January 31, 2010

When I arrived in New York I only knew two words of English. I knew yes and no and also knew the difference between the two.

Even though I learned French in school and spoke it fairly well at that time it only made me pronounce the English words in a French way which was really stupid. There was absolutely no similarity between the two languages.

First whole day in New York, we really wanted to go out and breath the air and see what the people were really like.

We stayed in a fairly nice hotel in Brooklyn at the time. Since I was already visited by some of my New York relatives I had some money. My uncle gave me some spending money so I was at the top of the world.

We found a little grocery store close to the hotel and went in very bravely. There were oranges on display and they looked very good. So I place my order: van kilo orange! (and said the word orange in Hungarian since I didn't know any better).

The guy looked at me and was trying to figure out what this mad Hungarian wanted. Not only he didn't understand the Hungarian version of orange he didn't understand the van kilo bit either. Eventually we understood each other.

He started to explain that in this country they didn't use the kilo but the pound. I had no clue what the pound was but I think I bought four oranges at the end.

A few weeks after arriving I got a job in some kind of a garment place. My job was to pack shirts and sweaters in plastic bags before shipping them out. My uncle got the job for me. But since I couldn't speak English it was impossible to communicate with the other people.

There was an older man working there who happened to be Hungarian and he helped me out from time to time but I couldn't impose on him all the time. Thinking back to those times I now realize that we Hungarians are like ants. Can't get rid of us and we are everywhere.

Anyway, sometime after the first week being there my boss called me into his office and said something to me. I said OK, yes sir. At the end of the workday I went home. Next day he called me in but this time the Hungarian man was also there. It turned out that the previous day he asked me to stay and work overtime because there was a lot of work.

I said OK, yes sir and went home. He didn't like this very much. He actually fired me right there and then. Since it was early in the day I think I went to Times Square and went to a movie to improve my language skills.

Shortly after this sour taste of American labor relations I landed another mindless job. I became a dishwasher. That wasn't so bad because the food was pretty good. But at the same time I attended night school where I was learning English.

This was a school in the middle of the Hungarian neighborhood in Manhattan. Our books were English-Hungarian.

In a very short time I learned how to say I vant an apple, and zis is a very nice suit Mister Smis and I also learned how to count to ten: van, too, sri, fore, five, six, seven, eis, nine and ten. I was cracking, English was easy. Only few years later I realized what idiotic things they were teaching us.

Fifty years later now, good old Willy Shakespeare and me are good buddies.