Forty words of love in Hungarian

Originally published in the GUARDIAN

As a child, Charlotte Mendelson thought her grandparents' native Hungarian sounded ridiculous. But now her tiny vocabulary keeps their memory alive

My grandmother was fearless. Yet if I asked her about the past, she would start crying. What kind of monster would have questioned her? So I resisted and now it is too late.

She and her husband, my maternal grandparents, were Hungarians. Or so I thought. They spoke Hungarian, impenetrably, to each other. Even after 50 years in Britain, their accents remained so strong that kindly strangers would direct them to tourist attractions. To my sister and me, their English-born grandchildren, they seemed entirely, comically foreign. Daring, touchy and fond of puns, prone to expansive hand gestures and public emotion, they were the big-eyebrowed and ferocious heirs of Dracula and Attila the Hun. We saw them weekly, took them on holiday, ate their garlicky food and waved our hands around as they did – how could we not have inherited the Magyar temperament? Our father's family, equally foreign, just as marked by tragedy and courage but harder to define, was quietly and unfairly sidelined. We were too busy being proudly Hungarian; it explained us.

I was in my 30s before I noticed something peculiar. My grandmother always told people she was Czech. I couldn't ask her about it. A central tenet of Hungarianness, or at least my grandparents' variety of it, was the protection of young relatives from any reference to death or sadness and our family history involved too much of both. Besides, there was the crying. So my monumental ignorance persisted, and my innocence: about her numerous lost sisters, her murdered parents, my sweet, handsome grandfather; about skiing to school or being a Communist, an early female student at Charles University, a refugee. I had a dim phonetic knowledge of the name of her and my grandfather's villages, yet they seemed not to exist in my atlas. I asked a second cousin for information, but the napkin-map she drew seemed to involve Transylvania, the Carpathian mountains, Ukraine.

Old people make mistakes. The young know best, and my grandmother was so clearly Hungarian. She spoke the language, for God's sake! What else could she possibly be? But she was growing old. I decided that, as her (I hoped) favourite grandchild, it was my duty to preserve her memories. "Just talk normally," I said, as I recorded her voice on to tapes I no longer have the technology to play. Weeping matter-of-factly throughout, she told me extraordinary stories: how Czech Catholics helped her, although she was a young Jewish woman ("they didn't care, they didn't want Hitler either"); how, with illegal passport stamps, no money and her family facing horror at home, she strode on to the last train out of Prague, hit a policeman, escaped to England, became a maid and then a cook, writing to her sisters in concentration camps, refusing to give up.

"So," I said bravely at the end. "You are Hungarian?""Don't be funny," she said.

Then the internet was invented and slowly, with one eye closed to avoid the horrible details, I discovered the extraordinary complexities of my grandparents' nationality: born in neighbouring Czechoslovakian towns in Austro-Hungarian TransCarpathia, taught to read in Russian, citizens of extinct Ruthenia, Jewish atheists, seeming entirely Magyar but considering themselves simultaneously Hungarian Czechs and proud English citizens, lifelong Labour voters out of gratitude to the working classes who let them into Britain and saved their lives.

Yet, even as this puzzle was partially solved, another presented itself: the world's most impossible language. Hungarian, as everybody knows, is extraordinarily difficult. Its sole linguistic link is to Finno-Ugric; Finnish inflections sound Hungarian, if you can't hear actual words. On the rare occasions when I meet other Hungarians' grandchildren, disbelief in our absurd ancestral language unites us. For the record, the best Hungarian word means central heating: központi fütés, pronounced kers-pontifutaysh; boldog születésnapot – bull-dog soo-lertaishnop (happy birthday) comes a close second. I am as astonished as you are by the spelling.

