East European History Quiz

[klazlo]

Originally posted by Vrylakas


It still isn't completely dead; I saw a paper when I was last there claiming that the decision to link Hungarian to the Finno-Ugric languages (as opposed to the Ural-Altaic and hence Turkish) was a political one, attempting to distance Communist Hungary from NATO Turkey and towards neutral Finland and all those Soviet minority peoples. (Sounds a bit far-fetched to me, given the massive body of linguistic evidence...) There still is some controversy about the possible relationships between the Finno-Ugric and Ural-Altaic languages, but the grammatical similarities (like the lack of genderization, etc.) are too much to ignore. Yes, you're right about the Hungarians studying vociferously any and all of the Finno-Ugric languages (Ob-Ugrian, Ostyak, Vogul, etc.). In my office I have a poster of the famous 14th century chronicle of the "Hunor and Magyar" brothers that established the myth of the common Hungarian and Hunnic ancestors...

There's another explanation, as a Hungarian joke says:

The Hungarian and Finnish people wandered from Asia to Europe. When they arrived to the border of Europe they saw a sign on the road. The following was written on it: "Those who can read turn north!" So the Finnish turned north...

I allowed this joke as a Hungarian I think it's not that bad...
But all that you wrote is true.

 

[basher]

Nice joke...

Do you Hungarians like to laugh at yourselves?
Many Finns love to complain just about everything.
That can sometimes be really annoying.

 

[klazlo]

Originally posted by basher
Nice joke...

Do you Hungarians like to laugh at yourselves?
Many Finns love to complain just about everything.
That can sometimes be really annoying.

What you wrote really shows that we're relatives: most of the Hungarians always complaining about everything (especially the unfair historical events or circumstances) or crying on the former glory of Hungary. Those national holidays that are not religious are about lost revolutions or the once glorious country... How can you have some fun this way???
So it's really annoying for me also. We don't have so much self-humor - that joke was a funny exception.

 

[Mîtiu Ioan]

Originally posted by Vrylakas
6. This country has the most phonetic alphabet for its language in all Europe.

Hungary ?

7. This country's name means "Black Mountain". (Hint: In its own language it calls itself "Crna Gora", but it is known in the West by the Italian version of its name.)

Muntenegru.

8. This country was composed of two territories known to Romanians as Bessarabia and Bukovina.

Moldavia.

9. Though this country is usually grouped with its southern neighbors, it is linguistically related to its northern neighbor. It also currently has the most successful economy in the former Soviet Union.

Estonia ?

10. This country was the only country in World War II to be simultaneously at war with both the Allies, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. This country was also among the most successful at protecting its Jewish population during the war.

Romania.

11. Hitler forced this country to declare its independence in Spring, 1939.

Slovakia ?

13. This country has a multitude of ethnic groups, and was the focus of the 1913 Second Balkan War (though this country didn't exist yet). (Hint: IMRO.)

Macedonia ?

14. This country was neutral through most of World War II, declaring war against the Nazis only a week before the German surrender.

16. This country had a powerful nationalist movement in the early 1970s, Matica Hrvatska, that provoked a major government repression.

Croatia.

17. This country has a long tradition of religious heresy, stretching back to its Christian days with Bogomilism. It continued that tradition with a new religion, until very recently...

Serbia ?

18. This country was the only fully-functional democracy in Central and Eastern Europe in the 1930s.

I'm really curious about this country ...

19. Though this country's language was written in the Cyrillic alphabet until the mid-19th century, it is related to modern French and Italian.

Romania ?

 

[Mîtiu Ioan]

Originally posted by Vrylakas
so the "Romanian" name is relatively new. 19th century Romanian nationalists wanted to emphasize their "Roman-ness", so they became Romanians.

Not entirely correct - in ancient time the serv-peasants was called "rumani".
The 19 th century nationalist claim they want to emancipate those people and is no shame to have a modest social origin - from here came "Romani".

Regards,

 

[Sodak]

Vrylakas, what was the reasoning behind the paper suggesting that Indo-European is not a true language family, but a disparate group of languages brought together?

