I think it’s highly unlikely that during more than 50 years, the staff of the mental hospital genuinely never identified the langauge he was speaking as Hungarian. It’s much more likely that nobody cared.
After all, “mental hospitals” were used as holding facilities for all kinds of undesirables during the Soviet period, many of them perfectly sane political dissidents.
I recently heard a kid reading pronounce World War I “World War EYE” <sigh>
Also just a couple days ago, visiting the Vietnam Veterans Memorial (here in DC) I overheard a young man in his late teens ask if this was about Saving Private Ryan and his parents had to explain it wasn’t… <deeper sigh>
Good point, and it makes me wonder if there are any US Korean War vets in any ‘hospitals’ in Russia?
Magyar, the language of Hungary, is not Slavic. It is not even an Indo-European language. English or Hindi are more closely related to the Slavic languages than Magyar is.
Isn’t Magyar an Indian (subcontinent) language transported there by invaders? I seem to remember the Magyars as being at least one of the tribes that invaded under Genghis Khan. It’s interesting because the Gypsies speak Romany, another Indian tongue that got into Europe a long time ago. Side note: I wonder if Basque, one of the famous isolated languages, can be explained by some ancient Asian tongue transplanted by invaders.
There was a treaty dividing Korea into North and South Korea, effectivly stating that once the two were reunited and all the other treaties were carried out, WWII would be over. North and South Korea are still in a state of war…I wonder which side Patton is on. On a lighter note, this is only of interest to historians and diplomats, and has little practical implication as most people think the war ended when we got u-571 thus saving private ryan.
Magyar is not from India, it is an non-indo-european language. Indo-european languages are those from europe and india, right? The idea is that the proto-indo-european speakers where nomads from central asia. Some of them went west and settled in europe, some went south and settled in India.
The Magyars settled Hungary during the 1200s or so. They weren’t part of the Mongols, but another group of nomads. The only language it is related to in Europe is Finnish, another non-indo-european language.
Basque is probably an indigenous language. You have to imagine that the original inhabitants of Europe had their own languages. The protoIE speakers moved in and assimilated the natives. Most of the original languages died out, but a few (like Basque) remained. Think of what’s happening with native american languages. After 500 years most indians speak english. Even if they know their tribal language most don’t use it every day. Now imagine the same thing happening, but without written records of the colonization.
No. WWII ended in Europe when Germany surrendered, and ended completely when Japan surrendered. Remember when they signed the surrender on the battleship Missouri?
It is true that the Korean War is still going on, no peace treaty was signed, only a cease-fire agreement. But the Korean War wasn’t WWII.
Hungarian, Estonian, Lapp, and Finnish are all Finno-Urgic languages. The best guess is the the original speakers of this language group lived somewhere near the northern end of the Ural Mountains. They apparently had both Caucasoid and Mongoloid ancestors. As they pushed west, the Finns, Estonians, and Hungarians interbred with Caucasians so they are now genetically mostly Caucasoid (maybe 90%), despite their language. The Lapps are genetically about half Mongoloid and half Caucasoid.