Weird and funny Hungarian expressions

Magyar Zászló Magyarország Hungarian Flag Hungary

Photo: Alpár Kató - Daily News Hungary

Every language has its expressions, phrases, and sayings that might sound funny to foreigners. That is one of the beauties of each and every language. Sometimes, however, these idiomatic expressions cause a laugh even among those who use them naturally as it is a phrase in their mother tongue.

The weather has been quite funny this week in Hungary, with smaller or bigger snowfalls in certain parts of the country.

Did the April snow kill Hungarian pálinka?

Restaurants and bars are unfortunately still closed, and so are the borders of the country. We really hope that very soon, you will get the chance to visit our beautiful Hungary (or re-visit it), but until then, we have brought you a list of Hungarian expressions that are either very hard to process or cause a huge laugh when translated to English. Learn one or two of them and impress either your Hungarian friends or people you will meet during your next stay in Budapest.

Hungarian is a beautiful but extremely hard language for foreigners. Truth be told, it can sometimes be tricky even for native speakers, especially when it comes to all our various expressions containing interesting words that simply do not seem to belong in the sentence. In many cases, the reason for the use of a specific word sounding extremely strange or even stupid for someone from the East of Hungary is simply the fact that the expression comes from the other corner of the homeland, where the word in question is used for a specific object. This word can either be another different word used for the same object by our friend coming from the Eastern part, or it simply does not exist in their vocabulary because the object does not exist in their area. Take a look at some of these expressions.

Miért itatod az egereket? – Why are you giving drinks to the mice?

Have you ever given a glass of water to a mouse? I do not think so, we rather fear them and even scream if we see one, let alone give them drinks. Do not think Hungarians are this strange that they do it; the meaning of this sentence is very simple. In Hungary, when asking a crying kid, for instance, for the reason of their sadness, we do not directly ask them the question Why are you crying?, we rather choose this creative way to find the problem and to solve it.

Örül, mint majom a farkának – He is as happy as a monkey about his tail

This sounds fairly funny in English, I think. Monkeys are considered happy animals that have a lot of fun, at least they are depicted this way in movies and cartoons. According to Hungarians, they are the happiest about the fact that they have a tail. Is this true? Well, we should ask an expert to find out, nevertheless, we will continue to use it to say someone is extremely happy about something, and just like monkeys, they would be jumping from joy.

Kutyából nem lesz szalonna – You cannot make bacon out of a dog

This is one of my personal favourites. Everyone likes bacon because it is yummy (at least every Hungarian, we just call it szalonna) and everyone likes cute little puppies. However, when you put the two into one sentence, bacon loses some of its appeal. Luckily, the Hungarian expression states very clearly that you cannot make bacon out of a dog so do not even try it. A slice of dog bacon sounds cruel and not very tasteful, and it is definitely something that stays in your head after you have heard it. We simply use it for someone who will never change, someone who will keep making the same mistakes. Once a thief, always a thief.

Nem kolbászból van a kerítés – The fence is not made of sausage

As we love to use animal names in our expressions, the same is true for food. If you have read any of our articles containing a yummy Hungarian recipe, you already know that food, and especially a tasty and spicy sausage (kolbász), is very important in our little country. Naturally, we will use them quite often in our sayings. But do we have huge family houses surrounded by a sausage fence in the countryside? The answer is no, however, not only because the saying says so, but because it would simply be a crazy (but somewhat delicious) idea. As we LOVE sausage and consider it one of the best things in the world, whenever the fence is not made of sausage, it is simply not as good as you thought it would be. Makes sense, right?