The Other Hungarian Hollywood Connection

As I oozed into my eighth day of severe influenza early last week it suddenly became clear that desperate measures were required. It wasn't just the fever, or the aches and pains, or the ominous jangle in my mucous-sodden lungs, or any of the other normal pains and sufferings of this year's Magyar mulligrubs. All that I could handle. No, the real problem was that, after a week of moping around the house, I could feel myself slowly dying of boredom and self-loathing.

And that was when I decided to brush up on my Hungarian.

Yes, yes, I know: aside from the plight of the Gypsies and the joys of sledding the first snow of Buda, the single most predictable and hackneyed thing a columnist for an expat-oriented newspaper in Hungary can write about is the wretchedness of trying to learn the Hungarian language. But that's only because it's so true, and because in all likelihood, you yourself gave up trying to get Hungarian down before you even really started.

Now, to be perfectly blunt, unless you are planning to marry a Magyar or otherwise spending the rest of your days in Pannonia, there is no real point in lumber through the jungle of nok/nek/tok/tek required to actually become fluent. Even if you do somehow manage to become fully conversational, present demographic trends suggest that by 2040 the only one you'll be able to have a conversation with is yourself.

All the same, it is more than a little pathetic to be skulking around town, years after your arrival, still unable to put together a sentence in the local language longer than "check, please!" and having no choice but no nod and smile when the néni from the next door comes over and starts yelling at you.

But skulk no more! Assuming you already possess the necessary grammatical rudiments, you can now hone your Hungarian to a fine point without leaving the safety and comfort of your home, and without expensive books, tapes or tutors. Best of all, this revolutionary new method of language acquisition is as simple and enjoyable as sitting on your behind and watching trashy English-language videos. And the reason it's this easy and agreeable is because that's exactly what it is: sitting on your behind and watching trashy English-language videos, while reading and occasionally taking notes on the Hungarian-language subtitles.

You got a baj with Hungarian, haver?

In case you missed it, the key word in the paragraph above is "trashy." For sure, the idea of using movies to learn foreign languages is nothing new, and you may even be smart enough to have already figured out that the versatility of the DVD (as opposed to video) dramatically increases the effectiveness of such auto-edification. But if you are this smart, you are probably too smart to be interested in the kind of movies that are actually able to teach you anything of practical use. The point is this: no matter how good your Hungarian gets, you are always going to sound like a meathead. So the key is to select movies with characters who say very little but impress greatly when they do actually speak. Perhaps the best such movie to come out in recent years is "xXx". Filmed just down the road in the Czech Republic, it stars the inimitable Vin Diesel as a standoffish but droll and savage extreme sports daredevil named Xander "xXx" Cage, who is somehow pressed against his will into government service to foil a shadowy terror group called Anarchy 99.

Within seconds of meeting Xander Cage, it becomes clear that he is a man of few but wonderful words, and knows how to say them in beautifully concise Hungarian. About to drive the Corvette of a hypocritical politician off a mile-high bridge, Cage smiles into the web camera he has installed on the doomed car's dashboard, and smirks:

Now, just compare this zinger to all the useless Hungarian phrases you probably spent hours trying to learn, and what an impression you're likely to make the first time you pull it out, suitably personalized.

Not a minute later, Xander comes face-to-face with the first of many menacing baddies, who burps out what is probably the most important phrase you can learn in any language. (Valami baj von, haver? - "You got a problem, boy?") Later on his opening day of training as an undercover operative, Xander is hurled from the back of a low-flying airplane along with several other unwilling recruits. But while the others suddenly start yelping in panic (Mi a francot akarnak - "What the hell do they want?") Xander is tickled pink, howling Imádom az ilyen bulit! ("I love this kind of party!) and Befizetek meg egyre! ("I'd pay for that again!")

In fact, Xander quickly starts getting so stoked that he begins saying things in Hungarian that are actually pretty complicated, or which don't exactly correspond to what's being said in the English version, meaning you need a dictionary to make sure you are getting it right. But don't let go now, because before you know it, you will be able to express what you really feel about life in Central Europe.

El tudod képzelni? Ahogy egy olyan város, mint Budapest eltűnik a merges gáz felhőjében? Why yes I can!

A klub tagjaiban két dolog közös: Gazagok és bűnözők ("Everybody in this club has two things in common: they are filthy rich, and they are criminals") is what Xander is told before entering the heaving disco where he first comes face to face with the leader of Anarchy 99, a spectacularly greasy Russian hood named Yorgi, who by incredible coincidence is played by a New Zealander of Hungarian descent named Martin Csokas. Perhaps because of this connection, Yorgi and his henchmen know loads of useful Hungarian, including such indispensable phrases as Ennyit az űzletről, jöjjön a szórakozás! ("Now that business is finished, we party!"), Gyertek, ribancok! ("Bitches, come here!") and El tudod képzelni? Ahogy egy olyan város, mint Prága eltűnik a merges gáz felhőjében ("Can you imagine a city like Prague vanishing in a cloud of poison gas?")

Well, Yorgi, thanks to you not only can I imagine it, but I can say it in Hungarian! In fact, by the end of xXx, I could say just about everything I've ever wanted to say in the language of our fine city. And the next time that damn néni from next door comes over babbling about something or other, she'll be the first to find out.