My First Hungarian Sentences, And What I Achieved With Them

Few things can give a foreigner the sense of triumph, the sense of empowerment, the sense that a huge, lumbering door is finally opening up to them, than to complete a normal, day to day transaction in the host country's language. And so, after nearly three weeks of eating in restaurants, where pointing at menu items despite not knowing what would actually arrive (though sure it would be some variation of pork), and nodding all-purposely at whatever the waiter said regardless of whether it had the intonation of question or statement, constituted "communicating," yesterday I decided to plunge headlong into wider Hungarian culture, and with it, immerse myself in Hungarian language -- without the guide wires of a menu or sympathetic professionals accustomed to working with the confused.


I decided to go shopping, food shopping. But not the kind of food shopping where you fill a basket with items, disgorge the basket on a belt at whose end an "associate" disinterestedly scans the bar code and places the item by the bagging area for you to pack -- that kind of shopping can be executed in utter silence.


No, the kind of shopping I am talking about is market shopping, in Eger's large indoor market where local farmers bring their goods to be sold -- fruits, vegetables, loose eggs, slaughtered but not yet fully dressed pigs, chickens, and even beef. In the market there are no scanners, only men and women who, when one gets within a certain proximity of their stall or showcase, begin speaking, somewhat volubly, saying what, who knows.


But because I want to live the local life here, be with the people, so to speak, and not be carried along on some capitalist conveyor belt, I knew that I had to do my shopping in the market, and that in order to do so, I couldn't just grunt and point. Nor did I want to. I wanted to communicate, really.


And so, girding myself for the risky business of talking to a human being or two, I spent some time with google translate (http://translate.google.com/#) -- which was quite helpful --, learning how to speak the things I wanted to purchase, just a few simple things. But, with their success I knew I would be emboldened to go for bigger game. So, I settled on two basic items: a piece of chicken and a piece of sausage.
"Egy csirkemell, kérjük" ("One chicken breast, please.") and "Egy kolbász, kérem" ("One sausage, please"). Easy enough.


Now, even though I practiced those two phrases until I was sure I sounded as though I had been born and raised in Eger, I was neither so naive nor so bold to think that what I thought I heard when I spoke those phrases would sound anything like what they should have sounded like to my audience. And because I had been told repeatedly since landing on Hungarian soil that people greatly appreciate just the attempt to speak some Hungarian and will go a long way toward overcoming the gaps, I thought it best to begin each transaction ingratiatingly, with an apology: "Bocsánat. Amerikai vagyok" ("Sorry. I am an American."). My strategy was to confess at the outset to my tongue's two left feet, own up to my need for compassion, and then be forgiven.


I wrote each phrase on a scrap of paper and rehearsed them over and over as I walked down to the market. By the time the market came in sight I was feeling quite confident, wondering why I had ever been so sheepish. Maybe I wouldn't introduce myself with an apology. Maybe I would just order the items, and when I say "order," I mean order: "You there! Chicken man! Give me a chicken breast! And it better be fresh!", "And you! Sausage man! Snap to! A piece of your best sausage! Stat!" 
  
I admit I donned a bit of a swagger as I approached the market entrance, but as I walked through the sliding doors it was as though they had pulled a cape from my shoulders and with it whatever confidence I thought I had. I felt sort of naked. But there was no turning back for me. I had to see this through. 


I knew I was in trouble when even my opening apology to the chicken man met with a squint. I repeated "Bocsánat. Amerikai vagyok," and received only a shaking head and a shrug for my contrition. I cut to the chase, then, and simply tried to order the piece of chicken, outright. Chicken man just congealed into a chilly stare, at which I melted away to regroup before trying my luck with the sausage man.  


The difference between chicken man and sausage man went beyond the difference of chicken and sausage. Chicken man was a regular looking guy in a clean white smock standing, more or less eye level with me, behind a glass case of neatly arranged yellow chickens. Sausage man, on the other hand, was a butcher and he looked like a butcher, big, burly, perhaps a bit world-weary at having to swing a huge cleaver all day. His glass case was filled with slabs upon slabs of meat unrecognizable to me. Whatever they began as, his blood-stained apron clearly showed they came to a violent end, and there was more to come.

As I approached sausage man he looked down upon me from what seemed a great height. Could he really be that tall, or was he standing on something? His face was flushed the color of his apron. I gave "Bocsánat. Amerikai vagyok" my best shot and, Eureka!, he understood, though he looked more exasperated by than appreciative of my confession. In fact he sighed. 

Still, I was thrilled. I had uttered something, and it was understood. What euphoria! And so when with renewed vigor I said, "Egy kolbász, kérem," and he held up for my approval about two yards of hot pepperoni, which I hate, I said, "Igen! (Yes!). Jó! (Good!)," though the nightstick of shriveled, dessicated sausage was far more than I wanted, especially given that I didn't want any of it. But we were communicating, he and I, so how could I say no? Yet, I was not going to be some kind of American pushover -- meaning, even though we were communicating I wanted him to know I was still in charge. I gave him the international hand gesture for "half", at which he moved his hands together mid-stick, said "Hmm?", to which I nodded, and he snapped the pepperoni in two, at which point it also became clear to me that he had a history with chickens. 

Anyway, he wrapped the dreaded pepperoni in paper and then asked what could only have been something like, "Anything else?", at which, wanting to show that I understood him fully, I pointed at a thick slab of what appeared to be dried bacon, probably about a half pound of it. Of course, I had no idea what I would do with a slab of bacon (apart from induce a heart attack), or, in fact, what could be done with a slab of bacon, but that was beside the point. I was shopping like a Hungarian, in Hungarian. Pepperoni, bacon, who cares? 

He wrapped the slab, too, in paper, asked the same question which lead to the bacon in the first place, to which I responded authoritatively with "Nem (No)." He handed me both my items, I paid him, gave him my most constrained, it's-second-nature-to-me "Köszönöm (Thank you)," to which he in turn nodded, though ever so slightly. As I left the market, I felt as though the sliding doors redraped my shoulders with confidence.

And so, that is the story of my first successful Hungarian conversation, and how I came to have pepperoni and bacon, when what I wanted was chicken and sausage. 

UPDATE: Both pepperoni and bacon are now available on eBay.