Gyere már!

It seems that whenever I encounter a new language, I always fall back on the language I learned previously. When I learned Hungarian a few years ago, I kept thinking of everything in Spanish. And now that I'm in the Netherlands, I always think of saying everything in Hungarian, which is truly bizarre, since until I came here, I thought I had forgotten all the Hungarian I knew.

So after a nice day on the town, having dreamed of speaking in Hungarian the entire time ("túl drága!", "kérek szépen egyet ebből", etc), I stepped into Schoenen Reus to buy some new (!) slippers. All of a sudden, out of the corner of my ear, I hear a middle-aged woman snap at her daughter: "Gyere már!" . I stood to attention. A magyar nyelv, jajj! Olyan szép!

And yet just as suddenly I could not speak Hungarian anymore. The best I could manage was to sheepishly plod over to her and say: "Szia, hogy vagy?" . She almost blushed, and then I heard the familiar reply: "Jó, köszönöm szépen." .

The whole experience reminded me of how Heléna and I would walk the streets of Budapest, and how she would always dally by store windows. Usually unimpressed by whatever she was looking at, I would say drily: "Gyönyörű, gyere." . Occasionally I would reverse it: "Gyere gyönyörű." . Yes, I was a pretty witty guy in those days.

I'm looking forward to teaching Sarah some Hungarian in preparation for our visit to Hungary this winter.