Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Sörözni.

I have a couple (or 10) of these in the fridge. Happiness.

There is this one verb that I always forget to use in Hungarian, even though it's absolutely brilliant and should be used all the time. I tend to write "blablabla sört inni" (literally "beer to drink") and then someone corrects that to "sörözni". And how cool is that? A verb that actually means "to drink beer" (even though I'm not 100% certain I understand the nuances of this word). I was thinking a bit about how this would turn out in other languages. In Swedish I guess we would arrive at "öla" (öl being beer), which at least to me sounds very funny. Conjugated in the first person that would be "jag ölar". It's so ugly I think I must start using it. We do have a specific verb that is used together with drinking alcohol, when you're kind of sitting around drinking something, and that's "pimpla", which is also the word for "ice fishing". I like it though - "Pimpla öl". Still, it's composed of two words.

In English it would be... to beer? I beer. Hmm, that doesn't really work out that well, does it? French, bièrer - je bière. Same problem there! Obviously, the productive patterns of those two languages aren't always that practical.

I think I'm going to öla tonight, because tomorrow is a day off. The summer, I hope I will be doing lots of ölning. I ölade a bit yesterday, so I know that the öl I have is very tasty.

Do you know of any other language that has a particular verb for beer drinking?

5 comments:

  1. I'd probably use the progressive in English: I'm beering. If I had to come up with a French expression, I'd probably do the same, but likely make it a reflexive verb: Je suis en train de me bièrer. Incredibly, if I say this to myself with a "normal" French accent, it sounds stupid to my ears. However, if I emphasize the Quebec accent, all of a sudden it sounds much better.

    Damian

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  2. I hadn't thought of that possibility! I think "me bièrer" sounds rather OK, but "I'm beering" makes me a bit hesitant :D

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  3. På norsk snakker vi jo i blant om å pilse? :)

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  4. Ååååh, det er jo perfekt! Hvorfor bruker ingen jeg kjenner det for?

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  5. Vet ikke ... Det har blitt et relativt vanlig verb; det ville overraske meg om du ikke får høre uttrykket "pilsing i parken" i løpet av sommeren ;)

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