Fraternity-Testvériség, 1960 (38. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
1960-03-01 / 3. szám
4 FRATERNITY JOSEPH KECSKEMETHY: ITEMS OF INTEREST AMERICAN-HUNGARIAN INSTITUTE Sputnik may have been largely responsible for the recent emphasis on science and language training in American colleges, but one Rutgers University professor has found some down-to-earth reasons for student interest in his language course. August J. Molnár, lecturer in Hungarian at the State University, has been told by his students that reasons ranging from professional advancement to love and marriage have inspired them to take the difficult language course. Prof. Molnár teaches a beginner’s course in Hungarian in the College of Arts and Sciences at the men’s colleges here and also in the Extension Division evenings. Hungarian was first offered at Rutgers last fall and is supported by the American-Hungarian Institute, a non-profit New Jersey corporation. “One of my students in the day school, who is a third generation Hungarian-American, says his parents want him to marry a girl of Hungarian descent”, Prof. Molnár said, “and he wants to be prepared for any in-law problems which might develop.” Prof. Molnár admits that this reasoning seemed far-fetched until one of the adult students in the evening course explained his case. This fellow, who knows no Hungarian, married a second generation Hungarian girl and is taking the course just to find out what’s going on around the house, which happens also to be the home of his mother-in-law. “Of course, these are exceptions”, he said. “Most of the undergraduates in the course believe that a knowledge of Hungarian will give them greater career opportunities in journalism, foreign service, teaching, business and other major fields in which they are interested.” In explaining the difficulty of the Hungarian language, Prof. Molnár said the vocabulary is not at all recognizable to the uninitiated. Its grammar differs radically from English and Indo-European languages commonly studied in American schools. Hungarian is a member of the Uralic language family, along with Finnish, Estonian and Lapp, whereas the more familiar German, French and Spanish are Indo-European tongues. He said that the federal government, through the National Defense Education Act of 1958, has spurred interest in the study of Hungarian and other languages not frequently taught in this country. The NDEA has designated Hungarian on its “second priority” list of languages, he said. Prof. Molnár, who is president of the American-Hungarian Institute, said that group’s decision to support the Rutgers program was based largely on heavy concentration of Hungarians in New Jersey. He said the Institute has plans to establish headquarters in this city and to build a library and museum near the Rutgers campus. The Institute is sponsoring a series of lectures on the campus this year. A 1949 graduate of Elmhurst (Illinois) College, Prof. Molnár was chairman of the Department of Hungarian Studies there for seven years before coming to Rutgers last July. (Rutgers News Service)
