In article >  writes:
|Clemente Izzi wrote:
|> My German grandmother, who once lived in Romania and went to school in
|> Hungary told me of a game in which the words MUTUSDEDITNOMENGOGIS played
|> a central role. The words were written on an old piece of cloth. Do you
|> know what these words mean? [...]
|> 
|Additional information regarding the word breaks....
|MUSTUS
|DEDIT
|NOMEN
|GOGIS  or COGIS
|These words are spelled phonetically (approximately)
|It is thought that the first word may mean "show me" in Hungarian!!

These words are Latin: mute (grape must?), he/it gave, name, you hold.
What does that mean?... I think we would need more info about the game itself.
On the other hand it might be fake Latin and real Hungarian, "show me"
would indeed be mutass or mutasd, similar to the first word. This could
also be a "folk etymology", a false Hungarian interpretation.

Any ideas, someone from sci.lang? (thread originally in soc.culture.magyar)

-- 
-- Olivier Clary   mailto:   http://www.geocities.com/Paris/1326/
Me'te'o-France/CNRM/Groupe Mode'lisation pour Assimiln. et Pre'vision, Toulouse
Aussi loin qu'est l'orient de l'occident, Il met loin de moi mes fautes --Ps103
Se nem kicsi, se nem nagy, / E'ppen hozza'm valo' vagy!  (Lakodalmas -Te'ka e.)

On 1 Feb 1997 09:25:46 GMT,  (CLARY
Olivier) wrote:

>In article >  writes:
>|Clemente Izzi wrote:
>|> My German grandmother, who once lived in Romania and went to school in
>|> Hungary told me of a game in which the words MUTUSDEDITNOMENGOGIS played
>|> a central role. The words were written on an old piece of cloth. Do you
>|> know what these words mean? [...]
>|> 
>|Additional information regarding the word breaks....
>|MUSTUS
>|DEDIT
>|NOMEN
>|GOGIS  or COGIS
>|These words are spelled phonetically (approximately)
>|It is thought that the first word may mean "show me" in Hungarian!!
>
>These words are Latin: mute (grape must?), he/it gave, name, you hold.
>What does that mean?... I think we would need more info about the game itself.
>On the other hand it might be fake Latin and real Hungarian, "show me"
>would indeed be mutass or mutasd, similar to the first word. This could
>also be a "folk etymology", a false Hungarian interpretation.
>
>Any ideas, someone from sci.lang? (thread originally in soc.culture.magyar)

Maybe MUTUS DEDIT NOMEN C(A)ECIS "the mute gave the blind their name",
or MUTUS DEDIT NOMEN COXIS "... the lame ...".  I'd prefer the first
interpretation: I guess the cloth was used as a blindfold.

==
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal                     ~ ~
Amsterdam                   _____________  ~ ~
                 |_____________|||

Germanic languages often have surnames like Johnson = John's son 
(originally). 

Does Hungarian have surnames like that?  If so, is the word for "son"
suffixed to the end of a name?

I ask because over in a Slavic newsgroup, some people have found 
Slovak ancestral surnames ending in -sin/-csin, but later without
the ending (e.g. Martoncsin became Marton in mid 1800s). 
Since "sin" is common Slavic for "son", some have suggested this 
might be the meaning of the suffix.  Since Slavs generally
use different suffixes to denote descent (like -ovich/-evich), 
I wonder if this might have been a Hungarian custom (if that's 
what's really going on here).

Thanks for any input.

Joe Armata

Archive-name: hungarian/pointer
Soc-culture-magyar-archive-name: pointer
Bit-listserv-hungary-archive-name: pointer
Version: 0.90 (beta)
Posting-Frequency: monthly
Last-modified: 1995/11/21
URL: http://hix.mit.edu/hungarian-faq/hungarian-faq-pointer

 This document summarizes network-related resources of Hungarian
interest, which are accessible via email. Some of the most readily
available sources of information can be found in the archives of
periodical information postings to Usenet; these documents are commonly
known as FAQs (from Frequently Asked/Answered Questions). Knowing the
name of the file you can retrieve it by sending email to
 with the command "send
usenet/news.answers/<ARCHIVE-NAME>" in the message (without the quotes,
and with substituting the actual name for <ARCHIVE-NAME> in the pattern
shown above) - for example, to get the document described below, use

 send usenet/news.answers/hungarian-faq

 To learn more about the RTFM server just send the command "help" to it
- it will provide step-by-step intstructions on how to use the
archives, on retrieving indexes and so on.

 "Hungarian electronic resources FAQ" is a comprehensive collection
dealing with email, FTP, WWW and other Internet tools; its archive name
is 'hungarian-faq' (and the mail-server command to get it is shown in
the example above).
 If you only have direct access to email then, in order to use the
other tools, you'll need the methods described in "Accessing The
Internet By E-Mail" (Archive-name:
internet-services/access-via-email).
 To get a general introduction to Usenet (with some guides to Internet
as well - and explanation of how they are different, too) see "Welcome
to news.newusers.questions!" (Archive-name: news-newusers-intro).
 For a guide to finding someone's e-mail addresses, see the "FAQ: How
to find people's E-mail addresses" (Archive-name: finding-addresses).
Do notice that it's usually inappropriate to send such blanket requests
to mailing lists; the search tools available give much better chance to
locate addresses sought than posted queries in any case!
 An overview of commercial on-line services in Hungary is available by 
John Horvath > 
(Archive-name: hungarian/comm-providers).

 The hungarian-faq describes several email lists related to Hungary;
only a brief summary is shown here. Please keep in mind that
subscription requests (and other administrative communications) should
be directed to the server address, NOT to the lists themselves.

Server: 
 List:  (the HUNGARY LISTSERV list)

Server: 
 List: HOL (Hungary Online)

Server: 
 List: hungary-report

Server: 
 Lists: OMRI-L (Open Media Research Institute Daily Digest)
        MIDEUR-L (Middle European discussion list)

Server: 
 List: cet-online (Central Europe Today On-Line; email )

Server: 
 List: CERRO-L (Central European Regional Research Organization)

Server: email to  (Hollosi Information Exchange)
 Lists: HIX is a collection of several separate lists, including
  - MOZAIK, a collection of news items in English
  - various discussion forums in Hungarian language
  - SCM and HUNGROUPS, which are email-accessible archives of the Usenet
    newsgroup soc.culture.magyar and the hun.* national hierarchy,
    respectively; to get a directory listing of these archives (as well
    as that of other HIX lists), send email to  with
    "arch" in the 'Subject:' line. Note that the SENDDOC utility takes
    its parameter from the 'Subject:' of the message (unlike many other
    servers, like the ones described previously, which use the body)!

 Note that this document is available on the
 <http://hix.mit.edu/hungarian-faq/>; homepage for the "Hungarian
electronic resources FAQ" at the HIX WWW-server.
 The latter also provides access for the full FAQ via 
 'finger ', and for this brief pointer you are
reading via 'finger ' (notice that you
will likely need to redirect the output to a pager or a file in order
to read it). The Usenet archive name for this document is
 hungarian/pointer .

--
 Zoli , keeper of <http://hix.mit.edu/hungarian-faq/>;
 <'finger '> 
 NOTE: spamsters and bulk emailers see 'X-Policy*:' in the 
header for the charges to be imposed for net abuse!