The great European languages have affinities with
one another: Latin puts one on bowing terms with French and Spanish,
Italian and Portuguese; English is not entirely unrelated to German,
Dutch, and even Norwegian; old Greek is the key to modern. But in Hungary
one comes face to face with an absolutely new language, in which even
guesswork is impossible. When "Levelezoe-Lap" means a postcard, and "ara
egy napra" means price per day, you feel that it is all up. The nearest
relatives of Hungarian are Turkish and Finnish, the Asiatic ancestors of
the race having lived between Finns and Turks; and it bears traces of
their migrations, and of the great Mongol invasion of Europe by Djingis
Khan.
With a language thus handicapped, it was a mistake to have scarcely a
word of any other tongue in an Exhibition designed to attract Europe. The
only scrap of English I saw was in the "French Theatre," in the show of
"Living Pictures," the (London) director of which had forgotten to alter
the titles printed beneath the frames. Even in giving the names of
foreign authors the Hungarians preserve their habit of placing the
Christian name second; so that I saw in the booksellers' windows works by
Eliot George, Kock Paul, and Black William.
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