oryx_and_crake ([info]oryx_and_crake) wrote in [info]linguaphiles,
@ 2008-11-23 00:22:00
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Hungarian names - pronunciation
Dear Linguaphiles,

I have some Hungarian names here:
Juliska
Cica
Merges
Kovacs
Vaci Ut
Ujepest

How do you pronounce them? Vaci Ut is supposedly a street name - do I guess right that Ut means "street"?

Thanks in advance

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[info]kapitankraut
2008-11-23 05:47 am UTC (link)
"Ut" (or "Út" with the accent mark) is usually translated as "boulevard", but depending on your context "street" could be good enough.

As far as the names go, my pronunciation of Hungarian is atrocious, but I know that the "pest" in your last word would be "pesht" ("sh" as in "ship"). "Kovacs" should sound something like "Kovach" ("ch" in "cheese"), but I'll leave it to people with better Hungarian to verify that.

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[info]lysandrea
2008-11-23 05:49 am UTC (link)
Yep yep!

My Hungarian is a bit rusty after not speaking it much for a few years, but you are definitely on the right track.

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[info]kapitankraut
2008-11-23 05:54 am UTC (link)
I'm stunned, then. I was in Budapest in June, which is why I'd learned any of the language to start off with, and was absolutely convinced the smiles I was getting from the locals were ones of politeness and/or sympathy, rather than actually ones of "Hold on a moment, he kind of knows what he's doing".

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[info]lysandrea
2008-11-23 05:56 am UTC (link)
Haha. Even when I learned enough to get by without using English I got that look. I think it's just something they do. Though I did throw a few people off when I spoke in full sentences. Hehe!

Man, I wish I could go back to Budapest. It's absolutely stunning in the summer. Heck, anytime of the year it's gorgeous.

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[info]kapitankraut
2008-11-23 06:01 am UTC (link)
At least the Hungarians I had anything much to do with all agreed that their language was indeed phenomenally difficult for an Anglophone to pick up. Most other languages I have difficulty with seem to be spoken by people who say "No, no, it's really easy. You just have to [do something that is the linguistic equivalent of turning yourself inside out] every time and you're set!"

And I quite agree with you on Budapest. Definitely a place I'm going to have to go back to a couple more times.

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[info]lysandrea
2008-11-23 06:22 am UTC (link)
I caught onto the alphabet easily enough. But the words themselves? It took daily studying to learn it. It was just memorizing words over and over and learning how to form sentences. To this day my grammar is AWFUL.

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[info]muckefuck
2008-11-23 06:28 am UTC (link)
The sounds are easy. The only ones which don't exist as phonemes in English are German are the palatals (i.e. ty, gy, ny) and these aren't even very common. It's the words that I find most difficult since very few have cognates in Indo-European and even fewer of those are recognisable (e.g. cél =Ziel).

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[info]kapitankraut
2008-11-23 09:28 am UTC (link)
I agree about the sounds. Even if my "Teach Yourself Hungarian" tapes were spoken faster than I felt was ideal - although it was normal speaking pace, so in a sense I was the one who needed to adjust - about a day in Budapest and I'd figured out what everything sounded like.
Then all I needed to do was remember all the new words and try not to go mad when I met the grammar.

I was there with my father, whose language abilities are appalling across the board, and having him constantly ask things like "Righto, how do I ask if they have this particular recording of this musician playing Liszt?" didn't help either, of course.

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[info]notebookcafe
2008-11-23 05:53 pm UTC (link)
The only ones which don't exist as phonemes in English are German are the palatals (i.e. ty, gy, ny)

British English has similar sounds to ny and gy: the n+j in new [njuː] and the d+j in duke [djuːk]. They're not exactly the same but very much similar. Especially the "nj".

There's a Hungarian DJ called DJ Newl. His name is a play on that similarity between "ny" and "nj"; it sounds like "nyúl" (rabbit) in Hungarian.

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[info]muckefuck
2008-11-24 12:00 am UTC (link)
Similar, but in Hungarian, these palatalised sequences actually contrast with the true palatals, e.g. adj "give!" vs. agy "brain", menj "go!" vs. meny "daughter-in-law".

