Toonbots message board: Question for Michael

Michael Thu Sep 6 00:39:00 2001 Re: Question for Michael > Is this an actual word with > some meaning that I didn't know? Well, just because it means something in Hungarian doesn't mean it's not a meaningless nonword in English. I would wager that it's impossible to come up with a two-syllable concatenation of phonemes that isn't a perfectly good word in one of the gazillions of languages on the planet. I mean, you wouldn't expect to know the words "bizzunk benne" or "szerencsejatek" either, right? I don't know the word, but phonetically it looks perfectly Hungarian; I'll ask my wife.

pv Thu Sep 6 11:19:10 2001 Re: Question for Michael On another moon-man language tangent... A relative was looking for a language training program for Hungarian. I tried all the obvious places, found lots of language software, but not for Hungarian. Has anyone come across any such thing? PV

Michael Thu Sep 6 13:13:50 2001 Re: Question for Michael > A relative was looking for a language training program for Hungarian. I > tried all the obvious places, found lots of language software, but not for > Hungarian. Has anyone come across any such thing? PV I've found the most effective way to learn Hungarian is to marry a Hungarian, have a child, and attempt to teach the child Hungarian. It's a never-ceasing source of amusement for the entire nation of Hungary plus you may end up knowing words like "potty", "diaper", and "eat." Seriously, though, the best Hungarian text I ever saw was published by the US State Department as part of their language training programs. I'm not sure how you'd track it down, but your public library should be able to help. If you're in a major city, in fact, your public library may have it. The State Department language texts are far superior to Berlitz anyway, as they're used to train diplomats and spies instead of tourists.