Dielxysa?

Can you raed tihs? When a student first sent me this image in an e-mail my haed hrut. A class discussion and a simple test ensued to try and get to the bottom of this puzzle regarding redundancy in language. Let's start with the fact that the source of this meme is a translation of an English text that spread like wildfire over the net in 2003:

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

Can the text be traced back to its source at Cambridge University? Well, it seems a number of people have tried, but to no avail. This may lead to our first doubts concerning this word scrambling game.

Here is a text on the subject created by a skeptical blogger using the "scramble script":

I snlreiecy digarese wtih the perisems put frtoh aobut scbrialnmg wrods, so I'm itionltlnaney enrovdaenig to ulizite leetnghir cpocmtaeild wodrs, not nclesiesray uonommcn wrdos, taht can not be dceerihped as ieuntlivity as tohse in the oirginal prgpraaah. The frist of my dsiceorives is taht wrods endnig in sufefxis or bnegining in pierxfes bmecoe daggesiend form the frist/lsat ltteer rothlpisneias taht spupedsloy are the baiss of the pmseires, and bemcoe mcuh mroe clinaelnhgg, amsolt ieclenaipbhrde. See?

This proves that some scrambled words are more difficult to decipher than others. Note here that words ending in suffixes or beginning with prefixes complicate matters enormously. And this leads us back to our Hungarian text, and the question of 'what do we mean by the word "word"'?

Discussing the text in class, I used the following test (a randomly selected sentence from the internet):

A talaszteny 16:9-se kpnaénayárl rizelnkeekd

Geddit?

A tesztalany 16:9-es képaránnyal rendelkezik

(The test model has a 16:9 aspect ratio)

Here we are confused by a number of factors. First of all, there are two compound nouns "tesztalany", and "képarány". You might argue that we should treat these as separate words, but there are other problems. The word képarány ("picture ratio" = "aspect ratio) ends in the comitative suffix -VAL/VEL, and to make matters worse, the initial V consonant of that suffix phonologically assimilates with and lengthens the previous consonant.(This is reflected typographically by the "nny" consonant cluster towards the end of the word). Here then, the last letter is part of an inflectional ending and not of the "base word": the addition of inflectional letters simply adds to the confusion.

Then there is the verb "rendelkezik". If we break this verb down into its constituent morphemes we come up with something like this:

REND-EL-KEZ-IK
("order" + denominal verbal suffix + reflexive suffix + s3 person marker)
"s/he/it possesses"
Here the suffixes create a verb from a noun, and give information about reflexivity and person.

Let us look at another example, and see how the meaning of the word "unfolds" as more suffixes are added:

ki [out]

ki- véd- [out-defend]

ki- véd- és - [out-defend-deverbal nominal suff.-]

ki- véd- és – é- [out-defend-deverbal nominal suff.-S3 poss. suff.-]

ki- véd- és – é - re [out-defend-deverbal nominal suff.-S3 poss.-sublative suff.]

(suff. = suffix, roughly translatable as "in its/his/her defense")

If we jumble up the letters in between, we lose too much information, and the resulting word simply becomes a mess.

So how can we understand the Hungarian (translated) text? The translator probably made a number of conscious decisions in "creating" his scrambled words. In other words, s/he manipulated the jumbling of the text to make it easy to read.

First, note that in the Hungarian text there are many letters - especially consonants - which seem to be in the same order as in the original word. This makes the processing of the words a lot easier (note that in many languages such as Hebrew, Arabic, and Persian the vowels are simply left out). If most of the consonants are in approximately the right order and/or position words are easy to make out: "iprmoetnt" is easy because "iprmoetnt" retains the right order, approximate location, and correct sounds for p - r and t - nt. Transpositions of adjacent letters are easier to read than more distant transpositions. Also, there are a number of "short" words included in the text. There is less shuffling of letters in short words than in long words, and none in say a definite article such as "a" [the]. Short words = easier to process.

We might hypothesize the following:

The meme represents a simplistic reduction of the reading process in both languages.

In both languages, a number of function words [such as "the, be, and, you" etc.] remain unchanged - mostly because they are short words. This helps the reader by preserving the grammatical structure of the original, helping him/her to work out what word is likely to come next. Context also helps: the text is reasonably predictable. After you have understood the first few words of the sentence, you can guess what words are coming next (even with very little information from the letters in the word). Context plays an important role in understanding speech that is distorted or "noisy", and the same is probably true for written texts that have been jumbled.

However, on comparing Hungarian with English in more detail, we may conclude that the process of reading comprehension in Hungarian is to some degree different to the process in English, as grammatical information unfolds within words to a greater degree in Hungarian. By contrast, in English much grammatical information is conveyed by word order, as English is an inflectionally poor language.


It stands to reason that there is a stronger reliance on analytic strategies when reading words in an agglutinative language such as Hungarian, as prefixes, suffixes and inflections may provide a lot of additional grammatical information. In English many of our "words" map directly to morphemes, so perhaps there is a greater tendency towards "direct lexical access", otherwise known as "whole-word" or even "logographic" reading, where words are treated like images.


