BUT I UNDERSTAND
BUT I UNDERSTAND
Teaspoons softly clinking against cups of coffee. The scent of fresh paint. Late autumn heat sneaking among the highrises onto the playground. The hand that vibrates to the beat of the cat purring. A mosaic of impressions from Târgu Mureș.
Teaspoons softly clinking against cups of coffee. The scent of fresh paint. Late autumn heat sneaking among the highrises onto the playground. The hand that vibrates to the beat of the cat purring. A mosaic of impressions from Târgu Mureș.
This is why we come here, to enjoy ourselves, and when we go home, we’re all in a good mood. Stress-free and good spirited, it’s good for the brain. Well, for whoever has a brain. There are small, insignificant jokes, but we have fun.
“At first there was that time when I used to say ‘kezicsókolom, Margit’ [good day to you, Ms. Margit], now it’s ‘szia, Margit’.”
“Now she opens the door with ‘Itt osztják a kávét?’ [‘Is this where they serve coffee?’]”
Margit, Kati, Sanyi, and Ioana
I’m half Szekely, my mother is from the Nirja Valley. My father was Ukrainian, his mother Polish.
I went to school in Toplița and when I finished fourth grade in the Hungarian section, my mother Irén told me, “Now you’re moving to the Romanian section. Because we live in Romania. So, then, starting from the fifth grade, I started studying in Romanian, including at university. In Toplița I spoke both languages. Both Romanian and Hungarian. I doled out the bread and lard both to one and the other.
“I take the key out of the lock at night. They always have a key on them.”
“The deal is that they take out the key when they lock the door at night because if, God forbid, something should happen, we’d be able to get in quickly. We look out for each other. We’re already at that age when this is the healthy way to behave. Something could happen at any moment.”
“What our mistake was? He never spoke Hungarian to Andrei.”
“I didn’t insist upon it enough.”
“He spent more time with mother, we spoke Romanian more.”
“Andrei had a classmate whom he fell in love with. They were madly in love. The girl was Hungarian. They grew so fond and in love with each other that when Easter came around, his friend gave him a very long poem to learn by heart, to go sprinkling.”
“It was such a long poem even I’d have a hard time memorizing it.”
“And he’d rattle it out just like that. But he didn’t understand what he was saying. Yet, by God, he was able to say it. We laugh about it to this day.”
We tried to also include a more specifically Transylvanian vocabulary. ‘Șogor’, for instance – ‘sógor’. We use the word in Romanian as well. Yes, for the dialogues we sometimes used situations we ran into ourselves.
“We also play ping-pong or go out for ice cream.”
“The textbook is a sort of learning guide. It’s not a product that will teach you on its own or solve all your problems when you’re trying to learn a foreign language. There are a lot of materials that will take you up to a good level, which you need to go through. A single textbook won’t solve all your problems.”
Panna and Valentin
If someone else had made the project, they probably would have chosen ten other personalities.
Metamorphoses3, a 3g HUB project
To be honest, the textbook was more of a hindrance than a helper, because it took up a lot of my time. I mean, I don’t have much time to learn. I make buttons all day. I mean, I can’t say it hasn’t helped me at all. I also learned from the textbook, but I can’t wait to finish it so I can use it myself.”
Wait… I don’t recall that one either… Harom…
“A három macska?” [The three cats?]
“OK, I do know ’harom macska,’ but it was a longer sentence.”
“Menjünk haza, hogy adjunk enni a három kedves macskának.” [Let’s go home and feed the three cats.]
“Igen.”
My father is Hungarian and my mother is Romanian. I used to speak Hungarian with my dad and Romanian with my mom. I spoke Hungarian with the grandparents over here, grandma didn’t even speak Romanian. And with my grandparents on the other side I spoke Romanian, as they were Romanian, different religions, everything.
In our family – I also have a brother -, the girl was raised in the mother’s religion and the boy in the father’s religion. Neither of them switched religions. My father is Reformed, my mother is Orthodox. I’m Orthodox myself.
Otilia
My husband is Orthodox, too. We speak Romanian among ourselves.
I take the girl to the Hungarian section at kindergarten and I’ll probably take the little boy there, too, so he learns it. It was probably harder, because I only took her there when she was four years-old and she was a bit too old. But she understands. I spoke to the teachers and asked them to also explain things to her in Romanian, if they notice that she doesn’t understand. They told me she once said to them, “But I understand.”
The nanny is also Hungarian. She speaks both languages to Antonia. My father also comes by our place every week and he only speaks Hungarian to her.