Between the main language branches, there are plenty of differences to suggest different origins. However, it seems the similarities make this a bit hard to accept. While grammars differ, almost all retain a subject-verb-object sentence structure; The numerous verb conjugations that frustrate students of Latin were actually the norm a hundred generations ago; The vocabulary common to all I-E languages is thoroughly documented. Tongues as diverse as Greek and Sanskrit have remarkable similarities.

It seems more believable that a single family of languages diverged because of contact made with others as they migrated across eurasia. That various languages have been changed due to contact is beyond argument. I would suspect that divergence and variation has far more evidence to back it up than disparate tongues converging because of external influence.

That said, if somebody showed that some subgroup was truly of different origins, later absorbed by I-E languages, it wouldn't be too surprizing. Greek, for example, is the oddball of the family - maybe it was heavily influenced and absorbed over time. Sort of how Basque vocabulary is so closely tied to Spanish. The great unknown is, of course, who previously lived where the I-E speakers now do, and what they spoke.

 

[Vrylakas]

Klazlo wrote:

What you wrote really shows that we're relatives: most of the Hungarians always complaining about everything (especially the unfair historical events or circumstances) or crying on the former glory of Hungary. Those national holidays that are not religious are about lost revolutions or the once glorious country... How can you have some fun this way???
So it's really annoying for me also. We don't have so much self-humor - that joke was a funny exception.

Any country that can produce a Torgyán József or a Csúrka István has to have a sense of humor about itself...

 

[klazlo]

Originally posted by Vrylakas

Any country that can produce a Torgyán József or a Csúrka István has to have a sense of humor about itself...

You're right!!!
Or we can say that we have stupid motives to choose complete idiots and criminals for running our country! If it would happen in Civ3 we would always be in war with all our neighbors, break all treaty, lie continiously, have all our cities in disorder or mobilization. But it's unfortunately real life so you cannot use the autosave if the outcome is just a load of sh.t!

 

[Vrylakas]

Another taker!

Mîtiu Ioan wrote:

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by Vrylakas
6. This country has the most phonetic alphabet for its language in all Europe.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hungary ?

No - while far less so than Romanian or English, Hungarian does use various graphemic combinations to fully represent its set of sounds. The language in question, spoken geographically south of Hungary, has only 1 letter for each sound, and conversely only one sound for each letter; a near-perfect match!

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
7. This country's name means "Black Mountain". (Hint: In its own language it calls itself "Crna Gora", but it is known in the West by the Italian version of its name.)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Muntenegru.

Yes! The very likely soon-to-be-independent Montenegro.

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
8. This country was composed of two territories known to Romanians as Bessarabia and Bukovina.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Moldavia.

I wonder how you knew this one...?

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
9. Though this country is usually grouped with its southern neighbors, it is linguistically related to its northern neighbor. It also currently has the most successful economy in the former Soviet Union.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Estonia ?

Yes! A near-Finnish clone, derived from the Finno-Ugric language family.

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
10. This country was the only country in World War II to be simultaneously at war with both the Allies, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. This country was also among the most successful at protecting its Jewish population during the war.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Romania.

No, your southern neighbor. Romania switched sides when the Soviets reached the Pruth, but in doing so changed their allegiance. This country was at war with both the Allies and Axis at the same time.

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
11. Hitler forced this country to declare its independence in Spring, 1939.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Slovakia ?

Yes! And I understand they're going to erect a statue to old Father Tiso in Bratislava soon.

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
13. This country has a multitude of ethnic groups, and was the focus of the 1913 Second Balkan War (though this country didn't exist yet). (Hint: IMRO.)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Macedonia ?

Yes!

14. This country was neutral through most of World War II, declaring war against the Nazis only a week before the German surrender.

No guess?

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
16. This country had a powerful nationalist movement in the early 1970s, Matica Hrvatska, that provoked a major government repression.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Croatia.

Yes!

