Magyarul

So I'm taking Hungarian lessons, and we had a lesson on telling time today. I'm thankful for my Czech experience for many reasons, but I was especially thankful this evening when instead of saying "it's 10:30" we had to say, "It's half of the 11th hour". That's how we say it in Czech. I caught on quickly to that much and was ahead of the class because of it. That was easy. But in addition to saying things backwards (because of course, that is obviously the backwards way of saying it), Hungarians will tell time in reference to the quarter hour, regardless of what time it is. If it's 5:12, they will say "in 3 minutes it will be 1/4 of the 6th hour". If it's 9:52 they will say, "it's 7 minutes past 3/4 of the 10th hour"... Isn't that crazy? It's so complicated and uneconomical. Your brain has to work HARD just in order to know what time it is. My brain is working hard just in order to remember what I'm supposed to be doing right now...

It's not bad. It's just different.