AND Books ) wrote:
: ibokor ) wrote:
: : What  wrote reminded me of an examination
: : paper in high school. It was an "unseen" to be translated into
: : English. The gist of the text is still present and the contribution
: : from  brings it vividly to mind.
: 
: : A Hungarian linguist maintained that he could learn *any* language
: : from books alone. He went to a conference in London to present
: : a paper on his theory. After the lecture he was approached by an
: : Oxford Don who said, "That was a fascinating lecture, Professor
: : Kocsis. I didn't understand it all, but it made be aware of something
: : I had never known before: how much Hungarian resembles English."
: 
: : d.A.
: 
: yup, i heard of this linguist myself in the early 70s... his name was Hall
: not Kocsis... he actually DID syntactically "learn" any language within 5-10 
: minutes of speaking with a native... nope, Magyar was not his forte! :)
: 
: janos
: 

NOW YOU TELL ME! 
OUR HIGH SCHOOL TEACHER DECEIVED US!!
If only I had known earlier!

But our Prof Kocsis is not your linguist Hall, for ours
has an excellent command of Hungarian, even if his English
is a mark-down from MIgros.

d.A.

I don't know about luggage security at Ferihegy airport but I do know 
that it is definitely not a good idea to get a taxi into the city. This 
is extremely expensive. The best way to get to the city (well the 
cheapest anyway) is to catch the bus which leaves the airport to the 
final station on the blue metro line. The number of the bus is the red 
93. From the metro station you can get to the city for a fraction of the 
cost of a taxi. Also, I have heard that foreigners (westerners 
especially) are charged very high prices for taxis. You don't really need 
a taxi in Budapest because public transport 
u (Kriza Gyorgy) wrote:
>In article >,  says...
>>
>>In article > Arlene Proebsting, 
>>writes:
>>>I heard that a lot of people have had their luggage stolen when flying 
>>>into Ferihegy airport.  Is this still a problem?  
>>
>>Dunno, I haven't heard of it.
>>
>
>I can imagine that statistically the situation is worse than, say, at Zurich 
>airport, but the fraction of lost luggage is still so low that you don't 
>need to worry about that. (This is from my own experience.)
>
>
>>>Also, how much should it cost to take a taxi from the airport to the 
>>>center of town? 
>>
>>It costs a goddamn lot. Only one taxi company got the right to
>>carry passengers away from Airport.  You have to pay accordingly
>>where you go because they have district charges. The chepast one
>>was last year 1200 Ft. Can you imagine that ? Five minutes drive
>>costed 1200 Ft !!!! If you went to Buda it was well above 3000 Ft.
>> 
>
>That one taxi company charges 56 Ft/km. 1200 Ft for a five-minute ride means 
>an average velocity of 260 km/h. I think you pay more than 1200 Ft, because 
>out of town you have to pay aller-retour, and the ride takes about 30 
>minutes. 
>
>
>>>Is there a way to ensure that you are not getting  ripped off ?
>>
>>I think you even have to pay more if you don't speak Hungarian.
>>
>
>This is exactly the reason why only one company is allowed to take 
>passangers at the airport. If something like that happens, now it can be 
>traced back to the company. It's true that one has to be careful with 
>taxi drivers in Budapest. Rules of riding a taxi are simple. You pay against 
>a printed receipt showing the distance and the kilometer charge. These 
>kilometer charges should be (and are) posted in teh taxi. You have to make 
>sure the meter starts with the right amount (also posted). You also have to 
>make sure that out of the typically three different km charges (day, night, 
>long distance) the driver uses the right one. This may be more difficult for 
>a foreigner. 
>
>Black economy is wide-spread in Hungary. Hungarians often pre-negotiate the 
>price. You pay less, and the driver will not pay the taxes. (Moreover, the 
>meter will accumulate a "rolling distance", and the charges are deductible 
>from the driver's income.)
>
>
>
>>There is a bus line (red 94 or ninety something) which goes
>>to the terminal of blue metro from the Airport. It is fast but
>>don't go too frequently.
>>
>>(I prefer calling my relatives to pick me up)
>>
>
>
>If nobody picks me up, I take the shuttle bus to go downtown (Erzsebet 
>ter, next to the Deak ter metro station) for 350 Ft. It goes every 30 
>minutes. That blue bus (94?) takes you to the Kobanya-Kispest metro and 
>train station for 35 Ft, if it helps. 
>
>>Tamás
>
>Gyorgy
>
 is so good and cheap.

