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Mini language lesson #11: Hungarian food-oriented slang
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Hungarians love to eat, we are real foodies and we love to cook, bake our specialties. Also, we’re quite proud of our national dishes. This love is so deep that we even use the names of certain ingredients, foods in slang expressions. So we thought we’d broaden your knowledge with the most commonly used food-oriented slang expressions.
Keep in mind that we are not linguists in any way, we’re just as dazzled by the curiosities of the Hungarian language as foreigners are. So this series doesn’t aim to explain the etymology of words, it’s more a fun take on our language. We try to bring Hungarian closer to you with witty learning cards made by Daily magyar, a language-enthusiast person, whose posts give an insight into the complexity of the Hungarian grammar. But don’t worry, it’s all done in an easy-going way, so that it can make learning fun.
The following list gives you an insight into how colourful the Hungarian language is. We actually use these expressions quite often, so this really is a helpful episode. You’ll impress everyone if you bust out any of the following food-oriented expressions 😉
perecelni ~ to pretzel (synonym: leesni; eltaknyolni; eltaccsolni) – to fall (down)
→ perec – pretzel
E.g.: “A Józsi tényleg perecelt az új mocijával?” – “Did Józsi really fall with his new motorbike?”
→ moci; motorbicikli – motorbike
→ Józsi, Jozsó, József, Joci, Jocó, Jóska – Joseph
kolbászolni ~ to sausage – walking around/about in a place with no specific destination; slowly moving to one direction
→ kolbász – sausage
E.g.: “Egész nap a városban kolbászoltam.” – “I was walking around town the whole day.”
rizsázni ~ to rice (synonym: hantázni; mellébeszélni) – to talk about irrelevant things; to talk beside the point; to waffle about/on something
→ rizsa, rizs – rice
Who to believe … Our Finance Ministry or the European Commission?
https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2024/12/06/brussels-chides-hungary-for-significant-errors-in-its-fiscal-plans
Appears Hungary has concocted its own “methodology”?