Any Hungarians on the Forum

[Polyglot27]

Szervusz Ahi, your transliteration into Hiragana is quite good. I remember that when I was a teenager and discovered that my mother was secretly reading my diary I decided to write it in German using Cyrillic.
For unusual alphabets, have you seen the Shaw alphabet for writing English? Penguin actually published a bi-alphabet (?) edition of his play "Androcles and the Lion" in 1962.
My connection with Hungary and Hungarians began in the summer of 1982 when I met a group of 8 Hungarian students in front of the Pompidou Centre. I knew that East Europeans in those days could not take much money with them out of the country when they travel so I decided to help them where I could and make their holiday as pleasant as possible. They invited me to visit them the following summer and I went to Budapest. I was completely overwhelmed by their hospitality and fell in love with Budapest.
Of the art students, two have become professional artists. One of them is now internationally famous and lives outside Paris. The medical student is now a doctor.
I remember complaining how difficult Hungarian was and they told me that it was just as difficult for them to learn another European language, precisely because the structure was so different. My Hungarian friends had each learned a different foreign language in school and the funny result was that I very often had to say the same thing three times, in English, German and French at the same table to three different people.
I also have great admiration for all the Hungarian scientists and mathematicians. John von Neumann, Imre Lakatos, Paul Erdos, George Polya, Edward Teller and others come to mind.
Polya was one of von Neumann's teachers and he said that von Neumann was "the only student of mine I was ever intimidated by. He was so quick. There was a seminar for advanced students in Zurich that I was teaching and von Neumann was in the class. I came to a certain theorem, and I said it is not proved and it may be difficult. Von Neumann didn't say anything but after five minutes he raised his hand. When I called on him he went to the blackboard and proceeded to write down the proof. After that I was afraid of von Neumann."
Zelda, don't worry, I don't speak Hungarian. The little I know is limited to my time spent with my Hungarian friends.

[pampalini]

Originally Posted by ahi

Szervusz, Pampalini! ;-)

Glad to hear from my Eastern European brothers and sisters regardless of their level master of Hungarian.

I started this thread partly with the idea that I might share my (public domain) Hungarian eBooks with others who want them... but it has turned into a rather nice vehicle of social chatter.

Can I ask what languages do you read eBooks in? Does your language have any large repository of freely available public domain eBooks?

- Ahi

Well, due to the absolutely lack of ebooks in my native language, i'am a fervid reader (with my lovely sony 505) of english ebooks....but i will be very happy if you can sahre your hungarian books...not form me (at least not now) but for my wife...which is hungarian.
viszlat

[bozon42]

Originally Posted by GraceKrispy

yá'át'ééh shik'is!

(I'm only fluent in two languages, and this is not one of them. I am a very very partial speaker of three others)

Wa, yaa thee. :-)

bozon42

[ahi]

Originally Posted by Polyglot27

Szervusz Ahi, your transliteration into Hiragana is quite good.

Originally Posted by bozon42

Hello Ahi, Your Hiragana rewriting is impressive - congratulations.

I hope the two of you aren't just being nice!

How could (or, rather, should) Hiragana be expanded to provide for additional syllables? Upon cursory inspection, I half get the sense that with a bit of effort Hiragana forms could be slightly more harmonized/standardized* (there already appear to be semi-regular correspondences between some related forms)... and additional syllables could be derived in a semi-systematic way.

Of course, doing it that way I shall (probably never) have the benefit of doing it with a proper font... only by hand. Is there a better way?

I think I could get by (to create a fairly phonetic [but still Hiragana-like] Hiragana syllabary for Hungarian) with as few as 126 syllables (as opposed to the 73 single character syllables listed by wikipedia), with the understanding that syllables containing long vowels are indicated by some sort of an accent (which I'm sure are called something else in Hiragana terms), and that vocalized consonantal syllables are systematically derivable from its unvocalized syllable counterpart.

i.e.: 7 vowels (in reality 7 short and 7 long) + 17 consonants (in reality these 17 just represent unvocalized consonants and ones that have no vocalization-wise opposite counterparts... the full total of consonants is 26).

- Ahi

Ps.: * Harmonized/standardized to perhaps make some additional already used Hiragana forms available for novel use. Though I could be way off.