In article >,
Liviu Iordache  > wrote:
>Recently, the origin of the Hunyadis was subject of
>debate among the Hungarian and Romanian contributors to
>this forum. The following  text is adapted after
>
>     Held, J., 1985, Hunyadi: Legend and Reality. East
>          European  Monographs, Colombia University
>          Press, New York, 264 p.

Thanks, Liviu, for yet another excellent contribution.  I was the one
questioning Hunyady's expropriation by the Romanians, both Janos/Iancu
and his son, Mathias.  Though I knew that Janos/Iancu was at least half
Wallachian, based on the vague recollection of that legend about his
birth your article made reference to.  I also stated that whatever
Janos's ethnic background may be, his son Mathias was at least half
Hungarian, ethnically speaking, because his mother, Erzsebet Szilagyi
was Hungarian, to my knowledge.

But getting to the Held monograph, I found a few things very
intrigueing.  Here is, for instance, what Held writes about Iancu's
father, Voyk: 
 
>Once in Hungary, he probably married a Hungarian lesser
>noblewoman whose name it is not known. She might have
>been a Szapolyai,

So even if dismissing the Sigismund "liason" legend, Iancu still turns
out to be half Hungarian.  Based on this, Mathias would have to be 3/4
Hungarian, hardly a justification for the claim of one of the Romanian 
posters here that "Mathias was _OUR_ king", or something to that effect. 

>Voyk sired three sons Janos, Janos Jr. (!)  and Voyk Jr.
>and perhaps one or two daughters of whom only one is
>known to us by name.

Now this is the really interesting part!  I've never heard of having two
children of a family in Hungary be given the same name.  So I smell
something fishy about this.  Could this be because one of the Iancus was
an adapted son?  I could easily see this as evidence of the Sigismund
affair where Woyk was asked to "legitimize" the illegitimate son.  In
exchange, Woyk got favors from the Hungarian king.  Of course, I am only
speculating here and if anybody could come up another reasonable
explanation of the two Iancus in one family, I am all ears.

>Hungarian historians have sometimes attempted to deny
>Hunyadi's Wallachian origin.

This is new to me, because Hunyady's Wallachian background was written
up even by one of the greatest Hungarian poets of the 19th century.
But it was treated only on that legend level in the Hungarian highschool
curricula.  

I would be curious to know from the Hungarian readers of this article,
if the Held version of Hunyady's background was known in Hungary and
taught in some level of school there.

> The fact that king Sigismund
>mentioned the young Janos in the original patent and that
>his successors, Albert I and Wladislaw I granted large
>landed estates to the Hunyadis has been considered
>evidence for their Hungarian and royal ancestry.

Is Held dismissing this theory?  If so, why? 

>One could be gentle Hungarus while at the same time was
>also natione Latinus, that is, of Romanian origin and
>language.

That's right.  And that is also why talking about historical oppression
of Romanians by Hungarians makes no sense.  Because most of that time 
nationalism wasn't even invented yet.

Well, for you, I am

Joe Pannon

I don't know about luggage security at Ferihegy airport but I do know 
that it is definitely not a good idea to get a taxi into the city. This 
is extremely expensive. The best way to get to the city (well the 
cheapest anyway) is to catch the bus which leaves the airport to the 
final station on the blue metro line. The number of the bus is the red 
93. From the metro station you can get to the city for a fraction of the 
cost of a taxi. Also, I have heard that foreigners (westerners 
especially) are charged very high prices for taxis. You don't really need 
a taxi in Budapest because public transport there is so good and cheap.

