Do you know which is the best-known Hungarian word in the world?
While we have incorporated a lot of foreign words into our language, mostly in Magyarized ( Hungarian shape ) form, other people have adopted only a few expressions from us.
Goulash is known in many places, although they usually mean our stew instead of soup. But there is also a more widespread Hungarian expression in different languages of the world. What's more: a Hungarian family name also appears as a common name in English.
Among the Hungarian words, "kocsi" ( car ) has entered most languages in the world. The car was named after the village of Kocs in Komárom county, and it was the origin of many other versions: and the Slovak koc, the Polish kocz, the Romanian cocie, the Dutch koetsier, the Swedish kusk, the Spanish coche, the German Kutsche, the English coach, the French coche and Italian cocchio.
In the fifties, the ballpoint pen was also called biro in English after its inventor, József László Bíró. This was followed up by László Fejes, who used Google Books to examine the occurrences of the terms biro and biro pen.
The creator of the ballpoint pen worked as a journalist and was bothered by the fact that the ink on the pens used at the time dried out quickly and often smeared. Observing the operation of the rotary cylinders, he realized that the paint can be applied to the paper with the help of a ball from the end of a tube filled with ink. Therefore, he built a small ball into the pen, and when his hand moved on the paper, the ball began to rotate and so he first picked it up and then transferred the ink to the paper. In 1938 Bíró patented his invention. At first, the British government saw fantasy in it and bought the patent - not least because the "biro" worked well on airplanes at high altitudes, unlike its predecessor, the traditional fountain pen.