Hungary Two - Text
Twenty year old female, student from Budapest, Hungary. Currently attending Western Maryland College in Northern Maryland. She spent two years as an exchange student in Middletown, NY. Her Parents are both "white collar" workers in Hungary who divorced when she was younger, and she grew up in her father's upper-middle class home. The college has a campus in Budapest, so many Hungarian students spend their last two years of college there. These students tend to stick together, and the dialect is reinforced when speaking with their peers. Her dialect is a bit less pronounced than others' due to her education and background. Recorded by Elizabeth van den Berg on 11/3/99, and edited by Shawn M. Muller on 11/29/99. Running time 00:04:34.
TRANSCRIPTION
I am Hungarian. I was born and raised in Budapest, which is the capital, and my parents are, my father is a lawyer, my mom is a doctor, and I was the only child for a very long time. So I, we, we moved around a lot, but only in Budapest, and *but they got divorced when I was seven. So after that it was just different. So I stayed with my dad and my, his mother. My grandmother moved in with us so we kind of had this very small family, but then we got a dog. And *I would see my mom every other weekend and you know it just it it was very civilized and we, they're still friends. Anyway it's all Hungarians miss Hungarian food because somehow it's, we couldn't figure it out for a while because we don't really use special ingredients. We use paprika a lot. But the the, not in everyday food really, but somehow Hungarian food is more tasty, so we go, tasty, we go to [?..?] and people just look over and think no way, I can't eat anything else any more, and because everything kind of tastes the same and and fake. I mean, you can get used to it but even so we have goulash, which is very famous, but that's an everyday food, like we make it in a stew and also in a soup. And my grandmother makes that all the time and we eat a lot of soups and different diferent from the American kind, not this very thick one but *broth, I guess that's how you call it. And um, we, well we have this chicken paprika and all that. But for holidays we eat a little differently, I guess. In Christmas Eve we, I don't like, it's different. In Christmas Eve we eat fish. At least my family. My grandmother always makes this soup that is made out of vine. Everybody hates it eugh nasty, so. And then fish, and special kind of dessert, which I can not remember. And then on the first day of Christmas we eat turkey, which I guess you do here too. And then on the next day we eat cabbage. That's what people mostly do. So cabbage is also a big thing in Hungary. We use a lot of um sour cream in our food, and also cottage cheese, which is different from what you have in this country, because it's just more dry and not so salty, so diff.. a little different but nothing very very specific, and you would say this is Hungary. We stuff everything. We stuff peppers, we stuff cabbages, turkey, meat, everything.Santa Claus doesn't come at Christmas but *sometimes [?..?] it's Baby Jesus sometimes [?..?] it's the angel that brings the presents, and we celebrate them on Christmas Eve, so that's the big thing when we open the presents and everything. And Santa Claus comes December sixth, and you put your shoes out in the window and if you were a good child then Santa Claus comes and leaves you a present overnight. But if you weren't then he leaves you like this, I dunno, it's a bouquet of branches, but *small branches that you can *spank someone with, but you don't really, and it's painted gold so it's just a tradition. And then *wehave a lot less holidays than here. I mean, we celebrate New Year's and Christmas and Santa Claus and we have the national holidays that are *tied to historical stuff like, for example, now the biggest things is October twenty-third which is *first um free elections and also the Republic: Hungary turned from People's Republic to Republic, and that happened ten years ago actually, so it must have been a big thing this year, which I know. And then then August twentieth, which is *holiday of Saint Stephen, who was the founder of Hungary and he converted Hungarians into Christianism, so that's a big thing, because they have fireworks over the Danube and then it's a, it's a major thing ...[* = vocalic pause]
Transcribed February 11, 2008 by Kevin Flynn, Associate Editor for Transcriptions