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Hungarian language: the story on HearLore | HearLore
Hungarian language
Hungarian is the only Uralic language spoken in Central Europe, standing as a linguistic island surrounded by Germanic, Slavic, and Romance tongues. This isolation has preserved a unique identity that traces its roots back to the steppes of western Siberia, thousands of years before the Magyars arrived in the Carpathian Basin. Genetic studies have identified Y-DNA haplogroups in ethnic Hungarians, such as N3a-L708, which is most common in Siberia, and R1a-Z93, most common in Kazakhstan, supporting a westward migration of ancestors from regions around present-day eastern Siberia and present-day Mongolia approximately 4,500 years ago. The language itself diverged from its Ugric relatives in the first half of the 1st millennium BC, to the east of the southern Urals, where Persian loanwords date back to the time when the Ugric family broke up. These ancient connections are visible in words like 'cow', 'ten', 'milk', and 'reed', which span well over a millennium of history. The name of Hungary itself may be a result of regular sound changes of Ungrian or Ugrian, confirming the link to the Turkic tribe Onoğur, which means 'ten arrows' or 'ten tribes'. The classification of the Hungarian language as Uralic has historically been the subject of intense debate, with some scholars in the past proposing that Hungarian is a member of the Turkic language family, a controversy that raged through the 18th and 19th centuries.
The Language of Survival
The survival of Hungarian as a distinct language is a testament to centuries of political upheaval and cultural resilience. When the Kingdom of Hungary was founded in 1000 by Stephen I, the country became a Western-styled Christian state, and Latin script replaced the Old Hungarian script, which was an alphabetic writing system born from the Old Turkic script. The earliest remaining fragments of the language are found in the establishing charter of the abbey of Tihany from 1055, intermingled with Latin text, while the first extant text fully written in Hungarian is the Funeral Sermon and Prayer, which dates to the 1190s. Despite the loss of territory and population, the language persisted through the Ottoman rule from 1541 to 1699, absorbing Turkish words like 'cobza' and 'mop dog' from the Pechenegs and Cumanians. The Treaty of Trianon in 1920 resulted in Hungary losing 71 percent of its territory and one-third of the ethnic Hungarian population, yet the language remained the official language of Hungary and one of the 24 official languages of the European Union. Today, Hungarian is spoken by 14 million speakers, with 9,896,333 in Hungary alone, and significant communities in Romania, Slovakia, Serbia, Ukraine, and the diaspora in North America and Israel. The language holds official status nationally in Hungary and regionally in Romania, Slovakia, Serbia, Austria, and Slovenia, serving as a unifying force for communities that have been scattered across seven neighboring countries.
Hungarian is the only Uralic language spoken in Central Europe and traces its roots to the steppes of western Siberia. Genetic studies support a westward migration of ancestors from regions around present-day eastern Siberia and present-day Mongolia approximately 4,500 years ago. The language diverged from its Ugric relatives in the first half of the 1st millennium BC to the east of the southern Urals.
When was the first Hungarian text written?
The earliest remaining fragments of the Hungarian language are found in the establishing charter of the abbey of Tihany from 1055. The first extant text fully written in Hungarian is the Funeral Sermon and Prayer which dates to the 1190s. The first Hungarian-language book set in movable type was published in 1533 by Kraków printer Benedek Komjáti.
How many people speak Hungarian today?
Hungarian is spoken by 14 million speakers with 9,896,333 in Hungary alone. Significant communities exist in Romania, Slovakia, Serbia, Ukraine, and the diaspora in North America and Israel. The language remains the official language of Hungary and one of the 24 official languages of the European Union.
Who revitalized the Hungarian language in the 19th century?
Ferenc Kazinczy spearheaded a process of language revitalization that transformed Hungarian from a medieval tongue into a modern literary language. Kazinczy produced more than ten thousand newly created Hungarian words to replace existing words of German and Latin origins. This movement significantly reduced the ratio of words of Latin and German origins in the Hungarian language.
What are the main sources of loanwords in the Hungarian language?