I don't know about a problem with the luggage but I do know that the 
cheapest way to get into town from the airport is to catch the red 93 
bus. This takes you to the end station of the blue metro line. From there 
you can catch the blue metro into Deak ter station, which is the centre 
of Budapest. Catching a taxi if you are a foreigner (especialyy a western 
traveller) is not a good idea since I have heard that western people are 
charged a much higher rate than Hungarians.

 wrote:
: In article >, DBrutus > wrot
e:
: >
: >Welcome to N. Ireland II, and III, IV, V, VI.
: 
: Why should drawing the border along ethnic lines invoke the situation of
: N. Ireland?  If anything, it would reduce the chances of N. Ireland
: where the main problem is the mixing of two different groups in one
: country. 
: >
: Joe

The Protestant of Northern Ireland belong (at least historically) to
a different ethnic group. They are "Orangemen", migrants from the
time of William of Orange, who were invited to settle by the English
conquerors of Ireland. There has quite possibly been ample
intermixing to blur the distinctions, but the Irish are Gaelic, and
te Orangeman Dutch/Germanic. There was only one Ireland until
after the war of independence in the 1920's. The separation
into two sovereign states postdates Trianon.

d.A.

Call from anywhere in USA->Hungary,with the FLAT rate,24 
hours a day 7 days a week,of 55 cents/min.
	E-mail for more info.

 () writes about Seton-Watson:
> Let's face it: Seton-Watson was not a historian but a propogandist.
Then, in answering a post of Dan Cazacu, quickly takes the issue against 
Keith Hitchins, and his book "Rumania 1866-1947 [Oxford 1994]":
> That probably means that he used Seton-Watson as his source.  Most
> American historians when they write about Eastern European history, they
> use secondary sources. [to be read : "disconsider our propaganda" - my adnota
tion]
Jeez! And so we sentence all of them to death... ;-(  ;-( 

T. Kocsis ) gives us a further "push" (precious hint ?)
> [...] Seton-Watson-like 'scientists'

Who was one of the founders of `Slavonic Review' and presided the 
Society of British historians, not to speak about some others. Correct
me if I am wrong, I read his biography quite a long time ago...

Yet again,  () writes :
>>Assumptions, assumptions, unsupported assumptions. Joe, can't you do better?
>I claimed nothing else myself; only gave my guess why the two books
>contained similar conclusions.

What about this: both _record_ the same historical _facts_. 
Similarly: the dauphin is a mammal in every "Zoology 001" book; 
two contemporary astronomy books present the same overall picture 
of the solar system; 2+2=4 in every first grade math book (only Goldstein
wanted Winston Smith to think otherwise - that was in "1984"); Everest 
is the highest peak on Earth in every Geography 001 book. And so on...
In a phrase, any objective reality is expected to be treated similarly 
in any two science books dealing with it.

 () comes up with a hot one:
>Sorry, but I can't possibly pick up every book that has ever been
>published on the subject. 

Somebody who really read _nothing_ could state the same and still be
formally correct. So, this is irrelevant, unless you present clear
evidence that the facts recorded by Seton-Watson and Keith Hitchins are
pure fiction or inventions, which never happened. This is the only way
you could possibly follow to get a point. And this is exactly what I doubt.

Finally,  (), understanding he has a hard time
(he is not so stupid anyway) launces a loud cry for help :

>Respected by whom?  Do you respect every historian I respect?
>What I respect is the kind of presentation we see here from Jeliko and 
>Iordache, quoting original (primary) sources, instead of loaded
>commentaries so typical of the kind of history books, based on secondary
>sources. [to be read : S.O.S. !!!! S.O.S.!!!! ... - my adnotation]

Way to go, (). P.S. Hey, man! Do you have some more ? I collect the hottest one
s.

 
Mihai Caragiu

A Hungarian friend of mine who works as an English teacher in Budapest
is visiting Chicago for a while.  She is interested in doing some
informal translation or teaching to help cover expenses during her
visit.  She is a native Hungarian speaker and her English is quite
good; she can translate in either direction and is experienced
teaching English as a second language.  If interested, send email
and I'll put you in touch with her (she is not on the net).