In conclusion, the text shows some of the power of redundancy in both languages, but it's not as simple as saying that letter order does not matter at all. It is a very reductive, pseudo-scientific meme.

And while we're on the subject, somebody should tell the people at French Connection UK that most people think their t-shirts read "fuck". Surely that's inappropriate. Maybe they got the idea from "CFUK", or "Conservative Future UK".

Magyar-Alkohol Szótár

As social and cultural animals, humans have developed a rich and diverse vocabulary of intoxication-related language to describe the subjective states they experience when drinking. Here, for advanced learners of Hungarian and other "beerlinguals" is the "Magyar-Alkohol Szótár" (Hungarian-Alcohol Dictionary):

Méezsör. - Szeretnék még egy (utolsó) sört kérni
N'düzed. - Kérem adjon tüzet, legyen szíves.
Gyogizsdzsaj. - - Nagyon vonzónak találom Önt, kisasszony.
Möfaszan. - Bocsánat, nem értettem amit mondott.
Huubaze. - Sajnos úgy érzem, hogy rövidesen rosszul leszek.
Jjjjjaaaa. - Meglehetősen fáradtnak érzem magam, talán jobb lenne ha valaki segítene hazamennem.
Pisaba. - Megígérem, hogy többé nem fogok ennyi alkoholt fogyasztani.
Amászikit - Legyen szíves engem is kínáljon meg a cigarettájából!
Ö'nújm. - Nem érzem jól magam.
Dedeneemá. - Köszönöm, barátom, nem kívánok több kevertet.
Hosszméső. - Hozok még sört.
Csejde. - Gyere ide barátom!
Énnemkek. - Köszönöm, nem kérek többet inni rövidet.
Tesmonni háravn. - Elnézést, hogy megzavarom a diskurzust, de meg tudnák kérem mondani a pontos időt?
Eszökecczit. - Elszívok egy (utolsó) cigit.
Hádeteteeztígyte? - Tényleg menni készülsz?
Fiszk. - Főúr, kérem a számlámat, legyen szíves!
Itagzi. - Itt a taxim, ideje indulnom haza

Latest Project: Fungarian - A New Way to Learn Hungarian

Fungarian is a special learning program and registered trademark of the HUNGAROLINGUA Language School, which has been providing language education services since 1991. Our students mostly include expats who work for leading multinational companies.

Fungarian is a method of teaching Hungarian as a foreign language which focuses on practical knowledge and communication skills. The term "Fungarian" was coined to show that the "Hungarian is a difficult, unlearnable language" cliché is just a myth. Learning Hungarian can be fun if you do it for your own pleasure, and it can be rewarding if you have immediate success, e.g. when you understand the signage in the streets or can safely use the greeting ‘csókolom’ and receive praise from locals for your good pronunciation.

The idea of coming forward with a new approach of teaching Hungarian was instigated by complaints from foreign residents who made the effort to enroll on a Hungarian language course only to drop out after three classes since they found learning Hungarian to be the “constant torture of grammar.” Fungarian focuses on lexical items in their cultural context, highlighting everyday situations and finding solutions to difficulties commonly experienced by foreigners.
We use our own materials, developed by a core team of five experienced linguists and teachers.

As well as teaching Hungarian to interested individuals, we also take care of the other needs of expats, especially newcomers. Our “off the beaten track” tours of Budapest are tailored to individual interests and have proved very successful. We also offer thematic one-day tours outside Budapest.

Furthermore, we provide tailor-made intercultural communication training and individual coaching sessions to meet company training needs.

The school is located in the centre of Pest, near Blaha Lujza tér.

Translating Beregi

This is an excerpt from Beregi Tamás' forthcoming novel Noctambulo. It is of course, translated by me:

[…] The crowd dispersed for a second, and I realized my stomach was groaning with hunger. I dropped anchor in a small patisserie, breakfasted, and watched a group of women with some fascination as they gossiped outside the window in feathered hats. Then, I continued on my way. Along the Strand—unlike in London’s Cheapside—there were plenty of ladies who drew one’s gaze in the daylight hours: they paraded themselves around in flowing yellow and white costumes, always with parasols at hand; in bad weather they were put up to provide shelter from the wind and keep them dry, while in fairer weather they were used to net a little shade.

It was not just famous restaurants, pubs and theatres that had mushroomed along the Strand, as there were a number of bookshops and photography salons as well. I paused before the window of one of the shops, and perused the collection of children’s portraits on display. The unknown artist had framed the pictures with painted snowdrops and clouds, and sometimes even sketched crushed eggshell around the children, whose countenances each bore a peculiar expression of terror. For even though the drastic reduction of exposure times had meant the disappearance of hidden supports that ensured that little necks, elbows and waists remained motionless (props that were often ridiculed in Punch for their resemblance to instruments of torture) it was still a challenge to keep children still on high chairs with their wooden hoops, horses, swords and rifles, and the procedure was nothing less than torture for both child and photographer. Indeed, a particularly dim-witted young tadpole had even caused one of Thomas Poulton’s work-colleagues to be ousted from the trade: the portraitist had tried to goad the child into looking towards the camera by using dolls and musical boxes—at one point he even improvised a tap dance and a pantomime—but after two hours of fruitless endeavour and eleven wasted negatives, his nerves were tattered and frayed. The boy’s mother, who had meanwhile been waiting in the hallway, suddenly heard her son emit a loud scream, and so she leapt up and burst into the room. There she found the photographer jumping up and down on the ruined negatives and pulling the hair of her beloved offspring, who was clinging onto the chair for dear life. It soon transpired that the boy was the grandson of a distinguished banker, and within a day the photographer was forced to shut up shop with permanent effect.

