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| Classification |
See also: Regular sound correspondences between Hungarian and other Uralic languages
Hungarian is a Uralic language, more specifically a Ugric language; the most closely related languages are Mansi and Khanty of western Siberia. Connections between the Ugric and Finnic languages were noticed in the 1670s and established, along with the entire Uralic family in 1717, although the classification of Hungarian continued to be a matter of political controversy into the 18th and even 19th centuries. Today the Uralic family is considered one of the best demonstrated large language families, along with Indo-European and Austronesian[citation needed]. The name of Hungary could be a corruption of Ungrian/Ugrian, and the fact that the Eastern Slavs referred to them as Ǫgry/Ǫgrove (sg. Ǫgrinŭ) seemed to confirm that.[1] As to the source of this ethnonym in the Slavic languages, current literature favors the hypothesis that it comes from the name of the Turkic tribe Onogur (which means "ten arrows" or "ten tribes").[2][3][4]
There are numerous regular sound correspondences between Hungarian and the other Ugric languages. For example, Hungarian /aː/ corresponds to Khanty /o/ in certain positions, and Hungarian /h/ corresponds to Khanty /x/, while Hungarian final /z/ corresponds to Khanty final /t/. For example, Hungarian ház ([haːz]) "house" vs. Khanty xot ([xot]) "house", and Hungarian száz ([saːz]) "hundred" vs. Khanty sot ([sot]) "hundred".
The distance between the Ugric and Finnic languages is greater, but the correspondences are also regular.
[ | Tags:Hungary,Uralic,Ugric,Uralic Language,Ugric Language,Siberia,Europe,Regular Sound Correspondences Between Hungarian And Other Uralic Languages,Mansi,Khanty,Finnic Languages,Indo-european,Austronesian,Citation Needed,Onogur,[haːz], Antiquity and the early Middle Ages |
The Old Hungarian script, the so-called "Rovás alphabet" The country switched to using the Latin language and alphabet under king Stephen I of Hungary (reigned: 997-1038), and as late as 1844, Latin remained the official language of Hungary
It is thought that Hungarian separated from its closest relatives approximately 3000 years ago, probably in the vicinity of the Urals,[5] so the history of the language begins around 1000 BC. The Hungarians gradually changed their way of living from settled hunters to nomadic cattle-raising, probably as a result of early contacts with Iranian nomads. Their most important animals included sheep and cattle. There are no written resources on the era, thus only a little is known about it. However, research has revealed some extremely early loanwords, such as szó ('word'; from the Turkic languages) and daru ('crane', from the related Permic languages.)
A small number of anthropologists dispute this theory. Among others, Hungarian historian and archaeologist, Gyula László claims that geological data from "tree pollen analyses" seems to contradict placing the ancient homeland of the Magyars near the Urals.[6]
The Turkic languages later, especially between the 5th and the 9th centuries, had a great influence on the language. Many words related to agriculture,[7] to state administration or even to family relations have such backgrounds. Hungarian syntax and grammar were not influenced in a similarly dramatic way during this 300 years.
The Funeral Sermon and Prayer
The Hungarians migrated to the Carpathian Basin around 896 and came into contact with Slavic peoples – as well as with the Romance speaking Vlachs, borrowing many words from them (for example tégla – "brick", mák – "poppy", or karácsony – "Christmas"). In exchange, the neighbouring Slavic languages also contain some words of Hungarian origin (such as Croatian and Serbian čizma – "boot", or Serbian ašov – "spade"). 1.43% of the Romanian vocabulary is of Hungarian origin.[8]
The first written accounts of Hungarian, mostly personal and place names, are dated back to the 10th century. Hungarians also had their own writing system, the Old Hungarian script, but no significant texts remained from the time, as the usual medium of writing, wooden sticks, were perishable. It is thought that early Christianizers, such as the first king, St. Stephen, ordered all "pagan" writings destroyed,[citation needed] though some early inscriptions remain.
