emotionally I cannot identify with that kind of nationalism as
>I can't with any kind of nationalism. ESB
>
>Eva:what kind of nationalism are you talking about?Does it bother you,that
we like Canada,and try to defend it's achievement against the over pwoering US.
Our problems stems from 10 provinces,and territories,wich are constantly in
fight with the Federal Governement,and also with each other.
We have Nafta,but the provinces don't deal with each other.But when it comes
to the good things,yes we try do defend them.
We are not flag weavers,nor do we sing the national anthem evry morning.
We don't force emigrants to become Canadians,in fact we used to encourage
them to keep there culture.We are not a melting pot.
Your memory of 1960 might be right.Since then evrithing has changed.The
catholic church power over Qubec is gone,and with it the
Irish,Scotish,British influence.
So if you can remeber who gave you your first emigrant status,wich you now
critisies.Don't bite the hand wich Fed you.
Andy.
>
>
Andy Kozma

Toronto.

>I heard that the gift of languages is closely related to the gift of
>music. In my small circle of friends this generalization seems to
>have genuine foundation!
>
>I would like to meet some of those people whom others find
>speaking the given non-mother tongue (English or Hungarian)
>so natively that a native couldn't recognize them as foreigners!
>I bet they've learned that language before that magic age of
>12-15!
>
>Another thing I've found, the more languages one learns, the
>easier it gets to learn yet another (common rootwords, etc.),
>however the purity of pronanciation is inversly related to the
>number of languages spoken.
>
>An experience based  personal opinion for what it's worth!
>
I fully agree.  Agnes

>        Just to give you an example. The following story had to take
place
>sometime in the beginning of the 1960s. The first time ever the
coronation
>of the pope was shown on television. I am not a Catholic, I am not
>religious, but I thought it very exciting that we will be able to see
the
>actual coronation on tv. I said so in the living room of a friend of
mine's
>family. Reaction: the mother told me that now that I am a Canadian
citizen I
>am supposed to behave like a Canadian. I.e., I am not supposed to show
any
>excitement whatsoever at such things.

Well, Eva, it is not this bad - she must have been a very stupid woman
and this is really an isolated case.  However, I admit I got into trouble
at the work place many times with my straightforward manners.  I could
never learn to act the English way.  Yes, I love Canada.  Canada was good
to us.  My children and - especially - my grandchildren are fully
integrated.  And with my particular situation of a sick husband, that I
mentioned before, I am happy that I live here and not in the US.

Agnes

In article >,  says...
>
>
>van olyan news ahol magyarul irnak?
>koszonom!
>imre

Van. A soc.culture.magyar.  Ott is van angol levelezes, de sokkal
kevesebb.  Agnes