Hunglish.orgFőzelék means a "vegetable dish" in Hungarian but it really means soup. Leves is the word for soup but it isn't used in all cases as the previous word broadens the category of what soup in Hungary really is.
Written by Scott Savoie
If you look up főzelék up in a dictionary, the definition reads "vegetable dish,” but to me it’s a kind of soup.
Hungarians bristle when I say this.
"Leves’ is soup,” they say. "’Főzelek’ is somehting else.”
But for me, and my limited capacity of the English language, that’s how I would describe főzelék: It is like a thick soup. Usually it has a vegetables like peas ("borso”), or beans ("bab”) or spinach ("spenót”) and it is then thickened with flour so that it has the consistency of gravy.
It comes in a bowl, you eat it with a spoon: To me, that’s soup. But it is not. It is something quite different, as any Hungarian will tell you.
This is an example in which since there are two words for something, it creates the impression of being two different things.
Asked for an example in English, the only example I could come up with offhand was "Republican” and "Democratic” politicians. Two different words for the same thing, but most Americans are convinced they are totally different.
They say there are hundreds of words for "snow” in Aleut, because it is so important.
Likewise, there are many expressions for "money” in English.
In Hungary, soup is important, and they have a lot of words to prove it.