Where do these 5 strange Hungarian expressions come from?

There has been an ongoing debate about whether Hungarian is one of the world’s most difficult languages to truly master. While language skills are very much dependent on the person learning the language, it might feel that Hungarian is trying to fight back.

In today’s article, we will introduce you to five advanced language examples that you might hear from native speakers and probably have no idea what they are talking about. Some of these expressions might come from other languages even to Hungarian, but that does not take away their strangeness. Thanks to Dívány, we can show you where these words and phrases come from.

In Hungarian hónalj means the armpit (literally put, the “underside of hón”), but there is no body part named hón. Or is there?

The English word is much better in describing that the word arm is also used separately from pit. While in Hungarian, alj means the bottom, we simply do not use hón separately, and many Hungarians have the shower-thought: What is hón?

The solution is relatively simple. Dívány says that the Hungarian dictionary just defines hónalj to hón as well. The answer lies in the Hungarian etymological dictionary. It says that it is part of Hungary’s Finno-Ugric heritage. Because hónalj and other similar words only exist in Hungarian with the -alj and -alatt additions; hón might have originally meant the shoulder joint.

In Hungarian macskajaj is the state of having a hangover, but what does it have to do with cats (macska)?

In order to crack this, you would need a little bit of German as well. According to Dívány, the macskajaj is the direct translation of the German Katzenjammer. In German, there is a saying as well: “einen Kater haben”, meaning to have a cat.

As for many similar things, this saying came into being when students used it as a euphemism. Originally, the German word translated into Hungarian comes from Katarrh, which meant catarrh, malaise, flu or illness. The pronunciation of this word in Saxony sounded more like Katers.

Are you curious about how other foreigners struggle with the Hungarian language? In this article, you can see how foreigners try to speak Hungarian for the first time. But to help you acquire the Hungarian language, here is an article that makes learning Hungarian easy.

There are many ways you can say that something fails in Hungarian, one of them is dugába dől. But what is duga?

This would literally translate to: “collapse (in)to duga”. Dívány helps us find out what could duga be. The problem lies with the fact that duga has no relation to the Hungarian verb dug, which means to “put in”, another Finno-Ugric heritage in the Hungarian language. Instead, duga comes from South-Slavic and means the many wooden pieces that make up a barrel. It becomes quite clear from here. If the cooper does not assemble a barrel properly or the pieces of a barrel do not fit tight enough, then each piece, duga, would tumble and fall over, like a house of cards.

Hungarians often use kutya bajom to describe that they are fine, they did not get injured or similar things like that, but what exactly “ails the dog”?

According to Szabadföld this saying goes way back and has some quite negative connotations. Although Hungarians have always liked dogs, for some reason, Hungarian expressions where people are treated badly or worth nothing often include the word kutya, meaning dog. Kutya hideg means it is freezing, kutya élet implies that life is quite harsh, and gyáva kutya means coward. The meaning of dog in kutya bajom is most likely closely connected to kutyába se vesznek. The latter implies that they are not treated properly. This meaning of nothing is what resurfaces in kutya bajom. Suggesting that there is no problem there at all… usually, there is.

When someone tells you kikosaraztak in Hungarian, they are trying to tell you that they have been dumped or rejected.

The origin of this expression is quite interesting. According to Dívány, this also has some German origin to it. The German idiom is the following: “Jemandem einen Korb geben”. This means that they have been given a basket. In medieval times, when a knight courted a lady, they were lifted in a large, human-sized basket with the help of ropes and pulleys to the window of the woman they were in love with. There was a huge problem, however, if the feelings were not mutual. If the girl did not like the suitor, they gave them a basket without an underside or one that was damaged so that the suitor would fall out mid-air.

In Hungary, there was also a somewhat similar tradition in place. If the woman did not want to marry the suitor, she could place the basket around the man’s neck or simply throw the basket at him. Even after that, some people did not get the memo. Today the meaning of this expression in Hungarian has broadened quite a bit and just generally means that someone was rejected.

Read alsoEnglish–Hungarian wordplay: Same sound, different form and meaning, Part 2

Source: Dívány.hu, Szabadföld.hu