I MEET A HUNGARIAN- AMERICAN NEIGHBOR FOR THE FIRST TIME : HE CAN COMMUNICATE WITH FINNISH PEOPLE and HIS CHINESE GIRLFRIEND!

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!

RUSSIA : GERMANY : TURKEY : THE CZECH REPUBLIC : POLAND : READ MAGYAR-AMERICAN : ETHNICITY and 9/11 CELEBRATION

Thank You to new readers for stopping by my blog from these countries!

You know, my blog is about the Hungarian American experience and connection to the motherland of Hungary. But as we all know, due to war and politics, borders in these countries have been redefined many times as have the names of cities and towns which sometimes have three or four different language variations. "Ethnic" populations of Hungarians are in all these countries as are people of various "Ethnic" populations living within the borders of Hungary.

And in the United States people of Hungarian family origins are everywhere, though there are concentrations of Magyar-Americans in places where people who came during the industrial revolution resided.

There's a challenge because just about everyone is proud of (or at least not ashamed) of their ethnicity. WE CAN BE PROUDEST OF HAVING MUTUAL RESPECT for our similarities as well as our differences. I believe in the United States intermarriage has, one relationship at a time, made a big difference in how we think about what makes an American. There is a lot of diversity here. I have one friend who counts 6 different ethnicities in her blood; Irish, Polish, Croation, Hungarian, Slovak, German; in the United States we suspect that everyone has a "wee bit" Irish.

On Sunday I attended one of the many small community 9/11 memorial services in a big city. There were beautifully singing young girls, a bag pipe player, a violinist, and representatives from five different religions from Jewish and Moslem, to Catholic and Christian to New Age speaking, as well as representatives from the fire department and the police. It wasn't a spectacle but it was well attended. Fire department helicopters flew over in formation, the boy scouts carried flags, and the names of the 83 Californians who died in the terrorist attack were read, while 83 white doves were let out to fly around the park.

TO MY READERS AROUND THE WORLD! HAPPY 2011!

Hello my friends from around the world!  Happy New Year 2011!

I want to thank my new readers who are connecting here not just from the United States, which I expected (and am very happy about) but also in CANADA, UNITED KINGDOM, FRANCE, HUNGARY (how would I feel if absolutely no one in Hungary had yet noticed this blog ? Terrible!), CHILI, SPAIN, SOUTH KOREA, GERMANY, and SOUTH AFRICA!

If you are in CHILI, SOUTH AFRICA, or another country and are of HUNGARIAN ANCESTRY please let me know!