How to greet an old Hungarian mate

December 21, 2005 2:23 AM

I'm struggling to find a way of saying "buddy" in Hungarian.

I want to be able to say something like "Buddy! How are you?" (or "mate!..." or "paisan! (spelling?)" or "brother!..." or even "dude!...") to a Hungarian chap. I assume there is an equivalent word, but I just can't find it. (I'm happy to keep the "how are you?" bit in English, btw) Can anyone here help?

posted by bunglin jones to Writing & Language (6 answers total)

Pajtásom! will do. If you want the full sentence, Hogy vagy, pajtásom!
Can you work out the pronunciation from the spelling?
posted by Wolfdog at 3:09 AM on December 21, 2005

I'll bet he can't. A reasonable approximation is "Hodj vodj, poy-tah-shom!" (with the stress on the first syllable of the last word).
posted by languagehat at 6:02 AM on December 21, 2005

Footnotes: pajtás suggests some real friendship. It's what sounded right for the situation described in the title. Haver is a little more generic, closer to "dude" or "my man". And for what it's worth, what I see most often in netspeak for a generic "guy" is srác.
posted by Wolfdog at 6:26 AM on December 21, 2005

"Haver" (accent on the first syllable 'Hah-vehr' - the term comes from Yiddish/Hebrew) is extremely common among adults, while pajtás is a bit more rarely used.

In real Pest slang you might says "Mizoosh, haver?" (elided version of Mi ujság , haver / What's new, buddy)
posted by zaelic at 7:38 AM on December 21, 2005

Depending on how friendly you are with the guy, you can always try the lively "Szia faszikám!" (Hi, my little penis!)
posted by zaelic at 9:09 AM on December 21, 2005

Response by poster: Thanks very much, people! I hope to get a chance to try this out soon, THEN I'll mark the best answer.
posted by bunglin jones at 5:24 PM on December 21, 2005