u/pepperboon

2010-ben nem tudom, milyen volt a helyzet, mindenesetre érdekes. Az is, hogy a kajálós utcán (Pontstraße) nem volt senki nyáron, mert mostanában folyton tele van. A németeknél kicsit máshogy van a vizsgaidőszak, ezért ritkán lépnek le a diákok egyszerre. Na mindegy.

Még ha a lepukkant részeket mondanád, kevésbé lenne furcsa (Kennedy Park - drogosok, bevándorlók, egyszer volt hír kisebb lövöldözésről), de az egyetem környékét nagyon nyugisnak láttam eddig. Úgy tűnik szimplán peched volt.

Aachen-ben az egyetem kampusza mellett verőfényes nappal kővel kezdett dobálni egy tízfős arab banda

Na, hol volt ez pontosan és hogy történt? Jó ideje Aachenben élek, jártam az egyetemre is (RWTH), de soha, se verőfényes nappal, se az éjszaka közepén nem láttam semmi ilyen jellegű agressziót, pedig sétálgattam éjjel olyan környékeken is ahol sok arab és török lakik (Rothe Erde, Elsassstraße), nem csak az egyetem kampuszán. Egyszer se szólítottak meg, egyszer se ordítoztak egymással vagy mással az utcán, mint ahogy otthon a cigányok szinte mindig. A bevándorlók lakta környéken, arab/török kajáldákban is maximálisan kedvesek voltak mindig. Nem tudom, hogy sikerült megdobálódnod kővel, de szívesen meghallgatnám a sztorit.

My grandparents only got an inside toilet in around 1994.

We have "Kellemes ünnepeket!" (Pleasant holidays) but that includes New Year's Day as well. And we also have "Boldog karácsonyt!" (Happy Christmas). I don't know about the origins of Kellemes ünnepeket, but today it doesn't feel artificial or forced at all. It's just one of the possibilities, it's not specifically for PC people. I could imagine however, that it was popularized in the anti-religious communist years. But I'm not sure.

Most people are at least culturally Christian here, except for the Jews. There's no controversy around saying Merry Christmas here. Obviously you don't say it to someone that you know is Jewish and doesn't celebrate it.

We don't call it Secret Santa since in Hungary Santa comes on 6th of December and Christmas gifts are brought by Baby Jesus.

But yeah we had it in school every year and people sometimes do it a work too.

Left and right don't mean the same in every country (even "conservative" doesn't mean the same thing in Hungary as in the US).

But anyway, our right-wing has about 65-70% of the voters at the moment and about 78% of the seats in parliament.

But they often (usually) have some mortgage/credit on the flat or house.

The average Hungarian makes about $500, so $600 is definitely not the bare minimum. But you probably wouldn't want to live like an average Hungarian, though.

So, are Mercator maps still so widespread in US schools?

"Cooper fell into the black hole Gargantua"

Cooper beleesett a Gargantua fekete lyukba. (Or perhaps it's spelled "Gargantua-feketelyukba", I'm not sure, since there are no analogously named black holes in reality).

We put the name of a thing before its type. English sometimes puts it before (Black Sea, Indian Ocean, Mississippi River etc.) and sometimes after (Lake Victoria, Mount Everest etc.) but in Hungarian the name is always first. This applies to many things including people, so "President Obama" is "Obama elnök" in Hungarian.

You need the bele- coverb (or verbal prefix) to express the completed action of falling into it.

BONUS QUESTION: If I were to write the headline of this post in Hungarian, would this have been a correct sentence? "Hogy működne a magyar esetrendszer, ha az érintett főnévnek is neve lenne?"

Hogy működik a magyar esetrendszer (or rather "főnévragozás" as we usually say in Hungarian), ha az érintett (or "adott") főnévnek neve is van?

There's no need for the conditional mood, you are asking about how it actually is in Hungarian grammar. And "is" follows the thing that it refers to.

What do you mean? I don't understand what "which way goes which" means in this case, but I'm not a native speaker of English.

They'd be immigrants in Tibet, a foreign family that has settled there. The children who are born in Tibet would be in a very difficult situation, growing up with three cultures, speaking several languages probably. If they participate enough in Tibetan life and show enough commitment, they may become accepted by Tibetans to the point of marrying with them. Then after a few generations of having children with the local population, the Senegalese and Taiwanese identity would probably fade away and the new generations would only have a real connection to Tibetan culture, with a vague curious fact about some of their ancestors coming from far away.

That's more a "14 year olds on the internet" thing.

Yeah, that's my impression too. It's like the moment when kids learn something and now know a little bit more about a topic they start to emphasize that very much and become hostile to kids who lag one step behind in knowing that thing and would only learn about it like a year or two later. This happens with sex, music, movies, Europe, anything. And since the "knowledgeable" kids are just a tiny bit ahead of the others, they also often spread total nonsense but seem confident so others believe them.

This feels the same. Like an American kid would say to a classmate "My mom told me we are Italians, haha, no wonder I like pizza" and the other going "Ah you are so stupid to think you are so Italian with that pizza, my parents actually took me to Italy last summer and they have totally different type of pizza, and Italian culture is just so much more!!"

It's like a typical one-upping bragging game that kids play.

First "African" is not an ethnicity and Africa is not a country. But I don't get the question. The children would simply be like "I have a Chinese father and a [...African ethnicity...] mother". Usually after a few generations the Chinese identity would disappear and the family would assimilate into the local culture.

