European Chinese? (Part One)

When we knew we would be coming to live in Hungary, back in 1982, I began to contemplate the necessity of learning to speak the language. A Hungarian emigré we had encountered at a party had told us quite flatly that this would be impossible. He was the first - though not the last - to describe his mother tongue as European Chinese. What made the venture unavoidable was the fact that very few Hungarians had even a smattering of English: older citizens had learnt German while the present generation were struggling with compulsory Russian lessons.

I placed an advertisement in the local newspaper in the hope of finding a teacher. It was answered by a woman who had left Budapest in 1956 and now lived in a small community of fellow-countrymen in Reading. There was only one problem: she was unable to speak sufficient English to enable her to teach me - and this after 26 years in England! And so it was that I decided to wait until we arrived in the country and start in earnest then.

Paul had already acquired the then only available language teaching book, Learn Hungarian. It contains such gems as the conversation between the Bulgarian, Romanian and Hungarian railway workers, textile workers and miners meeting at Keleti station, all addressing each other as Comrade, and illustrated with a small drawing of them all holding hands as they wait for their train! Or the farm where the animals are ‘beautiful’ and the 'peasants are happy, rich and jolly.' Whilst this is arguably the best book available if you are serious about learning Hungarian grammar, it is also a wonderful example of the socialist idyll Hungary wanted to portray to foreigners.

Having arrived to live in Budapest in the summer of ’82, I enlisted the help of a university English teacher to help me with my language learning. As we limped towards chapter 4 or 5, I still felt queasy before attempting to secure the correct ending to my verbs. It was at this point in the book that they gaily began a new unit with a second set of verb endings! And so it was that Learn Hungarian joined a shelf of books busily gathering dust, and Péter lost his ‘second job.’

I decided that I would try and pick up the magyar nyelv by the so-called Direct Method (otherwise known as making an ass of yourself). This involved the endless repetition of phrases until they tripped off the tongue effortlessly. There was not the slightest room here for ambiguity in pronunciation: no Hungarian ever heard a foreigner try to speak his language – and certainly not in a market! Tourists in the 1980s were limited to East Germans (who came only in summer and headed straight for Lake Balaton) or Poles who came to buy and sell, and they tried to make use of the few words of Russian they hoped Hungarians might understand. Anything less than perfect pronunciation would be doomed to failure.


The day arrived for my first solo attempt. I prefaced my raid on the market by standing in the flat and repeating the sentence to myself for what I wanted to buy, and then rushed down and tried to find a stall without any customers so that my excruciating attempts were not witnessed. I found a butcher standing looking bored. After checking the coast was clear, I approached the stall and blurted out my well-rehearsed sentence: egy fél kiló darált húst kérek. I waited, hopefully, while he stared at me. Then folding his arms, and regarding me with the same curiosity Darwin might first have looked at the Galapagos turtles he said, ’Where on earth do you come from? You speak such horrible Hungarian!’