Reading the Bartameter (Part 2): Fluent Hungarian Is the Ultimate Aphrodisiac
The reader tips about Peter Barta, the Legal Aid Lawyer who allegedly made surreptitious videos of his female co-workers getting changed, are starting to flow into our inbox. From a former colleague:
I used to work at the Criminal Defense Division (CDD) in Manhattan with Peter Barta. He would sidle up to female co-workers, bragging about his fluent Hungarian: "Did you know that the only language related to Hungarian is Finnish?"Uh, yeah, I'm not an idiot. And if I didn't know that already, I would have remembered from the seventeenth time you told me.
He would then mention, with no apparent self-consciousness, that he lived with his mother. Finally, he'd try to ask the girl -- not me, I was too rude to him -- out.
We're repulsed. But at the same time, we can't help wondering: Was Peter Barta just lonely and misunderstood? Could Judd Apatow, writer of The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up, write a screenplay that would make Barta appear sympathetic -- a lovable schlub, a la Ben Stone (Seth Rogen)?
Even our tipster has a soft spot for her former colleague:
Creepy as he was/is, what a sad way to end one's legal career. (Though I suppose he should have thought of that before he recorded "bare breasts and buttocks" on a nannycam.)Ah, the Bartameter. We hardly knew ye ...
Food for thought: Would Peter Barta's clock / camera be covered by the Skadden technology allowance?
Earlier: Prior ATL coverage of Peter Barta (scroll down)
(42) Comments
Validate my existence.
First
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciG-Xs7mBwU
Wait...you're an idiot if you don't know the subgroups of various language families? F!
Food for thought: Would Peter Barta's clock / camera be covered by the Skadden technology allowance?
-----------------------------------------
Forgive me for thinking that this said Barta's cock...
Ignorat Perv. Turkish is also related to Hungarian.
Again with the "bare breasts and buttocks"---are you telling me the entire female criminal defense division gets buck naked in their offices and are thereafter going to the courtroom commando on a regular basis??? Or are they putting on special underwear for litigation?
Ignorat Perv. Turkish is also related to Hungarian.
Lat, dude, get a handle on things. Your commenters are out of hand. Not cool.
Again with the "bare breasts and buttocks"---are you telling me the entire female criminal defense division gets buck naked in their offices before trial and are thereafter going commando to court on a regular basis??? Or do they put on special underwear for litigation?
Ignorant Perv. Turkish is also related to Hungarian.
Ignorant Perv. Turkish is also related to Hungarian.
And of course, I can't spell "ignorant."
I wonder if his fluency is bigger than mine.
I like pressing the send button.
4:11 #3 -- maybe they didn't take their panties off, but were just wearing thongs. And like someone else said, the "bare breasts" lady might just have had to change her bra to work under her court outfit. Who gives a crap what they were doing in their offices, anyway -- it doesn't justify Creepy McNasterson's actions.
test
I lived in budapest for a while, and indeed, fluent hungarian is the ultimate afrodiziak! Thank you for making your readership aware!
hey 4:02, didn't you hear that the "N-word" was buried by the NAACP this past weekend, that means you can't use it anymore.
'I used to work at the Criminal Defense Division (CDD) in Manhattan with Peter Barta. He would sidle up to female co-workers, bragging about his fluent Hungarian: "Did you know that the only language related to Hungarian is Finnish?"'
This is not even an entirely correct statement. Based on typologically features, for instance, Japanese and Korean are often considered to be related to Hungarian and Finnish.
Greg, if I remember correctly, that's the only thing he has that's bigger than yours. xxxx
idiots all of you! hungarian is related to finnish and estonian - only. they are the finno-ugric languages. their relationship is in grammatical structure only, which would be apparent in any event only to a trained linguist. peter, rossz fiu vagy, de nem nagyon.
Anon,
You calling me fat? Or just well-Hungarian?
(Where'd you hide that spy cam?)
I believe Estonian is also related...
http://www.columbia.edu/~sss31/Turkiye/macarca.turkce.html
4:52-
Clearly the Finno-Ugric languages are not Indo-European in origin, but the influence of Indo-European languages (Turkish specifically) on Hungarian ought not to be ignored. The verb is, after all, "related" and does not imply any specific relationship, derivative or cognative.
Hoşça kal
Who strips down past undergarments, to reveal bare buttocks and breasts, in the office?
Something is missing here…..
These chicks should sue for virtual depantsification. Damages should be roughly.... hmm... $54m?
5:36 - I thoroughly enjoy stripping out of my undergarments while working. My secretary sweeps my office twice a day to make sure my co-workers aren't watching my man-breasts and man-buttocks on a nanny cam from down the hall.
Shit, I can't believe it took the arrest of a perverted Hungarian-American lawyer to bring out all the linguists on this blog.
By the way, there are several Karelian languages in northwestern Russia, near Finland, which are also distantly related to Hungarian...
505pm - the turks occupied hungary for some time (check out the delicious baths and gyros in budapest still today as testament), and, just as in spain (also long under the Turks) a few arabic-derived words were left behind. this dropping of words into a language by turkish conquerors does not mean that spanish and turkish or hungarian and turkish are related, in the linguistic sense.
6:44,
1. Gyros in Budapest? Baths, yes, but where are all the gyros?
2. Spain was never occupied by the Turks. It was under Muslim rule for many years, but they were Berbers and Arabs, not Turks.
For liability reasons he has fully explained in other posts, Lat isn't going to clean things up.
first
"For liability reasons he has fully explained in other posts, Lat isn't going to clean things up."
Great, so we get stuck becoming another xoxo. Also, Lat needs to learn his damned law if he thinks that he's seriously exposing himself to liability by removing racial slurs. Just get some eager little government attorney who has too much time on their hands to read the damned comments, if he doesn't want to waste his own time doing it. This is the sort of shit that makes me not want to read the site.
I agree that what this guy did is very wrong. However, that doesn't change the fact that women constantly getting naked in the office, enough to prompt Barta to get the camera, is just ponderous.
Lat, your comments section is quickly becoming worthless - exercise some discipline
fuck you people. first amendment... etc.
Since I'm slogging through Barbri, I want to assure you, 10:22, that if Lat wants to remove offensive language from his own site, the First Amendment is in no way implicated, though your head appears to be implicated in your ass.
What a jackass! This guy really pisses me off! -- The hungarian language is one of many Uralic-based languages. Nothing special about it. If you want a unique language, one that is considered by linguists to have no comparable relative, only Basque fits that mold. Jerk.
What a jackass! This guy really pisses me off! -- The hungarian language is one of many Uralic-based languages. Nothing special about it. If you want a unique language, one that is considered by linguists to have no comparable relative, only Basque fits that mold. Jerk.
What a jackass! This guy really pisses me off! -- The hungarian language is one of many Uralic-based languages. Nothing special about it. If you want a unique language, one that is considered by linguists to have no comparable relative, only Basque fits that mold. Jerk.
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