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[info]notebookcafe
2008-11-24 10:15 am UTC (link)
Interesting. I've been muttering these words to myself all day, but as long as I'm not speaking really slowly I can't seem to find any difference between "adj" and "aggy" (not agy) or "menj" and "menny" (not meny). I'm obviously not good at this. :D

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[info]muckefuck
2008-11-24 03:23 pm UTC (link)
Meny and menny are different words ("daughter-in-law" vs. "heaven"); geminates are distinctive in Hungarian. I've never heard of the word aggy before. Where did you learn it and what does it mean?

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[info]notebookcafe
2008-11-24 04:10 pm UTC (link)
You're right, aggy is not a word, but adj sounds like aggy and not like agy. Sorry if I wasn't clear. And yeah, I know meny and menny are different things, I'm a native speaker.

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[info]notebookcafe
2008-11-23 07:45 pm UTC (link)
Oh, and ty is like t+j in stupid [stjuːpɪd].

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[info]oryx_and_crake
2008-11-23 06:05 am UTC (link)
Thank you!

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[info]notebookcafe
2008-11-23 05:05 pm UTC (link)
"Ut" (or "Út" with the accent mark) is usually translated as "boulevard", but depending on your context "street" could be good enough.

Actually, út should be translated as Road, but street sounds better in my opinion. Boulevard is sugárút or körút.

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[info]kapitankraut
2008-11-23 10:28 pm UTC (link)
That's interesting. Everything I saw in English in Budapest (so it was translated from Hungarian) rendered "Andrassy út" as "Andrassy Boulevard". Now you've got me trying to remember what anything to do with any of the körúts (such as Terez) said.

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[info]notebookcafe
2008-11-24 09:58 am UTC (link)
I don't know about the Teréz körút, but I know that Nagykörút is called Grand Boulevard or sometimes Great Boulevard in English.

As far as I can tell, a körút (lit. circle road) is a beltway/loop (AE) or ring road/orbital motorway (BE); sugárút is a road that connects the city centre to the suburbs (hence the name "radius road"); utca and út are all the rest, however, I think that an út is usually wider than an utca. I'm not sure about the exact definition of the English words, so I looked them up in my dictionaries.

Here's what my English-Hungarian dictionary says:

road: (ország)út, közút
street: utca, út
boulevard: körút, (fasorral szegélyezett) széles út, sugárút; (US) nagy forgalmú főútvonal
avenue: sugárút, fasor

And this is from my Hungarian-English dictionary:

út: [közút] road, [városban, széles] avenue, road, [néha] street
utca: street
körút: boulevard
sugárút: avenue

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[info]kapitankraut
2008-11-24 10:08 am UTC (link)
Well there you go. I think I saw Nagykörút as "Great Ring Road" (it's the one which encircles the centre of Budapest, right? Has a bunch of different names in different districts?), but I wouldn't bet on it.

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[info]notebookcafe
2008-11-24 10:30 am UTC (link)
It looks like I've been decieved by the Internet. I think I've only seen Nagykörút reffered to as Grand Boulevard on the Web, but it looks like whoever made the actual signs for the street thought that Great Ring Road is a better name. Oh, well. Yet another proof that you can translate street names any way you want.

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[info]notebookcafe
2008-11-24 10:32 am UTC (link)
(Here's the English wikipedia article on Nagykörút: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagyk%C3%B6r%C3%BAt)

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[info]lysandrea
2008-11-23 05:48 am UTC (link)
Phonetically from an American English perspective I pronounce them like this;

Juliska as Joo-leesh-ka
Cica as Tsee-Tsah
Merges as Mehr-gesh
Kovacs as Koh-vahch
Vaci Ut as Vah-tsi Oot
Ujepest as Ooy-eh-pesht ( I think I got that one right. I know how to say it and read it in my head, but explaining that to someone else isn't as easy!)

Utca (pronounced Ootsa) is usually street, but 'ut' can be used as well. Example, in Szeged I lived on Molnar Utca.