[ | Tags:Romania,Serbia,Croatia,Writing System,Gy,Old Hungarian Script,Hungarians,Stephen I Of Hungary,Turkic Languages,Permic Languages,Anthropologists,Gyula László,Geological,Agriculture,State,Funeral Sermon And Prayer,Carpathian Basin,Slavic Peoples,Romance,Vlachs,Croatian,Serbian,Romanian,St. Stephen,Christian,Latin,Official Language, Since the foundation of the Kingdom of Hungary |
The Kingdom of Hungary was founded in 1000, by Stephen I of Hungary (Hungarian: I. (Szent) István király). The country was a western-styled Christian (Roman Catholic) state, and Latin held an important position, as was usual in the Middle Ages. Additionally, the Latin alphabet was adopted to write the Hungarian language.
Therefore, Hungarian was also heavily influenced by Latin. The first extant text of the language is the Funeral Sermon and Prayer, written once in the 1190s. More extensive Hungarian literature arose after 1300. The earliest example of Hungarian religious poetry is the Old Hungarian 'Lamentations of Mary', a poem about the afflictions of Mary when she saw the death of her son - from the 14th century. The first Bible translation is the Hussite Bible from the 1430s.
The language lost its diphthongs, and several postpositions transformed into suffixes, such as reá 'onto' – 1055: utu rea 'onto the way'; later: útra). Vowel harmony was also developed. At one time, Hungarian used six verb tenses; today, only two (the future not being counted as one, as it is formed with an auxiliary verb).
The first printed Hungarian book was published in Kraków in 1533, by Benedek Komjáti. The work's title is Az Szent Pál levelei magyar nyelven (In original spelling: Az zenth Paal leueley magyar nyeluen), i.e. The letters of Saint Paul in the Hungarian language. In the 17th century, the language was already very similar to its present-day form, although two of the past tenses were still used. German, Italian and French loans also appeared in the language by these years. Further Turkish words were borrowed during the Ottoman occupation of much of Hungary between 1541 and 1699.
In the 18th century, the language was incapable of clearly expressing scientific concepts, and several writers found the vocabulary a bit scant for literary purposes. Thus, a group of writers, most notably Ferenc Kazinczy, began to compensate for these imperfections. Some words were shortened (győzedelem > győzelem, 'triumph' or 'victory'); a number of dialectal words spread nationally (e. g. cselleng 'dawdle'); extinct words were reintroduced (dísz 'décor'); a wide range of expressions were coined using the various derivative suffixes; and some other, less frequently used methods of expanding the language were utilized. This movement was called the 'language reform' (Hungarian: nyelvújítás), and produced more than ten thousand words, many of which are used actively today. The reforms led[citation needed] to the installment of Hungarian as the official language over Latin in the multiethnic country in 1844.
The 19th and 20th centuries saw further standardization of the language, and differences between the mutually already comprehensible dialects gradually lessened. In 1920, by signing the Treaty of Trianon, Hungary lost 71% of its territories, and along with these, 33% of the ethnic Hungarian population. Today, the language is official in Hungary, and regionally also in Romania, in Slovakia, and in Serbia.
[ | Tags:Slovakia,Latin Alphabet,Kingdom Of Hungary,Treaty Of Trianon,Roman Catholic,Middle Ages,Hungarian Literature,Old Hungarian 'lamentations Of Mary',Mary,Hussite Bible,Vowel Harmony,Verb,Tenses,Book,Kraków,Benedek Komjáti,German,Italian,French,Ottoman Occupation,Ferenc Kazinczy,Dialectal,Language Reform,In Romania,In Slovakia,In Serbia, Geographic distribution |
Regions in Europe where the Hungarian language is spoken. Based on recent censuses and on the CIA World Factbook 2006
Areas of Romania (Transylvania) where Hungarian has co-official status (in the localities of those areas, at least 20% of the population speaks Hungarian).
Hungarian is spoken in the following countries as a mother tongue:
Country
Speakers
Hungary
10,177,223 (2001 census)
Romania
(mainly Transylvania)
1,443,970 (census 2002)
Slovakia
520,528 (census 2001)
Serbia
(mainly Vojvodina)
293,299 (census 2002)
Ukraine
(mainly Zakarpattia)
149,400 (census 2001)
United States
117,973 (census 2000)
Canada
75,555 (census 2001)
Israel
70,000
Austria
(mainly Burgenland)
22,000
Croatia
16,500
Slovenia
(mainly Prekmurje)
9,240
Total
12-13 million (in Carpathian Basin)
Source: National censuses, Ethnologue
About a million more Hungarian speakers live in Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the United States, Venezuela and in other parts of the world.
