Hungarian Greetings and Farewells

One of my favorite things about Hungarians and the Hungarian language is their avid use of greetings and farewells. There are many different ways to say hello and to wish someone a good day, just as there are many ways you can say goodbye. There are formal greetings, informal greetings, abbreviated versions, ones to be said from a man to a woman, ones to be used when addressing more than one person, ones that are used for both hello and goodbye, and others to only be used at a particular time of day. When I first moved to Hungary and would see someone in my building I would panic inside for a moment as I tried to decide which greeting to use, and typically settled for just repeating the greeting that was said to me (that way I wouldn't offend anyone in being too informal or formal). Well this form of mimicry stopped quickly when about a week into my stay an elderly man in my building  kindly said to me "kezed csokolom" (meaning "I kiss thy hand"), and I quickly repeated this back to him. I had not heard this greeting before, so when I got to work I asked my colleague what it meant and soon learned its true meaning and that it is a formal greeting that essentially older men use towards women, or a man would use towards an older woman. After learning this I decided responding with my own greeting would be better received.

I have come to love this regular interaction with complete strangers, store clerks, colleagues and good friends. The proper question is not IF someone will say hello or goodbye to you, but how many times will they say hello or goodbye. No farewell is more prolonged than those which can be heard over the phone. I cannot count the number of times that I have been privileged to overhear one side of a phone conversation where the end to the call inevitably sounded like this: "szia, szia, hello, puszi, puszi, szia" (bye, bye, bye, kiss, kiss, bye). After I shared this observation of the long goodbye with some of my Hungarian friends, they became aware of how prevalent this was among Hungarians, and now we joke about it and exaggerate our goodbyes to a point of laughter. I rather like the long goodbye. It definitely beats no goodbye at all.

Until next time...szia, hello, szia, puszi, szia, szia