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
17. This country has a long tradition of religious heresy, stretching back to its Christian days with Bogomilism. It continued that tradition with a new religion, until very recently...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Serbia ?

1/2 point here because this country's history is strongly intertwined with Serbia's (or Racka's). Hint: It's last king before the Ottoman onslaught was from the Tomasevic line.

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
18. This country was the only fully-functional democracy in Central and Eastern Europe in the 1930s.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm really curious about this country ...

Mluvite cesky?

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
19. Though this country's language was written in the Cyrillic alphabet until the mid-19th century, it is related to modern French and Italian.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Romania ?]/b]

Of course.

Good run, Ioan!

 

[Vrylakas]

Mîtiu Ioan wrote:

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by Vrylakas
so the "Romanian" name is relatively new. 19th century Romanian nationalists wanted to emphasize their "Roman-ness", so they became Romanians.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Not entirely correct - in ancient time the serv-peasants was called "rumani".
The 19 th century nationalist claim they want to emancipate those people and is no shame to have a modest social origin - from here came "Romani".

Regards,

Multumesc!

Ioan - I spent some time in Timisoara; very nice city!

 

[Vrylakas]

And so I said to myself when I poked my head into the History Forum tonight and saw Sodak had been the last one to post to this thread, "I'll bet he picked up on something to do with linguistics..."



Sodak wrote:

ooo, linguistics!

Vrylakas, what was the reasoning behind the paper suggesting that Indo-European is not a true language family, but a disparate group of languages brought together?

It was a part of a revolt in, I believe the mid-1980s, against the Gimbutas-style romantic concept of a wave of Indo-European warriors swooping across the northern Plain and the Balkan mountain ranges, slashing & burning everything in their path and laying down their linguistic roots from the Hindu Kush to the Atlantic. I read of the newer idea first w/ Colin Renfrew, that (in his proposal) perhaps the core Indo-European language traits spread gradually via powerful new technologies in agriculture and metallurgy, fanning slowly through trade and transhumance routes into Europe. In this way, an Indo-European family formed by slowly spanning the Continent, partially assimilating disparate indigeonous languages but never forming a single uniform language. Renfrew doesn't go into too much detail, instead throwing it out as a "What if...?". On the one hand one could say this falls into line with an increasing awareness through several diverse fields of study that Europeans have much older roots in their continent through the so-called indigeonous, supposedly pre-Indo-European-speaking populations than previously thought. On the other hand, this brings us back to the eternal argument in linguistics about just how much living languages are susceptible to change, especially their core lexicon and grammatical structure.

Between the main language branches, there are plenty of differences to suggest different origins. However, it seems the similarities make this a bit hard to accept. While grammars differ, almost all retain a subject-verb-object sentence structure; The numerous verb conjugations that frustrate students of Latin were actually the norm a hundred generations ago; The vocabulary common to all I-E languages is thoroughly documented. Tongues as diverse as Greek and Sanskrit have remarkable similarities.

True enough, and with the various branches mapped out quite early in the history of linguistic studies. Ultimately, as a Pole I can happily observe that my branch of the Indo-European (or "Indo-Germanische" as the Germans naturally call it) family had the good sense to show up in Europe in historical times, thereby negating any need to be too concerned about "Urheimat"s...

It seems more believable that a single family of languages diverged because of contact made with others as they migrated across eurasia. That various languages have been changed due to contact is beyond argument. I would suspect that divergence and variation has far more evidence to back it up than disparate tongues converging because of external influence.

Fooling aside, I agree with you that the remarkable similarity between languages whose speakers are thousands of miles apart and with 3000+ years difference indicates that a single coherent mother language once existed. I am however intrigued by increasing evidence that chinks away at the image that's been created of a monolithic linguistic wave that swept all before it. I recall reading a short paper once that demonstrated a basic problem with how we perceive evidence by showing that while the modern Iroquios languages in New York and Ontario show a clear historical connection to the Native languages of the Carolinas with only a fairly recent disruption, the archaeological record just as clearly shows a strong cultural affinity between the Iroquois and an old material culture called Owasco in New York, stretching back more than a thousand years. The gist was that we still need to refine our approaches...

