Thursday, March 11, 2010

jó, jó, jó, jó, jó...

My cousin Adam is doing a project on Hungary for a school assignment. My aunt wrote and asked for an authentic Hungarian cookie recipe or something that he could bring in to share with his classmates. When I think of Hungarian food, I don't think of sweets. They have beautiful tortes and things at the local cukrászda, but they aren't the same sort of sweets that Americans have. So I wrote to one Hungarian friend, knowing she would respond to me very quickly. She sent me a few recipes, but they weren't really baked good items. Then I thought about bejgli. It's a nut or poppyseed roll that is served at Christmas. "It's not Christmas if there is no bejgli." It is quite important. :) My Hungarian friend said the recipe was quite difficult and therefore did not send it, which was fine. But I found one online. (I had looked for one last night but had no luck...found out that was because I was spelling it wrong. The "ej" and the "é" sound so similar to my non-Hungarian ears to I had incorrectly spelled it.)

Anyway, I stumbled onto this one website and had so much fun looking around. It is a site for a group of Hungarians living in California. One of the links on the website goes through some pretty basic lessons on how to learn Hungarian. I was naturally interested and read through it all. I knew just about everything they said. Yeah! My favorite thing they said though: "You can carry on a long conversation with a Hungarian by just letting the Hungarian talk and saying 'jó' every now and then." SO funny because it is true! I love listening to Hungarians talk because they will say jó a hundred times in a matter of minutes. I love it! I guess it's similar to us saying "okay" or "uh-huh" a lot. :)

I really enjoyed looking at this website because it is done by Hungarians who live in the US, just the opposite of our situation obviously. It was fun to read about their understanding of things and what they think about Hungary. There were pictures posted of Hungarian food and several food items that you would find at the store. Funny how normal those products looked to me! Nagyon jó!

1 comment:

Globaleeyore said...

I love this post. :) What is the website? It is hard to find some ingredients on this side of the ocean too. By the way, remember the article in the "Budapest Sun" about the different numbers jo is used at once?