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[info]muckefuck
2008-11-23 05:52 am UTC (link)
Do you really say "Joo-leesh-ka" rather than "Yoo-leesh-kaw"?

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[info]lysandrea
2008-11-23 05:54 am UTC (link)
Doh!

Thanks for catching that. I'm horribly rusty with some bits since I haven't spoken it for about 4-5 years, but yours is right. Sorry about that!

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[info]oryx_and_crake
2008-11-23 06:05 am UTC (link)
Thank you!

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[info]lysandrea
2008-11-23 06:16 am UTC (link)
Welcome! But like Kapitankraut pointed out to my sleep-deprived self "J" is in fact "Y". I can't believe I missed that!

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[info]muckefuck
2008-11-23 05:51 am UTC (link)
Correct, but the word is actually út. There are diacritics missing from half the listed words, which is a problem since--as in French or German--these are vital indicators of pronunciation. The correct spellings are Kovács, Váci út, and Újpest. The last of these means "New Pest" and is a district of Budapest.

Hungarian is pretty straightforward once you get down a few pointers: Stress is initial, but long vowels (those marked with an acute) are given full value wherever they appear. S represents a shibilant; regular [s] is spelled sz. Here are broad IPA approximations:

['juliʃkɒ]
['ʦiʦɒ]
[mɛrgɛʃ]
[ˈkovaːʧ]
['va:ʦi 'u:t]
['u:jpɛʃt]

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[info]oryx_and_crake
2008-11-23 06:05 am UTC (link)
Thanks a lot!

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[info]orange_fell
2008-11-23 07:52 am UTC (link)
But sz is a sibilant in Polish orthography, right?

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[info]muckefuck
2008-11-23 04:06 pm UTC (link)
It's a sibilant in Hungarian orthography; what it isn't in Hungarian is a shiblant.

The Polish value is [ʂ], a voiceless retroflex fricative.

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[info]hector_von_kyiv
2008-11-23 11:26 am UTC (link)
"Kovacs" has a short "a", afaik.

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[info]muckefuck
2008-11-23 04:03 pm UTC (link)
How far do you know? In Hungarian, it's invariably spelled with an accent over the last vowel. I only see (and hear) this dropped in Anglicised usage. The American television entertainer, for instance, pronounced it /'kovæks/.

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[info]hector_von_kyiv
2008-11-23 05:58 pm UTC (link)
Mea culpa.

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[info]notebookcafe
2008-11-23 05:23 pm UTC (link)
Nope. It's Kovács.

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[info]hector_von_kyiv
2008-11-23 05:57 pm UTC (link)
A glitch of my memory :/

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[info]ladytalon
2008-11-23 10:55 am UTC (link)
I think you can watch ER to hear Kovacs pronounced a lot. Hee.

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[info]oryx_and_crake
2008-11-23 11:09 am UTC (link)
In my experience, Americans usually mangle foreign names in the most horrible way.

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[info]ladytalon
2008-11-23 11:30 am UTC (link)
Of course, but I believe the actor is Croatian. So he's at least got that going for him.

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[info]oryx_and_crake
2008-11-23 11:40 am UTC (link)
I don't think so. Most certainly he would pronounce the surname like everybody else around him.

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[info]mshollie
2008-11-23 04:43 pm UTC (link)
It's pronounced "Kovach" on ER, and the actor's name is Goran Visnjic. He's Croatian.

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[info]notebookcafe
2008-11-23 05:19 pm UTC (link)
[info]muckefuck's IPA transcriptions are all correct, except that I think "merges" should be "mérges" [meːrgɛʃ].

By the way, not all of these are names.

Juliska is nickname of the female name Julianna.
Cica means kitty. That's obviously not a name. Can be a nickname, though.
Mérges means angry. It can be a surname, I guess, but I don't know anyone who's called Mérges.
Kovács is a very common surname. It means smith which is also a very common surname. :)
Váci út (Váci Road) is a road in Budapest. There's also a Váci utca (Váci Street) in the same city.
Újpest is the 4th district of Budapest.

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