Joy

In the last year I had not any time to write my blog. The reason for this is that I have to take care of his language development:

But now I feel to have the energy for doing something else as well not only to educate my son.

So I decided to write here about some interesting phenomena of the Hungarian language. I do not want to write long scholarly essays, I only want to show some lovely inventions of the language that I usually find together with my students in the lesson.

So here is the first one:

We studied with my Dutch student how to express joy in Hungarian. Of course there are more possibilities than only say “örülök (valaminek)”. There are several expressions which also describe different intensity of joy, like:

boldog vagyok
örvendek / örvendezem
repesek az örömtől
ujjongok
majd kiugrom a bőrömből (örömömben)

The last expression (I jump out of my skin (in my joy)) deligthed us, because we found that it is also present in the Dutch language. But while it is meaning in Hungarian that you are overjoyed and very excited, in Dutch you feel like jumping out of your skin when you are very angry and excited because of that. It means that when you say this in Dutch you have so many negative energies because of your fury that you would like to leave your body. But when you say this in Hungarian you have so many positive energies because of the joy that you feel like to fly out of your body.

So be careful when you speak another language. The same expression can decsribe so much different emotions!