Re: Old Newsweek article on Muzikas

[ed@wente.llnl.gov (Ed Suranyi)]

In article <9110042031.AA08354@aristotle.ils.nwu.edu> barger@ils.nwu.EDU writes:
>That, roughly, is the story of Muzikas (the 's' is pronounced 'sh'),
>Hungary's most popular folk group.

Well, I guess you all can now figure out how to pronounce my last name.
:-)

(I'm of pure Hungarian decent on both sides.)

> vocalist Marta Sebestyen was
>once voted the country's best pop singer for her work in a rock opera about
>Hungary's King Stephen [!!!].

That's not quite as surprising as you might think.  King Stephen is
considered one of the heros of Hungarian history, sort of equivalent
to our George Washington.

>In which case, Musikas
>[sic yet again-- I bet the Newsweek spellchecker got both spellings entered
>into it?

Musikas is definitely wrong; Muzikas is right.  Musikas would be
pronounced "mushikash", and it's meaningless.  Muzikas is pronounced
"muzikash" and has the same root as "music".

Incidentally, I got a very weird feeling when listening to Muzikas.
It was like one of my aunts was singing!  You see, I'm VERY familiar
with how Hungarian sounds, and can recognize it instantly, but I
associate it almost exclusively with my own family.  I don't hear
others speaking it often.

Ed Suranyi
ed@wente.llnl.gov