James Baquet

Some have suggested we should call countries by their own names for themselves, so China would be “Zhongguo,” India “Bharat,” etc. In that case, Hungary would be “Magyarorszag,” meaning “country of the Magyars,” the name of a tribe. Instead, Hungary refers to a confederation of tribes, the Oungroi.

I’ll stick with Hungary.

It’s located in Central Europe, surrounded by Slovakia on the north, Ukraine on the northeast, Romania on the east, Serbia on the south, Croatia on the southwest, and Slovenia and Austria on the west. It sits in the Carpathian Basin, also called the Pannonian Basin after the ancient sea whose bed created a plain there during the Miocene and Pliocene epochs.

Budapest, the capital and largest city, is in the north-central part of the country, and is a leading global city housing nearly 20 percent of the country’s 10 million inhabitants. This makes it a medium-sized member state of the European Union.

Another “crossroads country,” Hungary has been occupied by the Celts, Romans, Germanic people, West Slavs and nomadic Avars. At last, in the late ninth century, the Hungarian grand prince Arpad conquered the area, and his great-grandson Stephen I converted it to Christianity in year 1000. Hungary reached a “golden age” in the 15th century, but fell under partial occupation by the Ottoman empire in 1541, then came under the Habsburgs and Austria until 1918. In 1920, after World War I, new borders were drawn, and Hungary lost 71 percent of its territory and 66 percent of its population.

Hungary sided with the Axis Powers in World War II, and became a satellite state of the Soviet Union afterwards. In 1989, it became a democratic parliamentary republic.

Today, Hungary is a middle power with a high-income economy and a very high standard of living. It has a universal health care system and offers tuition-free university education. It is 20th in quality of life internationally, and ranks high in human development, social progress and safety.

Vocabulary:

Which word above means:

1. following a wandering lifestyle

2. 10 to 2 million years ago

3. early Indo-European people

4. league or alliance

5. 25 to 10 million years ago

6. Germany, Italy, Japan, et al.

7. long period of time distinguished from what came before and after, era

8. the “floor” of an ocean, sea, lake, river, etc.

9. greatest period in the history of a nation

10. centrally-located place with lots of activities