[HN Gopher] The man who did not have a conversation in over 50 y...
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The man who did not have a conversation in over 50 years
Author : supermatou
Score : 138 points
Date : 2023-09-30 20:51 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org)
| wslh wrote:
| The Wikipedia page doesn't give juicy information. I think we can
| go to [1].
|
| [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2000/sep/19/1
| afterburner wrote:
| > When he was told that he was going to be shown films about
| the second world war, he moved his chair to the very back of
| the room - only to be disappointed by his first encounter with
| television and its tiny images.
|
| Lol, expecting a movie theatre, guess he was a back-row guy.
| praisewhitey wrote:
| Some more information from the reporting at the time
|
| >He had never learned Russian, and has lived the last 20 years
| in linguistic isolation after the last other Hungarian patients
| left the hospital in 1980.
|
| http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/860033.stm
| Wxc2jjJmST9XWWL wrote:
| I'm a bit surprised it does get this many upvotes. The wikipedia
| article is a stub, the bbc article quoted (and posted here in the
| comments somewhere) doesn't do a good job detailing the exact
| situation he found himself in or what (if any of course) mental
| issues he might have had to be in the hospital.
|
| It's a bit of interesting trivia, little more, very little to
| discuss in my opinion (and the quality of comments so far reflect
| this), which is not meant to belittle the situation from a
| personal/human perspective.
| smeej wrote:
| How do you not learn a local language after 50 years? Were they
| also not talking around him?
|
| I don't think I have any special facility with language, but I'm
| fairly convinced if I had 50 years and the right vocal abilities
| to make the sounds, I could learn to speak a language from
| another _planet_ if I were immersed in it.
| huytersd wrote:
| I've seen Chinese and Pakistani people that have lived in New
| York City for 30+ years and don't speak a lick of English.
| Their situation is different though since they have a local
| community to rely on that speak the same language.
| toddmorey wrote:
| It seems like sadly he got very little social interaction in
| the hospital.
| 0xDEF wrote:
| He was in a Russian psychiatric hospital.
|
| Psychiatric hospitals in many countries are an extension of the
| prison system.
| Tao3300 wrote:
| A mental hospital probably isn't a good place to pick up a
| language, especially if everyone is convinced you can't speak
| sensibly and your teeth are gone. [Source:
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2000/sep/19/1]
| netsharc wrote:
| It seems like the hospital workers didn't really care enough to
| talk to him/to make conversation or even to teach him Russian
| words like "bed", "toilet", etc.
|
| Even having basic vocabulary, it's impossible to have a
| meaningful conversation...
| tkuraku wrote:
| You don't just learn a language by osmosis. You need resources,
| and people to work with you.
| avereveard wrote:
| > discovered living in a Russian psychiatric hospital
|
| I don't think you fully realize the extent of the meaning of
| that few words.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_abuse_of_psychiatry_...
| crooked-v wrote:
| When would get the opportunity while locked up in a psych
| hospital where everyone thinks you're crazy because you speak
| 'gibberish'?
| romanzubenko wrote:
| fwiw according to Russian news[0] workers knew he was
| Hungarian, and reached out to Hungarian officials to claim
| him, but didn't hear back. According to article at the time
| when Hungary was prepping to join EU, ex nazi PoW was not a
| priority.
|
| He only was "rediscovered", when Russian hospital personnel
| got him speaking Hungarian on camera for Russian news, and
| eventually news segment was picked up in Hungary and 80
| Hungarian families came forward to claim him as a missing
| relative.
|
| [0] https://ren.tv/news/lifestyle/887400-poslednii-plennyi-
| vtoro...
| tpmx wrote:
| Sounds like the title of a Wes Anderson movie. (But the "over"
| ruined it.)
| Janicc wrote:
| They must've done that intentionally. You can't tell me he
| wouldn't have been able to communicate through drawing, writing
| or some sort of made up sign language that he's hungarian or that
| he's mentally well.
| lostlogin wrote:
| He was taken as a prisoner and likely had little idea what was
| going on in the wider world.
|
| I can imagine that cooperating may have be the last thing he
| wanted to do initially.
| Xeoncross wrote:
| How sad, to fall through the cracks in such a spectacular way.
|
| There have been so many appeals for help and obvious missed-test
| cases posted here by people. I can only dread the number of
| people who will experience such horrible fates again when there
| is another world war.
|
| Services and systems for which no user-accessible help exists,
| completely automated interfaces designed by people without
| knowledge of the end users actual use and only through public
| outcry is an operator directed to edit some database manually or
| restore someones account or access to funds.
| codetrotter wrote:
| Agree.
|
| Even with this
|
| > since his military service had been continuous, his decades
| of accumulated unpaid salary were paid in full
|
| It's still nothing, compared to having been locked away in a
| foreign country for almost his whole adult life :(
| xkcd1963 wrote:
| What do you mean by locked away? He could have left, it
| didn't say it was a forensic psychiatry.
| masfuerte wrote:
| Good luck getting out of a psychiatric hospital when nobody
| understands a word you are saying.
| xkcd1963 wrote:
| My objection to your previous message is that you must be
| assuming he was locked away. If this was the case, why
| was he let go to Hungary?
| ffgjgf1 wrote:
| Presumably after the collapse of the USSR Russia stopped
| using psychiatric hospitals as alternatives to
| gulags/prisons?
| philkrylov wrote:
| Right. At least for some time...
| H8crilA wrote:
| There are different types of patients in psychiatric
| hospitals. It depends on the institution but usually the
| majority of them are not psychotic at all but rather have
| affective disorders, personality disorders or addictions
| (or a combination). They can exist in the outside world
| just fine if there's a fitting place for them, think of a
| cocaine or alcohol addict that even manages to keep up
| with their high income career. There just wasn't a place
| for him - until he was repatriated.
|
| It is really shocking that he never picked up Russian. I
| understand that Russian and Hungarian are almost as
| different as Japanese and Hungarian, but he should be
| able to learn the language just by hearing it.
| apt-get wrote:
| > A Czech linguist of Slovak descent, Karol Moravcik,
| identified him as Hungarian, and on 11 August 2000, Toma
| arrived back in Hungary where his family was identified
| through DNA matching.
|
| Someone else recognized the language he was speaking, and
| that it wasn't actually gibberish (and so he wasn't some
| crazy old man).
| crooked-v wrote:
| He was let go to Hungary after _fifty-three years_ , when
| a Czech visitor coincidentally discovered that he spoke
| Hungarian.
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| Russia is quite known of moving people to rural areas from
| another country they are at war with.
|
| Displacing locals and moving Russians in, they claim the
| local population is ethnic Russians...
|
| Getting away is not easy
| xkcd1963 wrote:
| [flagged]
| vilunov wrote:
| Psychiatric hospitals in Russia/USSR (psikhushka) are
| virtually prisons, they were often used to involuntarily
| hold political prisoners.
| adonovan wrote:
| > Psychiatric hospitals in Russia/USSR (psikhushka) are
| virtually prisons, they were often used to involuntarily
| hold political prisoners.
|
| Indeed. The fact that no-one among the entire staff of
| the hospital over all those decades endeavored even to
| identify the patient's only language tells you that it
| was not a hospital.
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(page generated 2023-09-30 23:00 UTC)