Hungarian/Slovenian CE Courses: Cleveland State

Discussion in 'General Distance Learning Discussions' started by eriehiker, Dec 8, 2020.

Loading...
  1. eriehiker

    eriehiker Active Member

    I consider myself 25% Hungarian. My grandmother, Hazel, was born in something like a tenement house within the Hungarian section of Toledo, OH. The run-down apartment complex still stands across from an operating Hungarian meat market about a block from the somewhat famous Tony Packo's Hungarian restaurant. Hazel was not her given name. It was some variant of Iolanthe, or Violet. I dabble a bit in genealogy and it took me a very long time to track down her birth records. During the early 1900s, Hungarian immigrants in Toledo were mostly born at home and the records of the local Hungarian Catholic parish - St. Stephen Church - were the official records. And, of course, the name threw me off.

    This particular quarter of my family tree had a history of moving back and forth across the Atlantic prior to WWI and then moved with employment opportunities from Pittsburgh to Cleveland to Toledo and a bit into the Detroit area. I have boxes of Hungarian-American cookbooks and lace and pictures of this section of my family. And there have been some nice reunions through the years in the Michigan suburbs of Toledo.

    Anyway, this is how I came across a very nice program in Hungarian and other Central/Eastern European languages and culture at Cleveland State University. There are interesting online continuing education courses in that mix. I will eventually learn some Hungarian. Yes. I will do this. :)

    https://class.csuohio.edu/world-languages/wlcconted

    https://reg.learningstream.com/view/cal4a.aspx?ek=&ref=&aa=&sid1=&sid2=&as=45&wp=191&tz=&ms=&nav=&cc=&cat1=&cat2=&cat3=&aid=CLEVESTATE&rf=&pn
     
    innen_oda likes this.
  2. innen_oda

    innen_oda Active Member

    A friendly reminder for anyone reading, that if you have any Hungarian ancestor you can trace and prove lineage for, learning the language to a conversational level will enable you to apply for simplified naturalisation. Whether your ancestor left Hungary in 1910, or 1710, doesn't matter. Even if where they lived in now Szerbia or Ukraine or Romania, if they were born on Hungarian territory at the time of their birth, you may have yourself a second (or third or fourth) passport.

    If you're such a person, I'd highly recommend this course (and the DuoLingo course). Hungarians like to scare people by saying the language is sooooo hard. Remember that if 10 million Hungarians can learn it, so can you.
     
  3. innen_oda

    innen_oda Active Member

    Ibolya, I'd guess?
     
    Johann likes this.
  4. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    Probably. Almost certainly. Ibolya is Violet and I looked up Iolanthe - and it means "violet flower" (from Greek).
     
  5. Neuhaus

    Neuhaus Well-Known Member

    This is cool but am I the only one who sees CE and immediately thinks "What potential existed for CEUs that went utterly nowhere and now makes for a waste of a metric?"
     
  6. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    Yes. Definitely.
     
  7. Mac Juli

    Mac Juli Well-Known Member

    Hello!

    I like Kati Wolf. "Szerelem miert mulsz" simply sounds better in Hungarian... :)

    Best regards,
    Mac Juli
     
    Johann and innen_oda like this.
  8. Vonnegut

    Vonnegut Well-Known Member

    Well if you're from the Michigan suburbs of Toledo, I'm just fascinated with how much hiking there might be in Erie! I thought it was pretty much farm land and a truck stop!
     
  9. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    Or "Ne engedj el!" :) I'll learn ... Hungarians are an intensely musical people. I have to like that. And they know how to live. I don't like their current leader, though.
     
    Last edited: Dec 9, 2020
    Mac Juli likes this.
  10. eriehiker

    eriehiker Active Member

    Hehe. I used to run a blog for the Monroe Evening News called the Erie Hiker. I would visit and walk any natural and/or public area within an hour of Monroe, MI. I took boatloads of pictures and wrote article-length posts. I would also write about environmental issues and local park development. This was the time frame in which the Detroit River International Wildlife Refuge and the River Raisin National Battlefield Park were created. For about five years, I would get about 30,000 visits to the blog per month, which is maybe not a lot when compared to my next-door neighbor who has 2 million followers on Youtube as Claw Kicker, but for a blog with a very narrow regional focus, I was pretty happy with it.

    https://web.archive.org/web/20120330061423/http://www.blogsmonroe.com/expatriate/
    https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCt65DQDznu6uPj3IRhySHmw

    One of my favorite places to hike very locally there was the Woodtick Peninsula which was a 4 mile peninsula that was really a series of islands. If you knew the underwater sandbars, you could essentially island hop on foot. A few years back, an individual used the peninsula and frozen ice to reach Turtle Island in Maumee Bay. That took guts and I am impressed by that individual. Note that high water levels have now destroyed this peninsula hike. However, the lakes rise and fall and maybe in ten years it will come back.