That said, if somebody showed that some subgroup was truly of different origins, later absorbed by I-E languages, it wouldn't be too surprizing. Greek, for example, is the oddball of the family - maybe it was heavily influenced and absorbed over time. Sort of how Basque vocabulary is so closely tied to Spanish. The great unknown is, of course, who previously lived where the I-E speakers now do, and what they spoke.

Ya got yer Bulgarian. for example, in every Slavic language the words for the third-person singular are variations of "On, Ona, and One". In Bulgarian, a fellow Slavic language, they are "Toj, Tja and To". This is though, as you say, an anomoly as a clearly-assimilated non-Indo-European language. Your last statement above is crucial, because we will likely never have access to any pre-Indo-European language for comparison. I ultimately like ideas like Renfrew's because they challenge the status-quo in linguistics, which for all its accomplishments still is too often stained by politics and nationalism. Break the mold!

 

[Sodak]

I think you are right about the assimilation of "indiginous" european languages in the I-E family. Some traits, as the Bulgarian example, are likely the result of a non-I-E people either influencing or adopting the language of the more recent migrants. (Invaders is too harsh for what really must have happened, imho.) In all likelihood, most languages are a mix of the two. The previous residents left their imprint, thus the unique traits. The migrating peoples diverged geographically, and thus linguistically, leaving us the family subgroups. The historical dominance of I-E languages over their geographic predecessors makes me think they were tied to a dominant people - more advanced technologically or socially, for example.

Cultural spread of ideas would probably spread faster that an actual migration of peoples. Good ideas would move quickly along communication routes. This would give rise to adoption of words (object names, mostly), but not to grammatical borrowing. That would come about because of prolonged contact.

Altho we'll probably never know what the pre-I-E europeans spoke, there are clues aplenty. Every aberration, every exception could be a remnant of somebody else's way of speaking. If researchers spend more time looking at differences like these, they may begin to piece together similar exceptions that could offer clearer hints to the now long-dead languages. That would be some cool research. If it actually came to fruition, anyway...

 

[Mîtiu Ioan]

Originally posted by Vrylakas
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
No, your southern neighbor. Romania switched sides when the Soviets reached the Pruth, but in doing so changed their allegiance. This country was at war with both the Allies and Axis at the same time.

Yes - you're right - but I belive that you refer to the year 1940 when both a Axis allied - Hungary and Soviet Union attack and take provinces from Romania - my fault .

Slovakia ?

Yes! And I understand they're going to erect a statue to old Father Tiso in Bratislava soon.

One of my grandmother is from Bratislava - so it's normal to knew this .

1/2 point here because this country's history is strongly intertwined with Serbia's (or Racka's). Hint: It's last king before the Ottoman onslaught was from the Tomasevic line.

Bosnia-Hertegovina then.

Mluvite cesky?

Aaaa - Cehoslovakia !!
Sorry - I already said Slovakia at one answer and this confused my ...

Good run, Ioan!

Thanks

Regards

P.S. : Nice quiz - please make another one related with cultural aspects !!!! Pleaseeee ...

 

[Pellaken]

A hélyzet reménytelen, de nem komoly....

>>>this is the name of a country.... hummm.... could it be greece?

1. Excluding the former Soviet Union, this country currently has half of Eastern Europe's population, at 40 million.

>>>Poland

2. This country's first paved road was built in the 1950s.

>>>albania??

3. This country absorbed thousands of people from Thrace and 1.3 million from Anatolia after World War I.

>>>Greece?

4. This country gets a bad rap, but its capital was once home to one of the most humanistic philosophers of the 18th century, Immanuel Kant.

>>>Czech Rep.?

5. This empire was famous for its bureaucracy, and in fact a writer would one day make a living writing about that bureaucracy (while living at 22 Zlaty/Gold Street). The British Empire ran all of India with fewer bureaucrats than this empire had in one city, Prague, alone. (Bonus point: Who was the writer?)