[ahi]

Originally Posted by pampalini

Well, due to the absolutely lack of ebooks in my native language, i'am a fervid reader (with my lovely sony 505) of english ebooks....but i will be very happy if you can sahre your hungarian books...not form me (at least not now) but for my wife...which is hungarian.
viszlat

Will do. ;-)

I think I found the perfect avatar for you, by the way:



- Ahi

[ahi]

Originally Posted by Polyglot27

I remember that when I was a teenager and discovered that my mother was secretly reading my diary I decided to write it in German using Cyrillic.
For unusual alphabets, have you seen the Shaw alphabet for writing English? Penguin actually published a bi-alphabet (?) edition of his play "Androcles and the Lion" in 1962.
My connection with Hungary and Hungarians began in the summer of 1982 when I met a group of 8 Hungarian students in front of the Pompidou Centre. I knew that East Europeans in those days could not take much money with them out of the country when they travel so I decided to help them where I could and make their holiday as pleasant as possible. They invited me to visit them the following summer and I went to Budapest. I was completely overwhelmed by their hospitality and fell in love with Budapest.
Of the art students, two have become professional artists. One of them is now internationally famous and lives outside Paris. The medical student is now a doctor.
I remember complaining how difficult Hungarian was and they told me that it was just as difficult for them to learn another European language, precisely because the structure was so different. My Hungarian friends had each learned a different foreign language in school and the funny result was that I very often had to say the same thing three times, in English, German and French at the same table to three different people.
I also have great admiration for all the Hungarian scientists and mathematicians. John von Neumann, Imre Lakatos, Paul Erdos, George Polya, Edward Teller and others come to mind.
Polya was one of von Neumann's teachers and he said that von Neumann was "the only student of mine I was ever intimidated by. He was so quick. There was a seminar for advanced students in Zurich that I was teaching and von Neumann was in the class. I came to a certain theorem, and I said it is not proved and it may be difficult. Von Neumann didn't say anything but after five minutes he raised his hand. When I called on him he went to the blackboard and proceeded to write down the proof. After that I was afraid of von Neumann."

Very interesting. Glad to hear you have fond memories, and hopefully you still visit now and then!

It is nice to hear praise for Hungarian minds... so many of the brilliant scientists, mathematicians, et al that Hungary has produced (i.e.: via the education system, if nothing else) seem to me to be without nationality (or are downright claimed by their adoptive country as its own, period) in the international consciousness.

I am aware of Shavian--my only woe with it is that I (like most native speakers of English) cannot confidently recognize/separate/delineate all the sounds of English, despite being able to readily and accurately produce them... though perhaps learning to read the play you mention in Shavian might just improve my phoneme-recognition capacity. Do you think?

- Ahi

[Polyglot27]

Originally Posted by ahi

I hope the two of you aren't just being nice!

How could (or, rather, should) Hiragana be expanded to provide for additional syllables? Upon cursory inspection, I half get the sense that with a bit of effort Hiragana forms could be slightly more harmonized/standardized* (there already appear to be semi-regular correspondences between some related forms)... and additional syllables could be derived in a semi-systematic way.

Of course, doing it that way I shall (probably never) have the benefit of doing it with a proper font... only by hand. Is there a better way?

I think I could get by (to create a fairly phonetic [but still Hiragana-like] Hiragana syllabary for Hungarian) with as few as 126 syllables (as opposed to the 73 single character syllables listed by wikipedia), with the understanding that syllables containing long vowels are indicated by some sort of an accent (which I'm sure are called something else in Hiragana terms), and that vocalized consonantal syllables are systematically derivable from its unvocalized syllable counterpart.

i.e.: 7 vowels (in reality 7 short and 7 long) + 17 consonants (in reality these 17 just represent unvocalized consonants and ones that have no vocalization-wise opposite counterparts... the full total of consonants is 26).

- Ahi

Ps.: * Harmonized/standardized to perhaps make some additional already used Hiragana forms available for novel use. Though I could be way off.

Ancient Japanese seemed to have 7 vowels. But in those days they transcribed it into Chinese characters with a similar sound. Hiragana and katakana did not exist then. The poems in the "Man'yoshu" seem to have this 7 vowel system.
However, have you thought of Korean? It is an agglutinative language and has a true alphabet with separate consonants and vowels. I love it because it is perfectly designed to express the Korean phonetic system. At the same time it looks like Chinese writing to people not used to East Asian scripts. It has at least 7 vowels if that is what you are looking for.

[ahi]

Originally Posted by Polyglot27

Ancient Japanese seemed to have 7 vowels. But in those days they transcribed it into Chinese characters with a similar sound. Hiragana and katakana did not exist then. The poems in the "Man'yoshu" seem to have this 7 vowel system.
However, have you thought of Korean? It is an agglutinative language and has a true alphabet with separate consonants and vowels. I love it because it is perfectly designed to express the Korean phonetic system. At the same time it looks like Chinese writing to people not used to East Asian scripts. It has at least 7 vowels if that is what you are looking for.

