SOVIET EFFICIENCY
Today the Moscow Times reported that the last World War II POW who had been held in the Soviet Union died in Budapest. Andras Toma was captured in 1944 by Soviet troops. He was deemed to be mentally unbalanced after some time as a POW, and was shipped to a psychological hospital. Given the use of the hospitals to house political prisoners during the Soviet era, it is hard to know whether he really was unstable.
In any case, Mr. Toma's use of the Hungarian language was misunderstood to be gibberish by Soviet doctors, and he remained in a Russian hospital until 2000, when a Hungarian-speaking Slovak doctor heard his speech and realized it was Hungarian. Mt Toma was then flown back to Hungary and eventually reunited with family he no longer knew he had.
OK, is the worst thing about this story that the Soviets, then the Russians didn't realize that they had a POW for 56 years, or that they could not identify the Hungarian language even after having INVADED the country in 1956? Remember, these were not just uneducated semi-rural Russians failing to identify a language spoken 1500 miles away. These were doctors and other very educated personnel. Incredible.
The other interesting point is that Hungarian is unrelated to the Slavic languages that made up the bulk of the Warsaw Pact languages (exceptions being German, Hungarian, and Romanian). The distance of Hungarian from the Slavic languages is made clear below:
Number Hungarian Polish Russian
1 egy jeden odéen
2 kettõ (két) dwa dva
3 három trzy tree
4 négy cztery chetíreh
5 öt piec pyat
6 hat szesc shest
7 hét siedem sem
8 nyolc osiem vósem
9 kilenc dziewiec dévyat
While the Polish and Russian are not identical they are much more similar than the Hungarian is to either. In fact, Hungarian is apparently even slightly related only to Estonian and Finnish. Boy, did that guy pick the wrong language to speak to his captors.
STUPID NCAA
I might as well throw my money at the lottery as be in NCAA pools. I must accept that I simply do not watch enough college hoops to be a "fan" and generally don't care about teams I don't love (Illini), like (DePaul for old time's sake, Drake to preserve my marriage), or hate (Notre Dame, G.P. (which means General Principles), Iowa, Indiana, Purdue, Michigan, Michigan State, Wisconsin--no sense in bothering to hate the remaining Big (11) Ten teams). Thus, when Alabama Southern Juco A&I plays New Mexico State School of Mines and Bartending, I have zero idea who will win.
Today the Moscow Times reported that the last World War II POW who had been held in the Soviet Union died in Budapest. Andras Toma was captured in 1944 by Soviet troops. He was deemed to be mentally unbalanced after some time as a POW, and was shipped to a psychological hospital. Given the use of the hospitals to house political prisoners during the Soviet era, it is hard to know whether he really was unstable.
In any case, Mr. Toma's use of the Hungarian language was misunderstood to be gibberish by Soviet doctors, and he remained in a Russian hospital until 2000, when a Hungarian-speaking Slovak doctor heard his speech and realized it was Hungarian. Mt Toma was then flown back to Hungary and eventually reunited with family he no longer knew he had.
OK, is the worst thing about this story that the Soviets, then the Russians didn't realize that they had a POW for 56 years, or that they could not identify the Hungarian language even after having INVADED the country in 1956? Remember, these were not just uneducated semi-rural Russians failing to identify a language spoken 1500 miles away. These were doctors and other very educated personnel. Incredible.
The other interesting point is that Hungarian is unrelated to the Slavic languages that made up the bulk of the Warsaw Pact languages (exceptions being German, Hungarian, and Romanian). The distance of Hungarian from the Slavic languages is made clear below:
Number Hungarian Polish Russian
1 egy jeden odéen
2 kettõ (két) dwa dva
3 három trzy tree
4 négy cztery chetíreh
5 öt piec pyat
6 hat szesc shest
7 hét siedem sem
8 nyolc osiem vósem
9 kilenc dziewiec dévyat
While the Polish and Russian are not identical they are much more similar than the Hungarian is to either. In fact, Hungarian is apparently even slightly related only to Estonian and Finnish. Boy, did that guy pick the wrong language to speak to his captors.
STUPID NCAA
I might as well throw my money at the lottery as be in NCAA pools. I must accept that I simply do not watch enough college hoops to be a "fan" and generally don't care about teams I don't love (Illini), like (DePaul for old time's sake, Drake to preserve my marriage), or hate (Notre Dame, G.P. (which means General Principles), Iowa, Indiana, Purdue, Michigan, Michigan State, Wisconsin--no sense in bothering to hate the remaining Big (11) Ten teams). Thus, when Alabama Southern Juco A&I plays New Mexico State School of Mines and Bartending, I have zero idea who will win.
posted by David at 9:58 AM
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