[ | Tags:Slovenia,Ukraine,Austria,Israel,Transylvania,United States,Mother Tongue,Vojvodina,Zakarpattia,Canada,Burgenland, Official status |
Official usage of Hungarian language in Vojvodina, Serbia
Hungarian is the official language of Hungary, and thus an official language of the European Union. Hungarian is also one of the official languages of Vojvodina and an official language of three municipalities in Slovenia: Hodoš, Dobrovnik and Lendava, along with Slovene. Hungarian is officially recognized as a minority or regional language in Austria, Croatia, Romania, Zakarpattia in Ukraine, and Slovakia. In Romania it is an official language at local level in all communes, towns and municipalities with an ethnic Hungarian population of over 20%.
[ | Tags:European Union,Ipa, Dialects |
The dialects of Hungarian identified by Ethnologue are: Alföld, West Danube, Danube-Tisza, King's Pass Hungarian, Northeast Hungarian, Northwest Hungarian, Székely and West Hungarian. These dialects are, for the most part, mutually intelligible. The Hungarian Csángó dialect, which is not listed by Ethnologue, is spoken mostly in Bacău County, Romania. The Csángó minority group has been largely isolated from other Hungarian people, and they therefore preserved a dialect closely resembling medieval Hungarian.
[ | Tags: Phonology |
Hungarian vowels
Main article: Hungarian phonology
Hungarian has 14 vowel phonemes and 25 consonant phonemes. The vowel phonemes can be grouped as pairs of long and short vowels, e.g. o and ó. Most of these pairs have a similar pronunciation, only varying significantly in their duration. However, the pairs <a>/<á> and <e>/<é> differ both in closedness and length.
Consonant phonemes of Hungarian[9]
Bilabial
Labio-
dental
Alveolar
Post-
alveolar
Palatal
Velar
Glottal
Nasal
m
n
ɲ
Plosive
p b
t d
k ɡ
Affricate
t͡s d͡z
t͡ʃ d͡ʒ
c͡ç ɟ͡ʝ
Fricative
f v
s z
ʃ ʒ
h
Trill
r
Approximant
j
Lateral
l
Consonant length is also distinctive in Hungarian. Most of the consonant phonemes can occur as geminates.
The sound voiced palatal plosive /ɟ/, written <gy>, sounds similar to 'd' in British English 'duty' (in fact, more similar to 'd' in French 'dieu', or to the Macedonian phoneme 'ѓ' as in 'ѓакон'). It occurs in the name of the country, "Magyarország" (Hungary), pronounced /ˈmɒɟɒrorsaːɡ/.
Primary stress is always on the first syllable of a word, as with its cousin Finnish and neighboring languages, Slovak (Standard dialect) and Czech. There is sometimes secondary stress on other syllables, especially in compounds, e.g. viszontlátásra ("goodbye") pronounced /ˈvisontˌlaːtaːʃrɒ/. Elongated vowels in non-initial syllables can also seem to be stressed to the ear of an English speaker, since length and stress correlate in English.
Front-back vowel harmony is an important feature of Hungarian phonology.
Single /r/s are tapped, like the Spanish pero; double /r/s are trilled, like the Spanish perro.
[ | Tags:Finnish, Grammar and syntax |
Main article: Hungarian grammar
See also: Hungarian grammar (verbs)
Hungarian is an agglutinative language. It uses various affixes, including suffixes, prefixes and a circumfix to define a word's meaning and grammatical function. Instead of prepositions, which are common in English, Hungarian uses only postpositions.
There are two types of articles in Hungarian:
definite: a before words beginning with consonants and az before vowels (behaving just like the indefinite article ’a(n)’ in English)
indefinite: egy, literally ‘one’.
Nouns can have up to eighteen cases. Some cases are grammatical, such as the unmarked nominative (as in az alma ‘the apple’) and the accusative, marked with the suffix –t (as in az almát). Hungarian does not have a genitive case. The dative case serves the function of the genitive. Unlike English, Hungarian uses postpositions, as in az alma mellett ‘next to the apple’. Noun plurals are formed using the suffix –k (az almák ‘the apples’).