I am quite fond of Hangul as well, though in the past my cursory inspection of it did not leave me feeling it could be easily molded to reasonably phonetically represent Hungarian, without altogether ignoring the accepted values of letter forms.

You are--am I right?--suggesting that expanding Hiragana is likely to be difficult and/or more a work of creative imagination than linguistic derivation/restoration.

That was my own thought, but had hoped you might know something about it that I don't.

I'll post my efforts as they yield some fruit.

- Ahi

[krisk]

Originally Posted by GraceKrispy

yá'át'ééh shik'is!

(I'm only fluent in two languages, and this is not one of them. I am a very very partial speaker of three others)

that looks like Navajo! mind, I'm not fluent in it, but grew up hearing it spoken and seeing it written occasionally

[GraceKrispy]

Originally Posted by krisk

that looks like Navajo! mind, I'm not fluent in it, but grew up hearing it spoken and seeing it written occasionally

Why, yes it is! Where did you grow up? I married into a Navajo family, but I figured it was sort of rude to make my first Navajo post full of swear words

[krisk]

Colorado and New Mexico. my Grandmother taught at a reservation boarding school. I spent many summers with her and she made sure I spent a good deal of time with tribal elders

[garyhun]

Originally Posted by ahi

I am quite fond of Hangul as well, though in the past my cursory inspection of it did not leave me feeling it could be easily molded to reasonably phonetically represent Hungarian, without altogether ignoring the accepted values of letter forms.

You are--am I right?--suggesting that expanding Hiragana is likely to be difficult and/or more a work of creative imagination than linguistic derivation/restoration.

That was my own thought, but had hoped you might know something about it that I don't.

I'll post my efforts as they yield some fruit.

- Ahi

Üdv mindenkinek! - Hello everyone!
Igen az elsődleges célom a weboldal népszerűsítése. - Yes, my primary goal has been promoting the site.
Én is jobban kedvelem a PDF-et az EPUB-nál, de a legtöbb e-olvasó kütyü problémázik a PDF-fel. Viszont a Sony Reader vagy a Magyarországon hivatalosan forgalmazott Koobe legalább olvassa azEPUB-ot.- I prefer PDF to EPUB myself, but most e-reading gadgets have prolems reading PDF properly. Sony Reader, however - and Koobe which is officially distributed in Hungary - atleast reads EPUB.
Az Adamo Books egy kezdő vállalkozás, így minden javaslat és visszajelzés fontos.
- Adamo Books is a start-up enterprise, so every suggestion and feedback is important.
Jut eszembe, nemcsak vásárlókra és webhely-látogatókra számítunk, de szerzőkre is. Szívesen kínálnánk letöltésre külföldi szerzők műveit is. Javaslat? - By the way, we don't expect only customers and site visitors - we would gladly offer works by foreign authors for download. Any suggestions?

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by krisk

Colorado and New Mexico. my Grandmother taught at a reservation boarding school. I spent many summers with her and she made sure I spent a good deal of time with tribal elders

Oh, I've been to those two states! (and Texas, Arizona and California too). I actually lived in New Mexico for a year... Hot as hell, but I at least had a white Christmas there

[ahi]

Originally Posted by garyhun

Üdv mindenkinek! - Hello everyone!
Igen az elsődleges célom a weboldal népszerűsítése. - Yes, my primary goal has been promoting the site.

I think you might get a better response once your eBook store has been around a while and becomes better established. People might be weary of dealing with a relatively small and new foreign company.

Also, I would suggest you consider offering free eBooks as well... perhaps you could offer some non-copyrighted books from the Hungarian Electronic Library nicely formatted? That would keep people visiting your website regularly, and being exposed to new titles you have for sale.

Sok szerencsét!

- Ahi

[ahi]

Here's my attempt at Hangul, Polyglot and Bozon:

앋야이데 엠엘에케 민도로케 엘옌 벤네데
at-ya-i-de em-el-e-ke min-do-ro-ke el-yen ben-ne-de

에셰 레기 메체셰 아 조벤에도 넴세데켁넥
e-sye re-gi me-che-sye a jo-ben-e-do nem-se-de-kek-nek

The Hangul alphabet definitely isn't notably better for writing Hungarian than Hiragana is... not as is, anyways. I still haven't had time to think about adapting letters to my own purposes... so it might have more promise, with reinterpreted character values.

- Ahi

Ps.: Maybe a little better... fewer unnecessary vowels than with Hiragana, I guess.