Magyar News, 1992. szeptember-1993. augusztus (3. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1993-06-01 / 10. szám
HUNGARIAN PEOPLE, WHOM WE KNOW In the March issue I gave a chart trying to sort out how we call our relatives. I received responses that I would like to elaborate on. This is about the brother and sister. Brother is FIVÉR (fiú-vér) and sister is NŐVÉR (nŐ-vér). In general people use it for describing the older brother or sister. Probably the best word for the older brother would be BÁTY A. They also use BÁTY A for uncle —just to confuse the issue. The corresponding word on the female side would be NÉNJE. This is also used for aunt. If you ever get into a conversation and you are not sure who they are referring to, just ask — they will tell you. We have contact with many more people besides our relatives. In the English we address each other as Mr., Mrs., Miss, or recently Ms. As you noticed we men are shortchanged. The Hungarian says UR for Mr. Miss would be KISASSZONY, what is young lady. For Mrs. and Ms., following the logic, you would say ASSZONY and probably HÖLGY, what is lady. But this doesn’t work because you have to say it like — my lady. ASSZONYOM or HÖLGYEM. Let us say that you are addressing your neighbor who is SZOMSZÉD. You call him SZOMSZÉD ÚR, and her SZOMSZÉD ASSZONY. Once there is something in front of ASSZONY, there is no need to say “my.” An engineer is MÉRNÖK and a female engineer is MERNÖKNŐ. If you want to say Mrs. Engineer (what you don’t), it is MERNÖKNÉ ASSZONY. Mrs. Kovats will be KOVÁTSNÉ ASSZONY. Mate or companion is TÁRS. Your school-chum is ISKOLATÁRS, and the classmate is OSZTÁLYTÁRS, the playground buddy is JÁTSZÓTÁRS. The male teacher TANÍTÓ, a woman teacher is TANÍTÓNŐ. But if you address them, you say TANÍTÓ ÚR, or TANITONÉ ASSZONY. If you really start analyzing the suffix on TANITÓNE, then you would say it means Mrs. Teacher, the wife of the teacher. This could be a residue from the time when teaching was a male occupation. In the English we have chairman, and we are trying to update it to chairperson. The girlfriend will be BARÁTNŐ, but if you say BARÁTNE then you said Mrs. Barát. For different occupations we just stick NŐ after the words. ÁPOLÓNŐ is a nurse, NEVELÓNŐ is a tutor, TAKARÍTÓNŐ is a cleaning woman. For the male they are ÁPOLÓ, NEVELŐ and TAKARÍTÓ., In some cases things turn around. ÓVÓNŐ is a nursery teacher and there is nothing for a male. With modem day changes we will have some confusion about the clergy. Clergy is PAP. The wife will be PAPNE. A female clergy should be PAPNŐ. With Catholics everything is on the male side. The priest is TISZTELENDŐ ÚR or on a higher rank Zooming along the highway in your car, your thoughts wander from one subject to another. Sometimes you think of relatives, or friends, or just the people who live in the old country. It passes your mind that they in Hungary do not have all the conveniences of an automobile as we have it in America. You might even think about them with a little pity, and you might say, “well, what do they know?” At this point your car should come to a screeching halt because you made some Hungarians turn in their graves. Without these few Hungarians you wouldn’t be so happy about your car. It is a bad experience to drive with a faulty carburetor. Imagine what an experience you might have without a carburetor. Two inventors, Janos Csonka and Donat Banki in 1893 produced their gasoline engine using a special fuel atomizer they invented in 1891 and named it carburetor. This carburetor was patented a half a year before Maybach built a similar device. The first Banki-Csonka carburetor already had the float valve control, needle and butterfly. This is an essential part of today’s gasoline engine. Banki and Csonka solved the problem of spark plug ignition to replace the flame ignition, and with this they opened the road to the safe usage of gasoline. Janos Csonka became the designer and builder of the first Hungarian two and four cylinder automobiles from 1902 on. Donat Banki became professor at the Budapest University of Technical Sciences, invented the water-turbine which lead the way to the great hydro-electric power plants. FÖTISZTELENDŐ UR. A Protestant minister is TISZTELETES ÚR, or NAGYTISZTELETÜ ÚR. His wife would be TISZTELETES NÉ ASSZON Y, or even shorter TISZTELETES ASSZONY. Now we have to figure out what would be the name for a female minister. It isn’t fair that I do all the work, so why don’t you take a turn and come up with the answer. Joseph F. Balogh We still haven’t finished with Hungarian contributions to the automobile. I have to talk about István Schének who was bom in Esztergom, in 1830. He first became a pharmacist then he became a professor in chemistry at the Vienna University. After he went back to Hungary he taught at an agricultural college. Finally, for a quarter of a century he taught at the Academy of Mining and Forestry in Selmecbánya. Here he was unsatisfied with the light of the kerosene lamps and invented a gas lamp. Sure enough this wasn’t to his satisfaction so he invented an apparatus that would store electricity in the form of chemicals. Now you are one step away from the name of it. It is the battery you have in your car. This battery was used to illuminate the Opera, the Burg-theater in Vienna and also the B udapest Opera. The battery conquered Europe and then America - just to make your driving less troublesome. You might remember the days when flat tires were more frequent than they are now. But since we have the tubeless tires we don’t suffer that much on the road. We could drive forty-thousand miles now with a tire and don’t have to worry about the tube in it, the tube that might spring a leak. Somebody had to come to America to invent the tubeless tire and this emigrant is Mister Schwarz. After all this information one would think that the Hungarians are out of the automobile picture. Well, I am sorry to say but the best is to come yet _ (C M3.) THE “HUM” OF YOUR CAR SPEAKS HUNGARIAN EUROPEAN NAIL SALON Judith Racz Moved To: 565 Kings Highway, Fairfield, CT (Salon Maggi) Tel: 333-1468 GLOBAL TRAVEL MOVED THE OFFICE TO 161 Kings Highway, Fairfield, CT 06430, Grosso Mini-Mall, Suite 205 There is no interruption in services Tel: 331-1080