Adjectives precede nouns, as in a piros alma ‘the red apple’. They have three degrees, including base (piros ‘red’), comparative (pirosabb ‘redder’), and superlative (legpirosabb ‘reddest’). If the noun takes the plural or a case, the adjective, used attributively, does not agree with it: a piros almák ‘the red apples’. However, when the adjective is used in a predicative sense, it must agree with the noun: az almák pirosak ‘the apples are red’. Adjectives take cases when they are used without nouns: Melyik almát kéred? - A pirosat. 'Which apple would you like? - The red one.'
Verbs developed a complex conjugation system during the centuries. Every Hungarian verb has two conjugations (definite and indefinite), two tenses (past and present-future), and three moods (indicative, conditional and imperative), two numbers (singular or plural), and three persons (first, second and third). Two different conjugations are the most characteristic: the "definite" conjugation is used for a transitive verb with a definite object. The "indefinite" conjugation is used for an intransitive verb or for a transitive verb with an indefinite object. These rules, however, do not apply everywhere. The following examples demonstrate this system:
John lát. ‘John can see.’
(indefinite: he has the ability of vision)
John lát egy almát. ‘John sees an apple.’
(indefinite: it does not matter which apple)
John látja az almát. ‘John sees the apple.’
(definite: John sees the specific apple that was talked about earlier)
Present tense is unmarked, while past is formed using the suffix –t or sometimes –tt: lát 'sees'; látott 'saw', past. Futurity is often expressed with the present tense, or using the auxiliary verb fog ‘will’. The first most commonly applies when the sentence also defines the time of the future event, for example John pénteken moziba megy – literally ‘John on Friday into cinema goes’, i.e. ‘On Friday, John will go to the cinema.’ In the other case, the verb’s infinitive (formed using –ni) and the ‘fog’ auxiliary verb is used: John moziba fog menni – ‘John will go to the cinema.’ This is sometimes counted as a tense, especially by non-specialist publications.
The indicative mood is used in all tenses and is always unmarked. The conditional mood is used only with present and past tenses. The imperative mood is used only with the present tense. Verbs have verbal prefixes. Most of them define direction of movement (as lemegy "goes down", felmegy "goes up"). Some verbal prefixes give an aspect to the verb, such as the prefix meg-, which defines a finite action.
Hungarian word order is free, but more semantical than syntactical. Because the object is indicated with a suffix and not its place in a phrase, it and the subject can appear before or after the verb, depending on emphasis.
John lát egy almát. ‘John sees an apple.’
(when it is important to stress that it's John, not someone else, who sees an apple; or when no special stress is required)
John egy almát lát. (or even Egy almát lát John) ‘John an apple sees.’
(when it is important that it's an apple John sees, and not something else. The same emphasis could be translated as 'What John sees is an apple.')
[ | Tags:Verbs, Politeness |
Main article: T-V distinction#Hungarian
Hungarian has a four-tiered system for expressing levels of politeness.
Ön (önözés): Use of this form in speech shows respect towards the person addressed, but it is also the common way of speaking in official texts and business communications. Here "you", the second person, is grammatically addressed in the third person.
Maga (magázás, magázódás): Use of this form serves to show that the speaker wishes to distance himself/herself from the person he/she addresses. A boss could also address a subordinate as "maga". Aside from the different pronoun it is grammatically the same as "önözés".
Néni/bácsi (tetszikezés): Children are supposed to address adults who are not close friends with using "tetszik" ("you like") as a sort of an auxiliary verb with all other verbs. "Hogy vagy?" ("How are you?") here becomes "Hogy tetszik lenni?" ("How do you like to be?"). The elderly are generally addressed this way, even by adults. When using this way of speaking, one will not use normal greetings, but can only say "(kezét) csókolom" ("I kiss (your hand)"). This way of speaking is perceived as somewhat awkward and often creates impossible grammatical structures, but is still widely in use. Another problem created by this form is that when children grow up into their 20s or 30s, they are not sure of how to address family friends that are their parents | Tags: |