As part of my job over here, I teach English to my Hungarian colleagues twice a week. This is a nice change from teaching the kids as I find that the adults generally have longer attention spans and are less likely to cry, need to go to the bathroom, whack each other with their pencil cases, talk incessantly, etc during the classes.
On Monday I decided to teach my colleagues how to say numbers in English. I soon discovered that they mostly knew this already, so I got them to practice using the numbers in more complex sentences. I had them ask each other questions such as "What is your telephone number?" and "What is your address?".
Once they had mastered these phrases, I thought that they may as well learn how to ask "What is your email address?" I'm not sure why, but it never occurred to me that the @ and . symbols would be pronounced differently in Hungarian, but of course they are. In Hungarian, the @ symbol is referred to as kukac and the . symbol is called pont.
My colleagues then advised me that kukac also means worm in Hungarian. I suppose if you look at the @ symbol it does kind of resemble a curled up worm, so this makes some sort of sense.
My colleagues then advised me that kukac is also a term that is used to refer to a small penis.
Um, okay.
So I guess this means that an email address could literally be translated as something like "whatever small penis gmail pont com"?
Very strange!
- Amanda
English Hungarian translation
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