February 10, 2011: A Lesson in Hungarian; A good solution for discipline problems

February 10, 2011: Yesterday a colleague and I went to a bakery near the school for coffee. Despite the tasty looking cakes and assorted desserts, I was good and had only a cup of cappuccino. Take a look at the items on display and see if you would have had as much will power:

 I returned home to rest and eat a quick dinner before going downtown to see another free Japanese movie with David. This movie was a drama about a middle class Japanese greengrocer who befriends a number of Chinese students who have come to Japan to further their studies. He does this despite putting his family and his business through significant financial difficulties. Many years later the Chinese turn out to be quite prosperous after they return to China and pitch in to fly this greengrocer and his wife to China for a reunion dinner. It was a touching movie and reminded me of the culture of Asia that I experienced when I lived in Malayisa, Korea, and China.

After the movie David and I went out for a couple beers at my favorite restaurant before we each returned to our homes to prepare for the next day at school.

Meanwhile, I have amassed a couple of examples as to why my abilities in Hungarian are still lacking:

• I had finally learned how to order various items in a restaurant/pub and was proud to go by myself to get three glasses of beer several weeks ago when David, Andras, and I went to a pub. I approached the bar and said "Kérek három nagy pohár sört. (Three large glasses of beer please)" The bartender looked at me quizzically and pulled out three small glasses to pour the beer in. Before he began, I again said "Nagy pohár (large glass)" and he replied "Korsó?" as he took out three large glasses.  I had heard of the term "korsó" before and knew that one could order a "korsó" of beer, but never realized until that moment that a "pohár" is a glass that holds .3 liter whereas a "korsó" is a glass that holds .5 liter. So much for learning "nagy" and "kicsi" for "large" and "small". And so much for being lazy and trying to learn only one term for "glass".
• I recently assessed my ability (inability?) to speak basic simple Hungarian phrases and realized that I still do not know the word for "have" which in any other language seems to be one of the basic words. I wondered why my Hungarian text book had not introduced this verb yet. I asked my Hungarian teacher to teach me the conjugation for "to have" and learned all too quickly why it has not yet been introduced in my Hungarian text book. I suggested that I learn the "simple" (so I thought) sentence "I have a book. You have a book. He/she has a book", etc. and learned that the direct object of the sentence has to match the subject of the sentence! Not only that but the suffix for the direct object depends on not only the subject of the sentence, but also whether the last syllable of the direct object contains a "front vowel" or a "back vowel" and also whether the last letter of the direct object is a vowel or not in which case another consonant must be inserted just before the suffix. Therefore, the so-called simple sentence "I have a book. You have a book. He/she has a book." becomes "Én nekem van egy könyvem. Te neked van egy könyved. Ő neki van egy könyve." Remember that all of this must be spoken in real time with a conversation partner so one cannot spend much time in parsing all the rules for constructing the sentence. I think I would spend less time in solving a differential equation than in constructing a sentence in Hungarian!
• In Hungarian, prepositions are appended to their objects as suffixes to the objects. Fair enough. I've dealt with that grammatical construction in Korean. No problem -- right? Well, the Hungarians always like to present a challenge to a language learner like me. Let's take the "simple" preposition "to". In Hungarian there are actually four suffixes used for "to": "ba", "be", "ra". and "re". As I mentioned above, Hungarian vowels are of two types: "front" vowels and "back" vowels. So, the rule is that for objects whose last syllable contain a "back" vowel, one must add "ba" and for objects whose last syllable contain a "front" vowel, one must add a "be" and if the syllable ends with an "a" or "e", one must add a diacritical mark to the "a" or "e" (i.e., "á" or "é") as well. "ba" and "be" are used after all foreign and some Hungarian places. There are exceptions to this rule in which case the "ra" and "re" suffix is used. The "ba" and "be" suffix is also added to words that denote enclosed spaces. If the space is not enclosed, then "ra" or "re" is used, again depending on whether the last syllable of the object contains a "back" or "front" vowel. There are exceptions to these rules so there are many words where one just needs to memorize whether to use "ba", "be", "ra" or "re". And this is just for a "simple" preposition!
• Suffice it to say that my Hungarian is no where near the level my Malaysian or Korean was after I had lived in those places for five months. However, yesterday I saw two ladies talking ahead of me while a dog circled them as I walked toward them. One of the ladies started to walk ahead and I eventually caught up with her, and thinking I was Hungarian, she said "gyönyörű kutya (beautiful dog)" to which I almost instinctively responded "Nem beszélek Magyarul (I don't speak Hungarian)" when I realized I understood her! Instead I answered "Igen (yes)". So, I guess that I am making some progress small as it may seem.

 Form Teacher/parents evening: Last night there was a meeting that the parents of all the students attended to talk with their son's/daughter's form teacher. Since I am not a form teacher, I did not attend the meeting. However, I did hear about what was discussed. For one class, the form teacher talked about the severe discipline problems that the class is presenting to the teachers. The parents were all on board with this and after some brainstorming, they came up with an outstanding idea (Attention all English teachers!!) Cell phone usage during class and misbehavior in general have become a real problem. The parents suggested that in the future, the students must put their cell phones on the front desk of the class at the beginning of class. Then, if a student misbehaves, the teacher will have the guilty student come forth to the teacher's desk and call his/her mother on the phone in the presence of the teacher and the whole class to tell her what he/she has done. Brilliant! I'll be starting to implement this new rule tomorrow. We'll see how it works.

Another Hungarian curiosity: I've noticed on many occasions, that Hungarians who get on a bus leaving behind them a friend, parent, or child will stand at the window of the bus and wave at the person they've left behind until that person is out of sight. The people left behind will also wave until the bus is out of sight. I've also seen this a lot at train stations and airports. How sensitive.