The Devil Speaks Hungarian

In a land of unrelenting turmoil, in a city that's been laid siege by Mongols, Huns, Turks, Tartars, Germans, and Russians, a cop from Brooklyn joins the chase for a notebook with a mathematical formula that could turn the world on its head.

In a land of unrelenting turmoil, in a city that's been laid siege by Mongols, Huns, Turks, Tartars, Germans, and Russians, a cop from Brooklyn joins the chase for a notebook with a mathematical formula that could turn the world on its head.

In Communist times, it was impossible to do sociolinguistic work on Hungarian in contact with other languages. In the short period of time since the collapse of the Soviet bloc, Hungarian sociolinguists have certainly done their very best to catch up. This volume brings together the fruits of their work, some of which was hitherto only available in Hungarian. The reader will find a wealth of information on many bilingual communities involving Hungarian as a minority language. The communities covered in the book are located in countries neighboring Hungary (Austria, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Romania and Ukraine) as well as overseas (in Australia and the United States). Several of the chapters discuss material derived from the Sociolinguistics of Hungarian Outside Hungary project. Throughout the book, the emphasis is on how the language use of Hungarian minority speakers has been influenced by the majority or contact language, both on a sociolinguistic macro-level as well as on the micro-level. In the search for explanations, particular attention is given to typological aspects of language change under the conditions of language contact.

The second in a series of noir romance “Blues” novellas, Brick City Blues centers on a chance meeting between two strangers on an airport layover in Newark, New Jersey—the Brick City. She’s shuttling between her teaching job at Cornell and a research project in DC; he’s on his way to deliver a briefcase full of cash from the Cuban mob in Miami to a local capo for the Italian Mafia in Utica, New York. But opposites attract. Unaware of what he might be mixed up in, she finds herself slowly drawn to the tall, well-dressed stranger with the black briefcase. And he is undeniably attracted to the bookish Ivy League professor. They quickly discover that they have more in common than not. Or so it seems. Welcome to the Brick City, where anything can happen.