As children, my sister and I would sit in our grandparents' minuscule kitchen, gorging on sponge fingers and, to our infantile English ears, their language sounded ridiculous: "ongy-bongy, ongy-bongy, vosh-ingmochine." Yet, despite my swotty and preternaturally middle-aged youth, my love for my polyglot grandfather and father, my plans to learn Ancient Greek and read Pepys' diary before I turned 11, I didn't try very hard to master Hungarian. At its peak, my vocabulary never encompassed more than 40 words, none of which I ever learned to spell. Indeed, it barely occurred to me that they could be spelled. Finding them in dictionaries has proved difficult. They were simply sounds, a background commentary: szeretlek – sair-etleck (I love you); néz – nayz (look!); nagyon édes! – nodj-yon ey-desh! (very sweet); yoy (actually a Yiddish multi-purpose exclamation).

It is only in adulthood that I realise the value of my 40 words. I have photographs, strange felt mats, a horrible Czech crystal bell and postcards in foreign-lady writing, but these tell me nothing – they could be a stranger's. All the memories are in the tiny bits of Hungarian I learned from them.

We hear so often about unconditional love and so rarely receive it – I did, I now realise, every time they watched our magnificent gym displays on the living-room rug with straight faces; stood behind me for 30, 40 minutes in WH Smith while I agonised over the Beano versus Whizzer and Chips; sent me jars of apple puree at university. I know that, even at my most unadorable, they adored me.

How could I repay them? By amusing them, of course. I evolved a speciality, a sort of tribute act; I would pretend to order a meal, using as much of my ridiculous vocabulary (paradicsom – por-odichom (tomato); krumpli – croom-pli (potato); mikrohullám – mee-cróhulam (microwave)) as possible. "Good day," I would say to the imaginary waiter, "how are you? Dressing-gown potatoes! Hot tomatoes! No! Thank you very much!", until tears of (I think) laughter ran down their cheeks.

This became easier once I had persuaded them to teach me the numbers one to 10, which I mastered with colossal effort. They seemed proud of my triumph but oddly reluctant to tell me more. Their friends forced language classes and folk-dance lessons on their grandchildren; they did not. They were ambivalent about Hungary, for reasons they did not discuss. But now, although my grandparents are long dead, I want to hold on to the little I remember. And I still hear three-syllable English words in their accent: mim-ósó; com-putair; Vosh-ington; rid-iculos; and, most of all, von-darefool and tair-ible, which was their response to everything, from poorly chosen mascara (mosc-óró) to sudden death.

So, in their honour, I present a selection – OK, all – of my remaining vocabulary. You will never meet my grandparents, but their lives in England, their enormous influence on me, life-saving love and sense of humour and sadness, is in these words.

Csúnya – choon-yó (ugly)

My grandparents had style. They dressed up for the dentist, the cinema. In rare circumstances of extreme relaxation, such as the seaside, my grandfather would wear a vest under his shirt and a cardigan on top; my badger-haired grandmother, on her 90th birthday, wore bronze leather shoes and plum-sized clip-on earrings. I must have been a colossal disappointment: scruffy, speccy, toothy, pom-pom-haired, without a trace of fashion sense. They never criticised me, whatever the outfit: shorts, worn with a mullet, binoculars, an anxious expression and a Free Nelson Mandela sweatshirt. Yet whenever I leave the house in writing-clothes, I think of what my grandmother would say, and I feel ashamed.

Macska – motch-ko (cat)

Despite my linguistic ignorance I am, in one word only, bilingual, even actively Hungarian. Whenever I see a cat, I think "hello motchko", although my grandparents lived in a flat and did not, as far as I know, like cats.

Köszönöm szépen – kers-enem say-pen (thank you very much)

My grandmother was fantastically generous: not only with money, and visits to "poor sick boys" of 86, and accommodation for acquaintances' nieces' schoolfriends' visiting neighbours, but also in smaller ways. She went nowhere without multi-purpose presents: handkerchiefs, spectacle-cases, "sweeties", small Czech crystal animals. Every milkman or, horrifyingly, teacher, was rewarded; on holiday she left a brooch or a bracelet "for the chambermaid" beside her bed. When she died we found a vast supply of gifts, awaiting distribution.

