RE: [Cz-L] street names

This is strange. I was born in '27 and we left in the spring of '39. The first time I learned that my street, Strada Traian, was called Splenigasse in Austria was last year from the Cz group. On the other hand, I never knew that Herrengasse ever had a Romanian name.

I started to learn English in '38 and today my memory of conversations back in Cz are in English so I can't recall exactly what language we used when - but to the best of my recollection we may have slid from one language to another frequently. German remained the Lingua Franca, I guess, to the dismay of the Romanians who might have come in after the annexation of Bucovina.

Dad was from Arad and had a lot of Hungarian friends who would converse only in Hungarian but dad wouldn't teach me Hungarian. So even today, if I find myself in a crowd of Hungarians while they chatter away with me not understanding anything they're saying, I feel at home.

Yiddish was verboten at home. I had an uncle who spoke mostly Yiddish and to me that was the "fun" language. I picked up a lot of Yiddish years later in New York from Bill Ficks, the German-Irish-American Catholic manager of Zsa Zsa Gabor who had picked it up in showbiz. We would argue over pronunciation. I would pronounce "bubkes" the European way with an "oo" sound while he applied an American pronunciation, more of an "ah" sound. I pointed out that the English and Americans learned it long after we did so I had to be right.

In spite of my dad's intent to keep Hungarian his private language, I picked up a few Hungarian expressions. One of these was Czirke Fogo (no idea of spelling) which literally meant "chicken thief," a mild way of accusing someone of being a rascal. I had to produce a TV commercial with Zsa Zsa in 1961 and she became too demanding about things so I said "You are a czirke fogo!" She was surprised and delighted and started chattering in Hungarian. I explained that I didn't speak the language, but that one expression made us instant buddies and we got along beautifully after that. I wouldn't have been surprised to find out that she also understood a bit of Yiddish.

Andy Halmay

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Received on 2010-06-06 13:48:04