Monday, April 25, 2005

993 Anybody here read Hungarian?

I used to work for a woman whose native language was Hungarian. She had little respect for English, although her command of it was awesome. She said English just didn't have any good swear words, like Hungarian. She thought Hungarian was absolutely the finest for insulting people, their ancestors, their sexuality, their integrity, God and animals. One day she got very mad and threw the telephone through the window in her office. That was back in the days when phones weren't made of light weight plastic, when they had some heft. Then she pulled it back in through the window; that was back in the days when telephones were connected to walls by wires. Then she threw it through a second window. There are things you just can't do with cell phones, like breaking windows and terrifying your staff. Perhaps she had forgotten her Hungarian and English just didn't do the trick, so she used the phone. And you probably thought nothing interesting ever happened in libraries.

I thought of her today when I saw this sign, and wondered if someone was swearing in Hungarian.

4 comments:

Paula said...

Once I threw my cellphone at my windshield cuz it wasn't working. It just bounced off and fell on the floor, lying there like a dead Hawaiian-flowered rat. Very unsatisfying, I must say.

In 1960, my mom was a secretary at a Hungarian spy place in New York, but I'm not allowed to discuss it.

Norma said...

So, you're not going to translate this for me, are you?

Anonymous said...

what needs to bee translated? I'll try it...my motherlanguage is hungarian:)

Anonymous said...

my e-mail adress is faithlessonestep@hotmail.com