Hungarian

557 Hungarian Genealogy Dictionaries

/ ivasallay / 6 Comments

For many years I’ve used this Hungarian Genealogy Word List from FamilySearch to assist me as I’ve researched my family’s Hungarian genealogy.

This week I found another online Hungarian-English Dictionary. I really like this particular one because for each letter of the alphabet it gives a separate list of diseases beginning with that letter. Knowing the names of diseases in Hungarian is very helpful when looking at death records because often the cause of death is listed on the record.

If you are interested in word lists for some other language, you should be able to find it at FamilySearch.org.

Between those two word lists and an old Hungarian-English dictionary a genealogist friend gave me, I can find the meaning of most words I see. Sometimes I still have to ask my son who speaks Hungarian fluently for assistance, and sometimes the handwriting is so bad that even he can’t read it, but for the most part, we are able to read and understand the records.

FamilySearch included a chart to help people recognize the names of Hungarian months found in the records. When I looked at our family’s records, I sometimes found month names that were not included on their chart, so I expanded the table to include some of these other names, too. The chart is not very difficult to read: the first column is in English, and the last column is in modern Hungarian and looks quite similar to English.

Hungarian Months
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557 is the sum of two squares: 557 = 14² + 19²

557 is the hypotenuse of the primitive Pythagorean triple 165-532-557.

  • 557 is a prime number.
  • Prime factorization: 557 is prime.
  • The exponent of prime number 557 is 1. Adding 1 to that exponent we get (1 + 1) = 2. Therefore 557 has exactly 2 factors.
  • Factors of 557: 1, 557
  • Factor pairs: 557 = 1 x 557
  • 557 has no square factors that allow its square root to be simplified. √557 ≈ 23.6008

How do we know that 557 is a prime number? If 557 were not a prime number, then it would be divisible by at least one prime number less than or equal to √557 ≈ 23.6. Since 557 cannot be divided evenly by 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, or 23, we know that 557 is a prime number.

426 My Response to a Pi-lish Question

/ ivasallay / 3 Comments
Hungarian Pi

A comma is used for decimals in many countries.

This last week there was a post on the Mathemagical Site titled “Do You Speak Pilish?”  Some people remember the digits of π by memorizing carefully constructed sentences in which the first word has three letters, the second word has one letter, and so on. Several examples were given, not just in English, but in eight other languages as well!

Hungarian was not one of the languages listed, but I wondered if there could possibly be a Pilish way for Hungarians to remember the digits of pi? (Almost all of my husband’s relatives were born in Hungary, and I am fascinated with the country and the language.) I just had to google “Magyar pi szám,” to find an article titled Minden idők legjobb magyar nyelvű pi-verse.

Now while I can read many Hungarian words, the sentence structure is so different from English that my comprehension isn’t as good as I’d like it to be. My son, David, taught himself the basics of the language before he went there to live and work several years ago. I emailed him the article requesting that he help me with the translation. In the email he sent back you will notice the problem with word for word translation of Hungarian into English. My son wrote:

“I don’t think I could translate it whilst maintaining the word lengths (which is the whole point). I’m giving it to you with a more or less word for word translation along with one that is written in more natural English. The Ludolph it mentions in the poem is the Dutch mathematician Ludolph van Ceulen, who was the first to publish pi up to 20 digits.”

I put his word for word translation in the following graphic:

Hungarian Pilish Pi

 

Here is David’s translation into more natural English:

  • Instead of the old and rough approximation,
  • Count the letters that come, word for word
  • If we end here at twenty words, we already have Ludolph’s result,
  • but exactly 10 more come from this last stanza.
  • That, I can promise confidently.”

Here is my answer to the question, “Do you speak Pilish?”

Not really. I am not the least bit interested in memorizing some cute paragraph in English to help me remember the first 30 or so digits of pi, BUT in Hungarian, I am going to give a try!

