Furcsa dolgok a júniusi Easy Hungarian magazinban

What does “balkezes” mean in Hungarian?

Balkezes means left-handed, and it’s a tidy lesson in how Hungarian builds adjectives: take bal (left) and kéz (hand), join them, and add the adjective ending -es — bal + kez + es. The same recipe gives jobbkezes (right-handed). Beyond hands, balkezes can also mean “clumsy” or “ham-fisted”, echoing the old European suspicion of the left side that survives in many languages' words for “left”.

The pattern is everywhere: kék (blue) + szem (eye) → kékszemű, “blue-eyed”. Note kéz softens to kez- inside the compound. In the clip, Petra previews a magazine feature on balkezesek — statistics, famous left-handers, and the babonák (superstitions) historically tied to left-handedness — and mentions she is balkezes herself, making the word the natural anchor of the segment.