[...] As we get close to the end of the seventeenth century, the situation 
in Transylvania becomes precarious. This is related to the fact that
Transylvania passed under direct Habsburg rule. Then, Calvinism speedily
found itself on to the defensive. Catholicism - now once more in the 
ascendant in the Slovak districts of the Northern Hungary - set itself to 
recover its lost ground in the land beyond the Forest. What more natural
than that the Jesuits, strong in the confidence of Leopold I and court circles 
Vienna, should have turned their eyes to the Romanians as a useful instrument
of centralist and Catholicising tendencies ? They, like everyone else at that
period, regarded the masses as mere cannon-fodder in the spiritual war. They
therefore bent their efforts upon the hierarchy and clergy, to whom they had
many inducements to offer. Submission to the Holy See involved the acceptance o
f
the four essential points - the papal supremacy, unleavened bread
(painea nedospita in liturghie), Purgatory and the Filioque clause in the
Creed*. Otherwise the existing liturgy and canon remained untouched, as also
the marriage of the clergy, the wearing of beards, the internal arrangements
of the churches, etc. What was really decisive, however, was that the 
archpriests had lost their freedom of election to the metropolitan see under
Calvinist control, and welcomed the Union as a means of shacking off the gallin
g
Calvinist jurisdiction; that the union secured to the clergy who accepted it
equality of rights with the Roman clergy and therefore a vital rise in social 
status, and exemption for them and their families from serfdom and feudal
dues. In the phrase of a witty Jesuit of that day, the Romanian
clergy was "not led by supernatural principles, but by temporary
necessities". 

   In February 1697 the union was proposed to the Orthodox synod by the
Metropolitan Theophilus and unanimously accepted in principle, subject
for proper endowments and equality for the laymen of the new Church.

[...] The death of Theophilus during the summer of 1697 caused delay
and opened the door for disputes among the clergy, but his
successor Athanasius lost no time in resuming negotiations,
and the document of union was formally signed in October 1698.
  The final stage was reached at Alba Iulia, on 4 september 1700,
when no less than 54 archpriests and 1563 priests followed their
metropolitan's lead. The union was legalised by an imperial diploma
of Leopold I, issued on 16 February 1699, announcing that the
uniates were to enjoy the same Christian freedom "as the members
of the Latin rite". A further edict of 6 August was addressed
to the Romanians, assuring them that they were free to join any
recognised religion or to retain their existing status (the alleged
free choice was, however, a hollow farce, for the material
advantages of the Union were irresistible, human
nature being what it is, whereas the alternative of surrendering
to the Calvinists was not really an alternative at all).
That the Magyar outlook was by no means identical with the imperial is
shown by the grudging attitude of the Diet in its discussion on the
change of status due to union, and still more by the rescript issued
on 26 September 1699 by the Gubernium. This laid down that two
clergy should suffice for the largest Romanian communes, and one
for the smaller (an attempt to restrict to minimum the number of
persons exempted from serfdom). Also, that "as the Wallachs have
no good schools", their candidates for the priesthood are to be
instructed "in the school of that religion with which he wishes
to unite" and otherwise not be ordained (a last attempt to leave the
door open to Calvinist, as opposed to Roman, proselytism). Humiliating
as the methods employed to achieve it may have been, the Union proved to be
one of the most memorable events in the rise of Romanian nationality.

-------

*FILIOQUE is <the procession of the Holy Spirit from both the Father and the So
n>.
This seems to be the subtlest doctrinary difference between Orthodox and
Roman Catholics. The original, Orthodox, formulation was that <the Holy Spirit
originates from the Father>. The main reason for which the Catholics
added the Filioque doctrine was to avoid the possibility of heretical
interpretation of the Creed (Father - essential, Son - secondary).
The Orthodox position: this is a grave theological error, destroying the
paradoxical life (mystical unity) of the Trinity by introducing a "formal"
equality (which is a human, and not divine, category), etc. 

______________________

 Reference:  "A history of the Roumanians, 
 from Roman times to the completion of unity"
 by R. W. Seton-Watson. Cambridge [Eng.], The University press, 1934.
 viii, 596 p. XVI pl.(port.,incl.front.)fold.map. 25 cm.