Oh the MYSTERIOUSNESS of being HUNGARIAN! And Hungarians themselves are into the mystery of our origins and reading all around the human genome and DNA about now.
Last week, walking my dog, I happened to meet a neighbor I didn't know about who is a Hungarian-American of recent vintage. What an interesting and enthusiastic young person!
Of course, he mentioned that his people were now calling themselves Germans and Slovaks as well, because of well - the way the countries borders changed. But his first language is Hungarian, and I must stay his English is excellent, just enough accent to know that. He lives with his CHINESE girlfriend.
We talked for quite a long time. Enough that my dog lay down without being told to. (She knows that "mom is going to have a long conversation!")
I told him at the start of the conversation that I do genealogy research, that I don't speak Hungarian, but that I translate with the help of dictionaries and by asking other people who do speak it when I get stuck. I told him that I was convinced it was an Asian language, because by putting words in front or back or a root, you change the word - the imagery - that Hungarian is a poetical and humorous language.
I told him that sometimes when I translate place names, for instance, I'm reminded of the translations one gets in certain Chinese restaurants. For instance, one place, which is on a plateau with a lot of pine trees around seemed to be named "Black Hat." (One Chinese soup that has something for everyone to pick out of it is called "Happy Family.")
"I can understand Finnish people! I can understand things my girlfriend says and she's Chinese, because of that placement," he said. "We're MONGOLIANS!"
To finesse this a bit, there is evidence that while the LANGUAGE, which is not from the Latin, and not from the Slavs, probably came from an ancient starter population that dominated life at some point, and there is evidence that the Mongolians DNA is in, not only some Hungarians, but in a swath of countries, including southern Poland, parts of Germany, and so on, it may be a case of the DNA being diverse and the language being what prevailed even if the original native speakers' DNA became minority DNA.
I look into this every few months, because I know that DNA and the human genome science is getting more and more specific and interesting all the time.
I look forward to another conversation in the moment with Ferenz!