Popsi – pop-shi (bum); popó – po-po (diminutive – little bumlet)

As the only grandchildren of an elderly Hungarian woman, our bottoms were not our own. Our grandmother and great-aunts were obsessed with pinching and patting them; we'd go upstairs protecting them with our hands, usually in vain. They wanted flesh, the old ladies; it was how they measured our health and youth and, I suspect, the passing of their own.

They were startlingly forthright on this and other physical matters – "Why do you hide your lovely bosom?", "Still your period does not start?", "Darling, I take you to hairdresser. Don't you want to look pretty?" – and my grandmother thought nothing of chatting while she stumped around the flat in firm-control undergarments and orthopaedic rubber clogs. However, on most physical matters, medical, sexual, she was silent. She would never have sworn, or burped, or argued in public; lavatorial matters, even being seen on the way to the toilet, were taboo. And she once became completely hysterical with laughter and embarrassment when I asked her the word for "buttocks"; I insisted, until at last, quite beside herself, she spluttered, popsi – the rudest word I ever heard her say.

Kavitchka – kaa-vitchkó ('little coffee' in my family; coffee in Hungary is 'kávé'); pongyola – pond-yuló (dressing gown)

My Hungarian is domestic. I can't say "sea" or "England", only the words I used to hear during evenings in the grandparental flat, finding their slippers, fetching orange juice from the fridge on legs, foraging in much-washed Pyrex patterned with ghostly harvest scenes. Consequently, to me the scent of paprika and garlic is the smell of home, and I have absorbed their bedtime routine to the point where "to pongyola" has become a normal-seeming verb.

Palacsinta – pol-oshintó (pancake); körözött – ker-erzert (cream cheese spread with caraway and paprika); diostorta – dee-oshtortó (walnut cake); kukorica – koo-koritsó (corn); madártej – mod-arté (îles flottantes or floating islands, literally "bird's milk")

More than anything, I know words for food. My grandmother cooked heroically, like someone in a fairy story. Well into her 80s she would work a six-day week, shop, drive 60 miles to our house and casually produce sour-cherry soup, pancakes filled with cream cheese, lemon rind and raisins, creamed spinach, chicken paprikás and then drive home again, while I moaned about having to clean out the guinea pig. She had a nokedli-maker, from which she would extrude little dumplings into boiling water. She had a mincer, and it is her meatloaf and stuffed cabbage I long for now, like grandchildren the world over: hungering for the cheap and labour-intensive food they believe themselves too busy to recreate. The internet is no help; I need her.

Hogy vagy – hodge vodge (how are you?); szervusz – sare-vus (hello, literally "I am at your service"); kezét csókolom – kez-et choc-olom (children's greeting to older people, literally "I kiss your hand")

My grandparents were heartbreakingly formal; they ate fruit, including bananas, with a knife and fork. Of course many English people are, or were, polite. However, my grandparents' standards were exhausting. As children we were expected to show our elders the greatest respect but, not having grown up in the Austro-Hungarian empire, I lack certain instincts. I still offer my seat to anyone who will let me but should I stand to greet people my age? When an older man approaches a doorway, should I let him through first?

Gyenge – jen-ge (weak)

I have not inherited my grandmother's courage. She would march up strangers' paths to rip boughs of mog-nolió from their gardens; when I visit her at the crematorium, I dare steal only a bit of blossom for her nameplate. Yet I try to be brave in minor ways. How can I not trudge around galleries, swim in icy water, add huge numbers in my head when she could at 85? I have her photograph on my desk to remind me of hard work.

Nem-tudom – nem-toodom (I don't know)

When asked "where are you from?" which happens surprisingly often, I hesitate. Despite my strange prewar BBC accent, my passport, how can I claim to be English with grandparents who sounded as they did? What do I call them, if not Hungarian? I loved everything about them. I miss them more than I can say. And 40 words of their language is all I'll ever know.