This never happened to me, but I also don't talk to many Americans. One I met in Germany was pretty reluctant to talk about his great-great-grandparents going from Germany to the US. Now I think perhaps he had bad reactions before? Strange. I was actually interested in hearing what he knows about it.

I don't know how Americans phrase this thing when they get bad reactions... Like "So awesome to be German/Polish just like you guys, wooo!!" perhaps? Like if you just casually say "my ancestors actually came to the US from Germany/Poland" deep into a conversation (i.e. not the very first thing you say) I can't see how it can bother anybody.

I only know about this whole "controversy" from Reddit, I've never seen either side of the story in real life, i.e. either non-Hungarians claiming to be Hungarian instead of Hungarian-American or of Hungarian ancestry, or people getting upset about Americans looking into their ancestry.

The whole drama sounds pretty immature, I guess this kind of conversation happens among kids or in high school.

But it might be different in other European countries. In Hungary we are already pleased and satisfied if someone knows about Hungary or shows any kind of interest at all. I can see how too much of it can be annoying, e.g. for Irish people.

I answered here.

Which European country are you from (or which ones do you know best)? In Hungary it works like this:

• You turn onto a road
• Arriving at the first intersection you prepare for a rule-of-right type intersection if you don't have yield or stop sign.
• You slow down and look into the intersection and try to see if the cross street has a yield or a stop sign. This is why they are shaped like no other sign (octagon and downwards pointing triangle) so they can be recognized from behind.
• If there is no such sign for them, it's a rule-of-right intersection. If there is, then you have the right of way.
• Now as you go forward, all the other intersections of this road willl be of this type, so if you saw a yield sign for the crossing road, you can be assured that you are on a so called "protected road" and there won't be any rule-of-right crossings ahead.

I assumed this is how it is in other European countries as well, but if not, it will be useful to know.

No, because there are stop signs for the cross traffic. It's only yield-to-the-right in Europe if there are no Stop or Yield signs in the crossing (nor traffic lights).

Never heard of either.

Do they speak the language? Did they grow up with Hungarian folk tales, Hungarian animated films, can they sing basic Hungarian folk songs, did they grow up listening to Hungarian bands, do they know Hungarian movies, actors, singers, writers, poets? Did they grow up learning about Hungarian history?

Probably not.

We usually call them "people of Hungarian origin" or "of Hungarian ancestry" (magyar származású). There's nothing negative implied, this is a neutral, descriptive term.

If they return to Hungary then they are people of Hungarian origin who returned to Hungary. If their children grow up here, then they become normal Hungarians again.

Very different from my grandparents (born in the 1920s and 30s), but quite similar to my parents (born in the 1950s and 60s). Now obviously there are some differences but I feel the generational gap between my parents and grandparents is larger than the gap between me and my parents.

My grandparents were peasants and simple factory workers and didn't leave their town/region for most of their lives, never owned a car, didn't have a single full shelf of books, while my parents grew up with pop and rock music, watched TV as children, went abroad, wore jeans, studied at university etc. My grandparents struggle with mobile phones, while my parents use the internet and smartphones routinely.

We have several legends.

One is the legend of the wonderdeer (csodaszarvas). The story goes that two brothers, Hunor and Magor went out hunting and they found a beautiful white deer. They followed her for many many days, through hills and valleys, through swamps and fields, until they found a beautiful land with lush grass and all nice stuff, so they settled. The descendants of Hunor became the Huns, the descendants of Magor became the Hungarians ("Magyar" in Hungarian).

Another is about the dream of Emese. The legend says that a pregnant Hungarian woman called Emese saw a dream, in which a mythical bird called the turul impregnated her and she realized that a lineage of great kings would come from her womb. She named her son Álmos, which means "Dream-y" (it also means "sleepy"). And indeed the son of Álmos, called Árpád, led the Hungarians into the Carpathian basin in 895 and established the House of Árpád that ruled Hungary until 1301. Emese is a popular name for girls to this day.

In terms of TV viewer counts the list goes:

• car racing
• football
• boxing

In Hungary we learn the following:

Prehistory (őskor, literally "ancient age"): evolution of humans - 3000 BCE (first written records)

Antiquity (ókor, "old age"): 3000 BCE - 476 CE (fall of Western Roman Empire)

Middle Ages (középkor, "middle age"): 476 - 1492 (Columbus' discovery of America) or 1526 (Battle of Mohács)

Modern Age (újkor, "new age"): 1492/1526 - 1914 (start of WWI)

Present Age (jelenkor): 1914 - present

I don't think this is a "model" at all. It's just to remind people that beliefs, assumptions about how society should work, what constitutes good behavior etc etc. are part of what we call culture and people with different cultural backgrounds often have different views on this attitude level.

This is probably trivial and goes without saying for you, but many people never question their own basic assumptions about society (or even see them as such, as opposed to just "the right way for things to be"), and they assume that cultural differences are mostly about food, clothes, dances etc.

People who are critical or weary of multiculturalism are usually not against different styles of music or differently spiced food, but the different values.

It is for instance perfectly possible to have different believes about sex, religion or politeness take part in the same cultural practices just as it is possible to have the same beliefs and engage in different practices.

This is precisely why we need to differentiate between the two, because they can vary independently.

I could also liken the situation to language, where one can differentiate between vocabulary and grammar. We can easily give and take words among languages without reaching into the deeper structure of the language. Similarly, it's very easy and unproblematic to absorb different foods, music and festivities into a culture. The problem is when the "deep cultures" clash (deep values, like what is the point of life, what should society strive to achieve, do our man-made laws stand above "God's laws", etc.).