>>>Austria-Hungary

6. This country has the most phonetic alphabet for its language in all Europe.

>>>Russia?

7. This country's name means "Black Mountain". (Hint: In its own language it calls itself "Crna Gora", but it is known in the West by the Italian version of its name.)

>>>Montenegro {now the name makes some sence...}

8. This country was composed of two territories known to Romanians as Bessarabia and Bukovina.

>>>Moldova

9. Though this country is usually grouped with its southern neighbors, it is linguistically related to its northern neighbor. It also currently has the most successful economy in the former Soviet Union.

>>>Estonia

10. This country was the only country in World War II to be simultaneously at war with both the Allies, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. This country was also among the most successful at protecting its Jewish population during the war.

>>>Finland??

11. Hitler forced this country to declare its independence in Spring, 1939.

>>>Slovakia?

12. This country, composed of two ethnic groups, provided Lenin's private security guard in the Russian Civil War but later enthusiastically joined with the Nazis to fight against the Soviets in World War II.

>>>Latvia?

13. This country has a multitude of ethnic groups, and was the focus of the 1913 Second Balkan War (though this country didn't exist yet). (Hint: IMRO.)

>>>Macedonia

14. This country was neutral through most of World War II, declaring war against the Nazis only a week before the German surrender.

>>>Sweden

15. This country's capital was known for centuries by the German version of its name, Laibach.

>>>Slovenia?

16. This country had a powerful nationalist movement in the early 1970s, Matica Hrvatska, that provoked a major government repression.

>>>croatia??

17. This country has a long tradition of religious heresy, stretching back to its Christian days with Bogomilism. It continued that tradition with a new religion, until very recently...

>>>

18. This country was the only fully-functional democracy in Central and Eastern Europe in the 1930s.

>>>Czechoslovakia

19. Though this country's language was written in the Cyrillic alphabet until the mid-19th century, it is related to modern French and Italian.

>>>romania??

20. This country was, along with Czechoslovakia, one of the earliest victims of Nazi Germany when Hitler demanded the port of Klaipeda.

>>>Lithuania

21. Facing the inevitable Soviet invasion in 1944, this country successfully secretly smuggled its 1000-year old crown jewels out of the country to the American forces then in western Austria, and its national treasuries resided at Fort Knox in the U.S. until a thaw in relations prompted U.S. President Jimmy Carter to give them back in 1978.

>>>hungary??

Good luck folks!

 

[Jezebel]

Originally posted by Vrylakas
A hélyzet reménytelen, de nem komoly....

Where did this quote come from? And do you speak Hungarian fluently? Nagyon nehez nekem hogy senki korolotem beszel Magyarul... Budapest nagyon hianzik nekem.

My grammer's terrible and I'm missing all the accents and dots, but if you do speak Hungarian, let me know.

 

[Vrylakas]

Hello Pellaken -

Pellaken wrote:

>>>this is the name of a country.... hummm.... could it be greece?

Do you mean the quote I put at the beginning, "A hélyzet reménytelen, de nem komoly...."? This is Hungarian, from a famous quote of an economics minister in the 1950s. This was his reply (in typical communist doublespeak) when asked about the country's current economic condition : "The situation is hopeless, but not serious..."

1. Excluding the former Soviet Union, this country currently has half of Eastern Europe's population, at 40 million.

>>>Poland

Yes, although as pointed out this isn't really true. Fuzzy math!

2. This country's first paved road was built in the 1950s.

>>>albania??

Yes!

3. This country absorbed thousands of people from Thrace and 1.3 million from Anatolia after World War I.

>>>Greece?

Yes! The infamous 1922 population exchanes with Turkey and Bulgaria.

4. This country gets a bad rap, but its capital was once home to one of the most humanistic philosophers of the 18th century, Immanuel Kant.

>>>Czech Rep.?

No!

5. This empire was famous for its bureaucracy, and in fact a writer would one day make a living writing about that bureaucracy (while living at 22 Zlaty/Gold Street). The British Empire ran all of India with fewer bureaucrats than this empire had in one city, Prague, alone. (Bonus point: Who was the writer?)

