Language similarities between Hungarian and other languages of the world
Language is a beautiful system of words, meant to make communication easy. However, with cultural and national differences comes language difference. Every country has a different language, some of them have similar roots, similar scripts, and yet some are poles apart. We have a list of Hungarian words that are similar to words in other languages:
VIDEKI
Everyone’s favourite word. Not. ‘Videki’ means essentially, someone who is not from Budapest is considered ‘videki’. Interestingly, the word ‘Videshi’, which is from the Hindi language of India, has a similar meaning. It also means foreigner but is not limited to a particular region.
Update: A better definition of Videki would be everyone from the countryside and/ or not from Budapest.
KUTYA
‘Kutya’ means ‘dog’, and everybody loves dogs. They are cute, cuddly, and loyal to the core, plus ‘kutya’ sounds pretty cute, too. Funnily, dog in Hindi is called ‘kuta’ which is not too different from its Hungarian name.
MIT CSINÁLSZ
Now, I am no expert in any of the two languages, but one of my teachers actually made a group of Korean children cry by saying ‘mit csinálsz’ to them, which means ‘what are you doing’ in Hungarian, not realising that it was a curse word in Korean.
KÖSZI
Again, absolutely no knowledge, but one of my Arabic friends said she thanked someone in Hungarian by saying ‘köszi’ in front of her parents, and they did not understand, and she had to have a very uncomfortable conversation with them about what it means. So, be careful with that one. Use the full version.
PUSZI
Do I even have to explain this one? I am pretty sure every English speaker reading this just giggled a little bit to themselves. It means ‘kisses’ in Hungarian, which is fairly innocent compared to its English counterpart. So, do what you will with that information.
Language is as diverse as the people that speak it, so to find similarities in our differences creates a certain kind of kinship that is comforting in itself. After all, we are united in our differences.
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