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Peter Ellis

almostconverge

Mini Hungarian language lesson: thirteenOut of our many heroic defeats throughout history, few shaped our national consciousness so comprehensively as the 1848-49 revolution. Which is odd when you think about

Mini Hungarian language lesson: gardening.Most compound words that use a demonym as an adjective are not very complimentary: "spanyolcsizma" (Spanish boot, as in the torture device), "oláhtorma" (Wallachian horseradish,

Mini Hungarian language lesson: horticulture.It isn't so much that "Bálint gazda", the nation's horticulturalist, was loved passionately (although he was well loved and respected), more like he was a constant,

Mini Hungarian language lesson: stowaway.Yesterday I said Bertalan Farkas was the only Magyar to have been in space but that isn't entirely true. Even if we ignore Charles Simonyi's later

Mini Yorkshire geography lesson: villages.I'm going to shake things up today, to prove to the Home Office how bloody integrated I am: instead of the byways of Hungarian language and

Mini Hungarian language lesson: Sweary Saturday."Using Anglo-Saxon language" is a common euphemism for "turning the air blue", which of course is just another euphemism.But in Hungarian you'd struggle to use

Mini Hungarian language lesson: at the gates.I talked earlier about the Holy Crown of the Kingdom of Hungary, which according to (definitely not true) legends was a prize from the

Mini Hungarian language lesson: sausage idioms.Showing our German cultural influences, sausages are a big part of our national psyche, to the point that dozens of idioms use it as a

Mini Hungarian language lesson: where's Vali?When I first arrived in the UK, I could already speak the language pretty well.Yet when I sat down to watch a panel show or

Mini Hungarian language lesson: parallels.Today I'm going to talk about a mathematician whose name is virtually unknown outside Hungary, even though his results formed the basis of modern physics, Einstein's

Mini Hungarian language lesson: neighbours.While the Anglophone world was glued to the screen watching Neighbours, we quietly made our own."Szomszédok" (i.e. "Neighbours") was the first ever Hungarian soap, which ran