Köszönöm, Peacocks

Hello peacocks. I hope you’re all doing excellently. 

Right, first things first: I’m totally going to accept your kind patronage this month if it’s quite all right with you. The book is getting the finishing touches and the new video is almost ready. Whatever happens, they’ll both be out this month, finally.

Without spoiling anything for the new video, I will say it led me down a rabbit hole into the world of languages. One that particularly got me was Hungarian. Because Hungarian is insane.  

Excuse me. I know from being there that the people are lovely, and the culture is super interesting. But the history of their language is, to put it politely, a bit out there. 

You may’ve travelled about in Europe and noticed that even if the language is incomprehensible, sometimes you can tell what’s going on in the sentence. Lots of us speak languages based on Latin, and if you know enough roots, maybe you can take some fun guesses with a taxi driver or something. 

Yeah. Try that with Hungarian. You’re going to have a bad time.

Just look up a conversation on YouTube and see if you can follow it, any of it. Unless you’re Hungarian. In which case that’s cheating and hey, cool country.

NOW LOOK HERE, you might say. LISTEN UP, you might continue. HOW MUCH JAPANESE COULD YOU FOLLOW, HUH? LOTS OF LANGUAGES ARE UNIQUE.

And you would be right. There are plenty of other language families us English-speakers don’t even know where to start with. But most of the countries that speak them aren’t just casually sitting in the middle of Europe next to Austria. 

If you look into a bit more you’ll find that the reason Hungarian is so bizarrely other to the languages around it is because the country itself was probably settled (or originally composed of, anyway) folks who came from the Ural mountains, which is quite a walk away. 

And that really hits home. Because that was over 1000 or so years ago. And these people left part of their language behind. They integrated with the surrounding Europeans for sure – Budapest is gorgeous, and certainly very traditionally European in places. But they left all these patterns behind too, not least of all their tongue. Their legacy is still going strong. 

If you have been to other countries as no doubt most of you have, you’ve surely found that you’re aware of your own nationality a lot more, suddenly. It’s probably because you might be the only Brit, or Spaniard, or Kiwi for miles around, and suddenly all these little quirks you carry from your culture pop out noticeably for the first time. Largely because no one else around you is doing them. (If you find yourself in a room of people merrily introducing themselves abroad, I have noticed you can usually guarantee the folks quietly shuffling about at the back and looking too shy to talk are from my homelands.) 

All of that stuff is a sort of odd pattern you inherited, isn’t it? I always feel that way anyway. We didn’t build our language, or the prevailing fashions of the moment. We didn’t form our architectural habits. We were given them by long, undulating lines of people who died thousands of years before, in part. And when you come up against something as bizarre as Hungarian (no meanness meant, it really is the loveliest language, and again in my experience the people are ace) you realise whatever patterns you inherited and called “how it is” are just totally arbitrary little cultural games for the most part: from your language and all the way down even to your genetics and the genetics of your ancestors. They could be any other way. You just got this set in particular. 

All in the all: the world’s way cool and complicated, yo.

Excuse all that.

In other news, I expect you’re probably bored as shit hearing about the new book. I’m bored as shit trying to finish it at this point to be honest, but golly gee am I excited for you to see it. I won’t bang on about it any more nevertheless. Please stay tuned later this month. It’s almost here.

I hit something of a mental block last month. I’ve collected a fair few video ideas that never made it into anything, or I just never found the time, but even these felt stupid. WELL, I thought, I GUESS I’M JUST DONE THEN. And that was fine, and I was quite ready to accept it. It’s been an extremely surreal two years of having a job I had neglected even to dream of, let alone actually aim for. But I had a few mini-adventures these last few weeks and the little niggling ideas came back, the sun poked its head over the horizon, and writing was fun again.

And I realised that if you’re having doubts about what you’re doing, it may not be what you’re doing that’s the problem. You might just be bored of yourself. If you are in this position, may I politely recommend undertaking even the smallest of adventures and seeing if the ideas come back. Because I bet they will. 

Next time we talk I hope we’ll never have to mention the book again, or I certainly won’t be moaning about it. The days have been spent reading, rereading, rerereading, looking for typos, looking for inconsistencies, stopping for coffee, stopping for more coffee, cursing whoever invented books in the first place, then continuing. I hope very soon that will be over. I’ll attach the PDF, mobi, and epub files for free in the next Patreon post in any case. It goes without saying that the next book – as with the other excuses for books – would not exist without you. None of this would really. And as is perhaps getting dull to read now: I just want to say thank you, and thank you, and thank you. Or, köszönöm as our Hungarian friends would put it.

Finally, the cat sends her love, Bulgaria sends its regards, and myself – well, I just hope you’re doing very well, wherever you might be, whatever set of circumstances you might find yourself in. 

Thank you again for the support, carbon units, 

Much love and all the best,

Ex.