  • 426 is a composite number.
  • Prime factorization: 426 = 2 x 3 x 71
  • The exponents in the prime factorization are 1, 1, and 1. Adding one to each and multiplying we get (1 + 1)(1 + 1)(1 + 1) = 2 x 2 x 2 = 8. Therefore 426 has exactly 8 factors.
  • Factors of 426: 1, 2, 3, 6, 71, 142, 213, 426
  • Factor pairs: 426 = 1 x 426, 2 x 213, 3 x 142, or 6 x 71
  • 426 has no square factors that allow its square root to be simplified. √426 ≈ 20.6398

111 and How Well Can You Add and Subtract in All Those Foreign Languages in Which You’ve Learned How to Count?

/ ivasallay / 8 Comments

In general, adults understand how to add and subtract one-digit numbers, and most adults also have learned how to count in at least one language other than their native language. Does that mean these adults can add and subtract in those other languages in which they have learned how to count? I am curious to know the answer to that question. Let me tell you how counting, adding, and subtracting in a foreign language work for me.

I studied Spanish for three years in High School. I remember doing some basic addition and subtraction problems back then. Even though I remember very little Spanish vocabulary, I can still add and subtract one-digit numbers in Spanish fairly well.

I studied German for one and a half years in college. I remember even less German than I remember Spanish. All of the number words LOOK familiar, but I failed miserably when I tried to add and subtract using German numbers.

I lived in Turkey for two years when my husband was stationed at İncirlik Air Base near Adana. I learned a bit of vocabulary and how to count in Turkish. I actually remember the Turkish numbers a little better than the German ones, but my ability to add and subtract in Turkish isn’t much better.

Now I am motivated to learn Hungarian. (I want to be able to understand my husband’s relatives better someday when I get to visit them in Hungary again.) The numbers in Hungarian are fresh in my mind, and I have even passed the time counting up to 1000 in Hungarian when I’ve gone for a walk.

When it came to doing basic addition or subtraction in Hungarian at this game site I found my ability to count did not help as much as I supposed. However, with PRACTICE, I have been able to greatly improve my ability to add and subtract in Hungarian.

After gaining the ability to add and subtract in Hungarian, I added another wrench to the process: I required myself to say complete number sentences in Hungarian instead of allowing English words like plus, minus, or equals to be used.From Hungarian Verbs & Essentials of Grammar, I learned that there are a few ways to say a number sentence when adding in Hungarian. The easiest two ways to say 4 + 3 = 7 are “Négy meg három (az) hét” or “Négy plusz három (az) hét.” Subtraction is a little more complicated because different numbers take two different case endings, ból or ből, in order to maintain vowel harmony. 10 – 4 = 6 is “Tízből négy az hat.” while 6 – 2 = 4 is “Hatból kettő az négy.”

Requiring myself to use complete Hungarian sentences has made me a little slower, and sometimes the hourglass empties before I click next to the correct number word. However, with PRACTICE I am getting better, and I will move on to the number games that use numbers up to 20 and 100 very soon.

This activity reinforces my belief that practice really does make a difference. I can see the merits of children practicing basic number facts in English or any other language they can speak. The FIND THE FACTORS puzzles are an excellent way for people of all ages to practice basic multiplication and division facts.

If you would like to see how well you can add and subtract using these learning games in other languages go to http://www.digitaldialects.com/.

Select one of the 70 available languages (listed in alphabetical order from left to right), select Numbers 1 -12, and begin the adding and subtracting game in the chosen language. I would love to know how well you do, so try it and leave a comment if your results don’t embarrass you too much!

Now I’ll tell you a little bit about the number 111:

111  is a composite number. 111 = 1 x 111 or 3 x 37. Factors of 111: 1, 3, 37, 111. Prime Factorization: 111 = 3 x 37.

111 is never a clue in the FIND THE FACTORS puzzles.

111 = (1 + 2 + 3 + . . . + 35 +36)/6, which can be more easily calculated by using 111 = (36 x 37)/(2 x 6). Therefore, 111 is the magic sum of any 6 x 6 magic square that contains all the integers from 1 to 36.