M-Space: The Blog


Mon 28 Jul 2008

Hello and goodbye

On my recent trip to Hungary I learned a few words and phrases in Hungarian. I'll talk more about this fascinating language in a few days' time but for now I just want to mention an interesting fact about greetings.

One straightforward, if fairly informal, way of greeting people is to say hello, which is conveniently pronounced in much the same way as it is in English. To take your leave of someone, again informally, you can say szia, which is pronounced more or less like "see you" in English (you have to say sziasztok if talking to more than one person; by contrast hello is used unchanged for one or more people).

The thing that makes it a bit confusing is that both terms are interchangeable and can be used both for greeting and taking your leave of people. I didn't find it too difficult to get used to greeting people with szia, but the first time somebody shook my hand and said "hello" as we were getting ready to go our separate ways I did find it somewhat strange!

There are several other greetings too, of various shades of formality, but those two seemed to be the most common ones used between friends.

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