Sunday, April 5, 2009

#95












#95, Buda, Budapest


Because it makes things easier, I try to learn the language of the places I visit. I can say "I'd like the check please" in Czech and "I need help" in German. I once knew how to ask for a cigarette in Irish and I can drink to your health in Italian. One thing I cannot do, however, is make heads, tails, or middles out of Magyar, the Hungarian arrangement of the alphabet they insist on calling a language. Now, I know the Magyar tongue is a rich and complex language unlike any other European or romance languages, and I'm sure there is a beauty to the Finno-Ugric language group that is related, somewhat distantly, to Estonian, Finnish, and a handful of other minor languages found in Western Siberia, that I'm just not grasping. But what can I say? I can't be a master of everything.

This inscription comes from a museum plaque in Budapest. I know neither who nor what the text says and I haven't a clue what the 95 represents. So I'm opening this up to my readers, skilled as you are in navigating the unexplained intricacies of the Word Verification word system, to interpretation. Who, or what, is "OVAROSI TANACS"? Is it man, woman, mineral, or vegetable? Or is it something far more nefarious? And what's so special about that 95?

5 comments:

Ray Gunn said...

OVAROSI TANACS sounds like a fertility clinic to me!

Therese Cox said...

Ha! Good one, Ray.

Pierre said...

Instead of being creative, I used the Internet to find out what the words mean. Tanacs means council.
Ovarosi took a while to track down but as best I understand, it means old town. So there yar. Boring huh?

Rugspo: Edgar Allen's cat.

Therese Cox said...

On the contrary - I love facts! I also love the moment of boundless possibility before finding something out, but facts are always, always satisfying things.

Town council - rock on!

Julie said...

A down day