Blast from the Past

How did these articles of mine never get published? Just a bit of fun to keep the recession depression at bay:

Rat infestation plagues Budapest
Tuesday January 17, 2006

Budapest has been invaded by a huge army of rats, according to Pat Kany, spokesman for the EU’s Pest Control Body.

Members of a field team led by Kany made the stunning discovery whilst conducting research in the city centre.

“We were examining the shopping malls when suddenly we realised we were surrounded by mall rats of all different shapes and sizes,” said Kany, a rodentologist based in the German town of Hamlyn.

“Rat men, women and children swarmed about in hordes, frenziedly buying goods at over-inflated prices.”

The revelation contradicts the commonly held view that no rats existed in Budapest since thousands of gallons of the noxious poison traubisoda were pumped into the sewers during the Communist regime.

“Rats were thought to have been wiped out here, but we must complete a population density study and build an accurate picture of the mall rat genome base. Then we can see the rate at which mutations have occurred,” said rat scientist Jean Rottan.

Although several factors may explain the Malthusian-crisis caused by the beady-eyed rattus mallus hungaricus, Rottan cites vanity and the malls’ “rip-off rat mafia” as key contributors.

“Now huge nests have spread everywhere, and with a lack of vaccinations against bad taste, we estimate that the mall rat population will at least double by 2010.”

Rottan went on to warn that without the pied piper, who is currently serving a prison sentence for child molestation, drastic measures would have to be taken.

“The only way to combat the problem is for rat people to wake up and realize that just because something is expensive and sold in a mall doesn’t mean it’s any better.”

Kany then outlined the team’s plans to continue research with the aim of finding an effective solution.

“We will take specimens back to the rat lab in Hamlyn, and examine them with hammers”.


Gazprom cuts gas shipments to Hungary
Wednesday January 18, 2006

Russia's state-controlled natural gas exporter OAO Gazprom has cut shipments of fuel to Hungary by 20% because extreme cold weather led to increased domestic demand.

Kontár Kálmán, A spokesman for the Hungarian gas company MOLE, said that this cut is of little significance, as the level of hot air in Hungary is exponentially increasing in the period leading up to the elections. He added that there was in fact a distinct possibility of a tropical microclimate evolving over the next few months.

“The cold winter air will soon dissipate due to a huge influx of blustering hot air,” he predicted.

Although MOLE is at present using 3.4 billion cubic meters of reserve fuel to make up for the daily demand, Kontár suggested that connecting certain politicians and their press organs to the national network would not only redress the present shortfall, but also help combat climate change.

“The whole country could benefit from the huge amounts of superfluous gas produced,” he said, outlining company plans to siphon off 250 billion cubic meters of gas from parliament each year.

“Maybe then we could start exporting gas to Russia to help them cope with extreme weather conditions.”

The Big Freeze - New Year and Recession

After a short spell back in the UK (the "rip-off capital of the world") it became apparent to me that many commodities and services are actually cheaper than they are in Hungary.

That's not to say that everything is cheaper - far from it. But aside from ludicrous property prices it seems that you can enjoy a reasonably high standard of living on a relatively low budget back in Blighty. Bargain hunting may reap rich rewards.
For example, you can certainly get more high-quality foodstuffs for a lower price, and you can enjoy superb food at excellent restaurants that easily compare in price to their Hungarian counterparts (e.g. Lake District, lakeside restaurant with open fireplaces and 3 course meal comes to £14.99 per head - approx 4,500 HuF). The price of electrical goods varies in both countries, but on the whole, more bargains are to be had in the UK.

One shocking revelation was that for their 5 bedroom B&B my parents pay less money per year in water bills than I do for a two bedroom flat in Budapest. Long gone are those days when the UK was unaffordable, and Hungary was an alcoholic students' paradise.
OK, gas and electricity may be cheaper in Hungary, and if you're thinking of blaming the effects of exchange rate fluctuation, yes, the pound has deflated in value...but the forint is also depreciating, and for the vast majority of people outside the ultra-rich bracket, wages here in Hungary have certainly not caught up with those of Western Europe.
So, if you find yourself balking at the fruit and veg counters in Hungary, just think of those bargain bins in UK supermarkets that are full of "reduced" items. The quality of groceries in those reduced bins often exceeds that of full-price goods found on the shelves in Budapest supermarkets. All too frequently you find objects that are dessicated and shrivelled beyond recognition next to piles of crushed, vomit-inducing compost mulch that is labelled as some kind of root vegetable. So much for the dictum of "if in doubt, chuck it out". It seems that in Hungary the trend is to sell sh*t off your shovel, and get paid crap to boot.