>>>Austria-Hungary

Yes! Can you name the writer?

6. This country has the most phonetic alphabet for its language in all Europe.

>>>Russia?

No - though very close. You've got the alphabetic idea right....

7. This country's name means "Black Mountain". (Hint: In its own language it calls itself "Crna Gora", but it is known in the West by the Italian version of its name.)

>>>Montenegro {now the name makes some sence...}

Yes!

8. This country was composed of two territories known to Romanians as Bessarabia and Bukovina.

>>>Moldova

Yes! Mol'davskaja Sovjetskaja Sotsialistichnaja Respublika in the good old days....

9. Though this country is usually grouped with its southern neighbors, it is linguistically related to its northern neighbor. It also currently has the most successful economy in the former Soviet Union.

>>>Estonia

Yes!

10. This country was the only country in World War II to be simultaneously at war with both the Allies, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. This country was also among the most successful at protecting its Jewish population during the war.

>>>Finland??

No - much farther south!

11. Hitler forced this country to declare its independence in Spring, 1939.

>>>Slovakia?

Yes!

12. This country, composed of two ethnic groups, provided Lenin's private security guard in the Russian Civil War but later enthusiastically joined with the Nazis to fight against the Soviets in World War II.

>>>Latvia?

Yes!

13. This country has a multitude of ethnic groups, and was the focus of the 1913 Second Balkan War (though this country didn't exist yet). (Hint: IMRO.)

>>>Macedonia

Yes!

14. This country was neutral through most of World War II, declaring war against the Nazis only a week before the German surrender.

>>>Sweden

No - again, much farther south! Sweden never joined the war.

15. This country's capital was known for centuries by the German version of its name, Laibach.

>>>Slovenia?

Yes! Ljubljana is a beautiful city too.

16. This country had a powerful nationalist movement in the early 1970s, Matica Hrvatska, that provoked a major government repression.

>>>croatia??

Yes!

17. This country has a long tradition of religious heresy, stretching back to its Christian days with Bogomilism. It continued that tradition with a new religion, until very recently...

>>>

? No guess?

18. This country was the only fully-functional democracy in Central and Eastern Europe in the 1930s.

>>>Czechoslovakia

Yes! And the first country stabbed in the back by the democratic West....

19. Though this country's language was written in the Cyrillic alphabet until the mid-19th century, it is related to modern French and Italian.

>>>romania??

Yes!

20. This country was, along with Czechoslovakia, one of the earliest victims of Nazi Germany when Hitler demanded the port of Klaipeda.

>>>Lithuania

Yes!

21. Facing the inevitable Soviet invasion in 1944, this country successfully secretly smuggled its 1000-year old crown jewels out of the country to the American forces then in western Austria, and its national treasuries resided at Fort Knox in the U.S. until a thaw in relations prompted U.S. President Jimmy Carter to give them back in 1978.

>>>hungary??

Yes - the Crown of St. Stephen (Szt. István) was returned by U.S. President Carter in 1978!

Great run Pellaken!

 

[Vrylakas]

Jezebel wrote:

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by Vrylakas
A hélyzet reménytelen, de nem komoly....

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Where did this quote come from?

1950s Hungarian MKP Finance Minister. Very re-assuring, no? I love political humor and collect jokes whenever I can find them. Here's a great one from Hungary at about the same time:

"Lehetne-e a magyar gazdasági helyzet még rosszabb?
- Nem, mert ha lehetne, már lett volna."

("Can the Hungarian economic situation get any worse?
- No, because if it could it already would have.")

And do you speak Hungarian fluently?

Valamenyit. Csak rég-óta beszélgettem magyarul, sajnos. Egyetemista voltam Pécsett, történelmi és néprajzi szakos. Sokkal
jóbban olvasok mint beszélni már.... Én nem vagyok Magyar, hanem Lengyel de szerintem szép a magyar nyelv.