The most numerous loanwords come from Slavic languages with 1252 words of proven Slavic origin. The second largest group of loanwords are made up of Turkic loanwords which can be divided into pre-Conquest and Ottoman layers. The third largest group is made up of German loanwords which number around 400 and started appearing in the language as early as the 11th century.
In the 19th century, a group of writers, most notably Ferenc Kazinczy, spearheaded a process of language revitalization that transformed Hungarian from a medieval tongue into a modern literary language. Kazinczy's chief goal was to replace existing words of German and Latin origins with newly created Hungarian words, producing more than ten thousand words, most of which are used actively today. Some words were shortened, such as 'victory' becoming 'győzelem', and a number of dialectal words spread nationally, while extinct words were reintroduced to enrich the lexicon. This movement significantly reduced the formerly high ratio of words of Latin and German origins in the Hungarian language, which were related to social sciences, natural sciences, politics, and economics. The standard language lost its diphthongs, and several postpositions transformed into suffixes, including 'onto' which became a single word. At one time, Hungarian used six verb tenses, while today only two or three are used, with the future formed with an auxiliary verb. The 19th and 20th centuries saw further standardization of the language, and differences between mutually comprehensible dialects gradually diminished. The first Hungarian-language book set in movable type was published in 1533 by Kraków printer Benedek Komjáti, titled 'A Biblia', and the first Bible translation was the Hussite Bible in the 1430s. The language's ability to adapt and evolve has allowed it to remain vibrant and relevant, with a lexicon that now contains between 60,000 to 100,000 words, and technical texts that could total up to 1,000,000 words.
The Agglutinative Architecture
The vocabulary of Hungarian is a mosaic of influences from Uralic, Turkic, Slavic, German, and other languages, reflecting the complex history of the Hungarian people. The basic vocabulary shares several hundred word roots with other Uralic languages like Finnish, Estonian, Mansi, and Khanty, including words for 'live', 'water', 'hand', 'blood', and 'head'. Words for elementary kinship and nature are more Ugric, less r-Turkic and less Slavic, while words related to agriculture are about 50 percent r-Turkic and 50 percent Slavic. The most numerous loanwords come from Slavic languages, with 1252 words of proven Slavic origin, and an additional 382 words classified as 'possibly Slavic'. The second largest group of loanwords are made up of Turkic loanwords, which can be divided into pre-Conquest and Ottoman layers, with the pre-Conquest words making up the absolute majority of them. The third largest group is made up of German loanwords, which number around 400, and 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, including words for 'cow', 'milk', 'tax', 'fortress', and 'market'. The language has also absorbed words from Latin, Greek, and more recently, English,
The Geography of Speech
especially in technical fields and slang, demonstrating its adaptability and openness to new influences.
Hungarian culture is deeply embedded in the language, with unique features that reflect the history and values of the Hungarian people. The words for the points of the compass are directly derived from the position of the Sun during the day in the Northern Hemisphere, with 'north' meaning 'night', 'south' meaning 'noon', 'east' meaning 'rising of the Sun', and 'west' meaning 'setting of the Sun'. There are two basic words for 'red' in Hungarian, 'piros' and 'vörös', with 'piros' used for inanimate, artificial things, and 'vörös' for animate or natural things, a distinction that is unique in recognizing two shades of red as separate and distinct 'folk colors'. The Hungarian words for brothers and sisters are differentiated based upon relative age, and there are separate prefixes for several ancestors and descendants, reflecting the importance of family and kinship in Hungarian society. The language also has a four-tiered system for expressing levels of politeness, which reflects the social hierarchy and respect for elders in Hungarian culture. The name order in Hungarian is the so-called eastern name order, in which the surname comes first and the given name comes last, a convention that is retained in many Hungarian communities abroad. The language's ability to form extremely long words, such as 'megszenteltetettlenségtelítetlenségeskedésetekért', demonstrates the flexibility of its agglutinative structure,
The Lexicon of History
and the language's phonemic orthography makes it relatively easy to learn once the rules are understood. The language is a vital part of Hungarian identity, and its survival is a testament to the resilience and adaptability of the Hungarian people.