Today's press parades a whole series of selfishly exaggerating, catchy words and expressions. The significant expansion of the queen , for example, in the coverage of beauty contests - regardless of whether this rivalry is international, national or regional, county, or just district, settlement, institutional level, and is limited to even a few bold participants who perhaps do not always practice self-criticism - this designation is almost "mandatory" in the media. Both before and after the big event… Here is “Who will be the next king ?”; "the new queen took the top prize of the competition"; "divers crowned the queen "; "The queen !"
One of the websites lists who were the " queens " of district competitions of this kind in the county in the previous year... One of the press articles reporting on the election of the "Face of the University" states that X. "became the queen " and "the the throne " Y. and Z. were also placed: the second and third placed girls. Or: "Nineteen-year-old XY became this year's queen's other lady-in-waiting." This is nothing to talk about: "this year's queen" ... In the mentioned examples, it would have been more accurate to write about winners of of this year's first place winner of the .
The statement found in the press: XY "became the new Queen of Hungary" can be regarded as a similarly astonishing inaccuracy, and even as an unprecedented disrespect for our former home queens . (Moreover, with K queen the winner of one of the ... This case of the so-called parsimony can be corrected as follows: in the current year, XY "became the new beauty queen ", or: she became "became the beauty " - according to the jury of the competition organized in the X. locality. Yes, some are queens and some are competition winners ... What a difference!
It is true that the Hungarian interpretative hand dictionary indicates a similar meaning of the word queen However, it also indicates that rarely used in this sense.
The other day we celebrated the day of the Hungarian language (November 13) . On this occasion, among other admonitions, it would also not hurt to warn language users that it is not stylish to indiscriminately repeat meaningful words over and over again, such as the word queen in the cited cases, if they do not (completely) fit into the context due to their meaning . Yet today's media hawks self-serving exaggerated, sensationalist words. However, his use of words could be sabbatical. In the discussed topic, if only those persons with the title in question were entitled to it: for example - remembering the past - Mária Theresa or the recently deceased II. Elizabeth. They - they really queens .
Author: Lajos Arany , native language proofreader of Reformátusok Lapja, teacher at Debrecen Media Academy