I know what you mean about the keyboard and the diacritic marks. It is just our luck that PCs and the internet were developed by a country whose language is the one European language without diacritic marks... You can download a Hungarian or Polish keyboard, but they won't show up for those who don't have the same keyboard. Grrr!

Nagyon nehez nekem hogy senki korolotem beszel Magyarul... Budapest nagyon hianzik nekem.

I lived in Pest for a year, but I really prefer Pécs. I guess I'm just not into big cities; I also feel ambivilent towards New York. Of course, it probably didn't help that I lived next to Férihegy 2 in Pest....

My grammer's terrible and I'm missing all the accents and dots, but if you do speak Hungarian, let me know.

Hey - I slaughter every language I speak, the mother tongue included. Ask anyone on these forums...

Here's an anecdote for you: My first night in Pécs about 13 years ago (gulp!) I was leaving a restaurant when I accidentally slammed Brody János' hand with my chair. I though everyone in the restaurant was going to lynch me... I was very relieved to see him playing on TV about a month later...

 

[Apollo]

Originally posted by Vrylakas
I know what you mean about the keyboard and the diacritic marks. It is just our luck that PCs and the internet were developed by a country whose language is the one European language without diacritic marks... You can download a Hungarian or Polish keyboard, but they won't show up for those who don't have the same keyboard. Grrr!

One system I've used to get some of the Spanish characters in my posts such as í and ñ is to type them in Microsoft Word and then copy and paste them over. I'm not sure if Word has all the symbols you're looking for, and it was pretty hard just to find how to do those two above, but it's worth a try.

 

[Pellaken]

second guesses:
eliminated countries:
poland
albania
greece
a-h
moldova
estonia
slovakia
macedonia
slovenia
croatia
czechsolvakia
lithuania
hungary

4. This country gets a bad rap, but its capital was once home to one of the most humanistic philosophers of the 18th century, Immanuel Kant.

>>>Bulgaria???

6. This country has the most phonetic alphabet for its language in all Europe.

>>>Ukraine???

10. This country was the only country in World War II to be simultaneously at war with both the Allies, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. This country was also among the most successful at protecting its Jewish population during the war.

>>>Rumania??????

14. This country was neutral through most of World War II, declaring war against the Nazis only a week before the German surrender.

>>>Turkey?

17. This country has a long tradition of religious heresy, stretching back to its Christian days with Bogomilism. It continued that tradition with a new religion, until very recently...

>>>Czech Republic??

PS-the more ?'s mean the bigger the guess

 

[Vrylakas]

Pellaken wrote:

second guesses:
eliminated countries:
poland
albania
greece
a-h
moldova
estonia
slovakia
macedonia
slovenia
croatia
czechsolvakia
lithuania
hungary

4. This country gets a bad rap, but its capital was once home to one of the most humanistic philosophers of the 18th century, Immanuel Kant.

>>>Bulgaria???

Nope. This one stumped many because they were using more modern views of what constitutes Eastern Europe. Things change, ya know...

6. This country has the most phonetic alphabet for its language in all Europe.

>>>Ukraine???

No, though you're getting closer.

10. This country was the only country in World War II to be simultaneously at war with both the Allies, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. This country was also among the most successful at protecting its Jewish population during the war.

>>>Rumania??????

No - but veeerrrrrrryyyyy close.

14. This country was neutral through most of World War II, declaring war against the Nazis only a week before the German surrender.

>>>Turkey?

Yes! Turkey declared war on Nazi Germany at the end of April, 1945. (OK, about a week and a half before the German surrender.)

17. This country has a long tradition of religious heresy, stretching back to its Christian days with Bogomilism. It continued that tradition with a new religion, until very recently...

>>>Czech Republic??

In retrospect I shouldn't have bothered mentioning Bogomilism because it did end up affecting just about every country in Eastern Europe, but no there was one in particular associated with it. This country was censured by both the Western Roman and the Eastern Greek churches for its heresies. As a hint, it would be censured by yet another religion for the same problem....

PS-the more ?'s mean the bigger the guess