Hungarian language
Genetic studies have identified Y-DNA haplogroups in ethnic Hungarians, such as N3a-L708, R1a-Z93, and C2-M217. These findings support a westward migration of ancestors from regions around present-day eastern Siberia and present-day Mongolia approximately 4,500 years ago to the Carpathian Basin. Academic consensus holds that Hungarian diverged from its Ugric relatives in the first half of the 1st millennium BC, to the east of the southern Urals in western Siberia. Archaeological evidence from present-day southern Bashkortostan confirms the existence of Hungarian settlements between the Volga River and the Ural Mountains. Persian loanwords in Hungarian date around the time when the Ugric family broke up and probably span well over a millennium. They include words like 'cow', 'ten', 'milk', and 'reed'. Later the Onogurs and Bulgars had a great influence on the language, especially between the 5th and 9th centuries. This layer of Turkic loans is large and varied, including words borrowed from Oghur Turkic.
The first written accounts of Hungarian date to the 10th century, such as mostly Hungarian personal names and place names in Greek by Eastern Roman Emperor Constantine VII. No significant texts written in Old Hungarian script have survived because the medium of writing used at the time, wood, is perishable. The Kingdom of Hungary was founded in 1000 by Stephen I. The country became a Western-styled Christian state with Latin script replacing Hungarian runes. The earliest remaining fragments of the language are found in the establishing charter of the abbey of Tihany from 1055, intermingled with Latin text. The first extant text fully written in Hungarian is the Funeral Sermon and Prayer, which dates to the 1190s. In 1533, Kraków printer Benedek Komjáti published the first Hungarian-language book set in movable type. By the 17th century, the language already closely resembled its present-day form, although two of the past tenses remained in use. German, Italian, and French loans also began to appear during this period.
Hungarian is assigned to the Ugric branch along with the Mansi and Khanty languages of western Siberia. However, there is debate on whether that is a valid grouping. The classification of the Hungarian language as Uralic has historically been the subject of intense debate, although primarily among non-linguists. Some scholars in the past have proposed that Hungarian is a member of the Turkic language family. During the latter half of the 19th century, a competing hypothesis proposed a Turkic affinity of Hungarian, or alternatively, that both the Uralic and the Turkic families formed part of a superfamily of Ural-Altaic languages. Following an academic debate known as the Ugric-Turkic war, the Finno-Ugric hypothesis was concluded the sounder of the two, mainly based on work by the German linguist Josef Budenz. Today, the consensus among linguists is that Hungarian is a member of the Uralic family of languages. The name of Hungary could be a result of regular sound changes of Ungrian/Ugrian, and the fact that the Eastern Slavs referred to Hungarians as such seemed to confirm that. Current literature favors the hypothesis that it comes from the name of the Turkic tribe Onogur.
About 20% of Hungarian loanwords are borrowed from neighbouring Slavic languages. Examples include 'poppy seed', 'Wednesday', 'Thursday', and 'Christmas'. About 1.6 percent of the Romanian lexicon is of Hungarian origin. The second largest group of loanwords are made up of Turkic loanwords, which can be divided into pre-Conquest and Ottoman layers. Due to centuries of cohabitation with Turkic peoples such as the Volga Bulgars and Khazars, the exact origin of certain words can be hard to pin down. The number of Turkic loanwords is estimated to be between 300, 500. The third largest group is made up of German loanwords, which number around 400. These started appearing in the language as early as the 11th century but became especially prominent during the Habsburg-era starting in the 16th century. A much smaller but also much older layer of loanwords are Iranian loanwords, which only number in the dozens but serve as an important layer of the vocabulary. Words like 'cow', 'milk',
'married woman, wife', 'tax', 'fortress', 'market', and 'glass' belong to this category.
Hungarian has about 13 million native speakers, of whom more than 9.8 million live in Hungary. According to the 2011 Hungarian census, 9,896,333 people speak Hungarian, of whom 9,827,875 people speak it as a first language. About 2.2 million speakers live in other areas that were part of the Kingdom of Hungary before the Treaty of Trianon in 1920. Of these, the largest group lives in Transylvania, the western half of present-day Romania, where there are approximately 1.25 million Hungarians. There are large Hungarian communities also in Slovakia, Serbia, and Ukraine. In Romania, it is a recognized minority language used at local level in communes, towns, and municipalities with an ethnic Hungarian population of over 20%. The Szeklers form their own region and have their own national museum, educational institutions, and hospitals. Today, the language holds official status nationally in Hungary and regionally in Romania, Slovakia, Serbia, Austria, and Slovenia. It is one of the 24 official languages of the
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Common questions
What is the genetic origin of ethnic Hungarians?
Genetic studies identify Y-DNA haplogroups N3a-L708, R1a-Z93, and C2-M217 in ethnic Hungarians. These findings support a westward migration of ancestors from regions around present-day eastern Siberia and present-day Mongolia approximately 4,500 years ago to the Carpathian Basin.
When did Hungarian diverge from its Ugric relatives?
Academic consensus holds that Hungarian diverged from its Ugric relatives in the first half of the 1st millennium BC. This divergence occurred to the east of the southern Urals in western Siberia.
Who published the first Hungarian-language book set in movable type?
Kraków printer Benedek Komjáti published the first Hungarian-language book set in movable type in 1533. The earliest remaining fragments of the language are found in the establishing charter of the abbey of Tihany from 1055.
Which languages form the largest groups of loanwords in Hungarian?
The second largest group of loanwords are made up of Turkic loanwords, which number between 300 and 500. The third largest group is made up of German loanwords, which number around 400.
How many native speakers does Hungarian have today?
Hungarian has about 13 million native speakers, of whom more than 9.8 million live in Hungary. According to the 2011 Hungarian census, 9,896,333 people speak Hungarian, of whom 9,827,875 people speak it as a first language.