It's crumbelivable

September 9, 2006 6:33 PM

Can someone who speaks Hungarian tell me whether the voting is over and Stephen Colbert is really going to have a bridge in Budapest named after him?
posted by riotgrrl69 to society & culture (8 comments total)

I think I heard Stephen Colbert mentioning during one of the shows that they changed the rules so only hungarians could be illegible.
posted by McSly at 7:28 PM on September 9, 2006 [1 favorite]

What I heard him say was that they now require that you register each time you vote. Since the whole site is, in fact illegible if you don't read Hungarian, that might have a similar effect.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 7:41 PM on September 9, 2006

Here's the Wikipedia entry on the bridge and voting which is apparently current as of Sept. 8. Follow the link through the actual Hungarian website - Colbert is still in first place with 25% of the vote (in what is apparently the second round of voting after requiring registration.)
posted by imposster at 8:46 PM on September 9, 2006

I don't speak Hungarian, but the site seems to indicate that the second round of voting ended on Sept. 8, which is what Wikipedia says. From imposster's link:

The three names with the most votes, as well as suggestions from "local governments, cartographers, linguists and other experts," will be reviewed by a government committee before a final name for the bridge is chosen.

So it looks like Colbert will at least be considered, and the world will have to wait a bit longer for a bridge named after a programming language (Perl-Script having taken only fifth place in the second round).
posted by Aster at 11:09 PM on September 9, 2006

The reason Colbert isn't going to get a bridge named after him is in the last paragraph on the front page:

Ahogy arról többször hírt adtunk, a híd nevéről a tárcaközi Földrajzinév-bizottság nyelvhelyességi és földrajzi szempontok alapján, az Önök javaslatai mellett az érintett települések önkormányzatai, térképészek, nyelvészek, és további szervezetek képviselőinek javaslatait is mérlegelve dönt.

"As we have pointed out several times, the name of the bridge will be decided on the basis of the interministerial Geographical Naming Commission's views on grammar, language, and geography. Besides your votes, the governments of the affected localities, cartographers, linguists, and other organizations' recommendations will also be taken into consideration."
posted by Wolfdog at 4:28 AM on September 10, 2006

(So, yes, the voting is over; the commission has a list of 25 to choose from and they'll take the highest one on the list that they find acceptable. We could be looking at the Zrinyi bridge. A Zrinyi was once glorified for destroying a bridge, so there's maybe something poetic there.)
posted by Wolfdog at 4:36 AM on September 10, 2006

By the way: illegible means unreadable; eligible is the word you're looking for.
posted by louigi at 5:32 AM on September 10, 2006

If the pranksters had any subtlety at all, they would have tried to get the bridge named after this fellow.
posted by Wolfdog at 12:04 PM on September 10, 2006