    http://extremesouthmichigan.blogspot.com/2007/01/favorite-place-woodtick-peninsula.html
    https://www.nailhed.com/2014/12/turtle-island-pt-1-best-laid-plans.html

    I also enjoy the Pointe Mouillee "banana dike." The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers spent about $50 million and built a seven-mile artificial island where the Detroit River smashes the Huron River delta at the intersection of Lake Erie, the Detroit River and the Huron River. The island protects a massive wetland area where it is possible to see a lighthouse, the Renaissance Center in the distance, miles of distant Canadian shoreline, passing freighters and ice-breakers and as many birds as you might ever want to see. Birders counted 500,000 broad-winged hawks in one day there a few years ago during migration.

    https://www2.dnr.state.mi.us/publications/pdfs/huntingwildlifehabitat/sga/Pointe_Mouillee_SGA_mngd_map.pdf

    I placed links at the time onto Google maps and it becomes quite impressive when taken all together. SE Michigan/the Greater Detroit Area is actually very good for hiking and mountain biking. I tried to hike all the trails within an hour and I could never get it all done. There are just too many miles of trail. A person just has to realize that Michigan is pretty flat and that really nice places hide in plain sight.

    https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit?mid=1zD8L5y__iGIRhWhORUJAiVjDpWw&usp=sharing
    https://www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit?mid=1F7Rz0NXAwMSR_4G_C2RoiX9TGsE&usp=sharing
     
    Last edited: Dec 10, 2020
    innen_oda likes this.
  11. eriehiker

    eriehiker Active Member

    Note: I have to mention one of my favorite local names - Pointe Aux Peaux. My hometown of Monroe was originally named Frenchtown because it was initially created by French settlers. These settlers had a much better relationship with the local Native American population than the British and Americans who came later. Many local residents have French last names and descend from these settlers and, very probably, local Native Americans before they were driven out. Anyway, lots of the places I would visit had all of these crazy old French names. And, of course, we live along Lake Erie, not Erie Lake and walk along the River Raisin and not the Raisin River.

    Pointe Aux Peaux sticks out into Lake Erie and like most of the shoreline, there are muskrat lodges everywhere. If one were inclined, a person could trap a few and eat them on Friday during Lent because the long-held local tradition is that the local bishop in Detroit gave the okay because, like fish, muskrats swim. You can still go to muskrat dinners in town and I know a place nearby in Ohio that does a brisk business is frozen muskrat. BTW, I just looked it up and Pointe Aux Peaux apparently means skin point or pointe. That would make sense given the fact that skins would have been important in the local early economy.

    https://www2.dnr.state.mi.us/publications/pdfs/huntingwildlifehabitat/sga/Pointe_Aux_Peaux_SWA_map.pdf

    So there. Think about that the next time you are driving 85 on 75.
     
  12. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    Yep. Glad I read ALL your post. Know-it-all me was just itching to tell you that... but you got me, right at the end. Aaargh! :eek:

    Interesting stuff. I think I'd like it, there. :)
     
  13. eriehiker

    eriehiker Active Member

    Here's a little more...

    I mentioned in a previous post that from Pointe Mouillee in Michigan on the western end of Lake Erie, it is possible to look north and see the Renaissance Center in Detroit. That is Detroit's tallest building. There is, however, some odd geography at play here. The Renaissance Center is in Downtown Detroit. It is located right on the water along the Detroit River. The Downtown Detroit riverfront is south facing into Canada and this means that for me to see the Renaissance Center from Pointe Mouillee, I am actually looking over Essex County in Ontario and back into Michigan.

    https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=1f-znJyc4lGsSE7EBeenWteGZ7SbyqUOp&usp=sharing

    The fact that Detroit is south facing onto the river and the international border means that there is no "South Detroit." When Journey wrote "Don't Stop Believin,'" and mentioned a "Just a city boy/Born and raised in south Detroit," that boy was almost certainly born and raised in Windsor, ONT because when there is no coronavirus, Michiganders cross south into Canada and Windsor. There is even a restaurant in Windsor named "South Detroit."

    http://south-detroit.edan.io/

    I have probably crossed the U.S./Canada border 50 times and I am really hating the border shutdown. I don't blame the Canadians. It is the right decision. Just prior to the spread of coronavirus, I was planning some trips with my kids to Point Pelee and other near-in Canadian destinations. It is a day-trip for me and my kids are now just old enough - 7, 7 and 10 - to take them back-and-forth to Canada. It sucks to suddenly lose one-third of your local area. So, everybody, get the vaccine. :)
     

Share This Page