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| Classification | |
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See also: Regular sound correspondences between Hungarian and other Uralic languages
Hungarian is a Uralic language, more specifically an Ugric language; the most closely related languages are Mansi and Khanty of western Siberia (see Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug). Connections between the Ugric and many other 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. 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 Ǫgry/Ǫgrove (sg. Ǫgrinŭ) seemed to confirm that.[2] 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").[3][4][5]
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.
[edit] Tags:Uralic,Ugric,Ly,Ny,Sz,Ty,Uralic Language,Hungarians,Hungary,Regular Sound Correspondences Between Hungarian And Other Uralic Languages,Ugric Language,Mansi,Khanty,Siberia,Khanty-mansi Autonomous Okrug,Onogur,[haːz], | |
| Prehistory | |
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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,[6] 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 pollen analysis seems to contradict placing the ancient homeland of the Magyars near the Urals.[7]
The Turkic languages later had a great influence on the language, especially between the 5th and the 9th centuries. Many words related to agriculture,[8] to state administration or even to family relations have such backgrounds. Hungarian syntax and grammar were not influenced in a similarly dramatic way during these 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 Serbian ašov – "spade"). 1.43% of the Romanian vocabulary is of Hungarian origin.[9]
[edit] Tags:Latin,Serbia,Romania,Carpathian Basin,Alphabet,Cs,Gy,Grammar,Old Hungarian Script,Official Language,Stephen I Of Hungary,Turkic Languages,Permic Languages,Anthropologists,Gyula László,Geological,Pollen Analysis,Agriculture,State,Funeral Sermon And Prayer,Slavic Peoples,Romance,Vlachs,Serbian,Romanian, | |
| Old Hungarian | |
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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 remain from that time, as the usual medium of writing, wooden sticks, is perishable.
The Kingdom of Hungary was founded in 1000, by Stephen I of Hungary. The country was a western-styled Christian (Roman Catholic) state, and Latin held an important position, as was usual in the Middle Ages. The Latin script was adopted to write the Hungarian language and Latin influenced the language. The first extant text of the language is the Funeral Sermon and Prayer, written in the 1190s. More extensive Hungarian literature arose after 1300. The earliest known example of Hungarian religious poetry is the Old Hungarian 'Lamentations of Mary' from the 14th century. The first Bible translation is the Hussite Bible from the 1430s.
The standard 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, most commonly only two (the future not being counted as one, as it is formed with an auxiliary verb).
[edit] Tags:Writing System,Kingdom Of Hungary,Christian,Roman Catholic,Middle Ages,Latin Script,Hungarian Literature,Old Hungarian 'lamentations Of Mary',Hussite Bible,Vowel Harmony,Verb,Tenses, | |
| Modern Hungarian | |
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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 part of Hungary between 1541 and 1699.
In the 18th century, a group of writers, most notably Ferenc Kazinczy began the process of language renewal (Hungarian: nyelvújítás). 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 was coined using the various derivative suffixes; and some other, less frequently used methods of expanding the language were utilized. This movement produced more than ten thousand words, most of which are used actively today.
The 19th and 20th centuries saw further standardization of the language, and differences between the mutually comprehensible dialects gradually lessened. In 1920, by signing the Treaty of Trianon, Hungary lost 71% of its territory, 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.
[edit] Tags:Slovakia,Kraków,Benedek Komjáti,German,Italian,French,Ottoman Occupation,Ferenc Kazinczy,Dialectal,Treaty Of Trianon,In Romania,In Slovakia,In Serbia, | |
| Geographic distribution | |
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Regions in Europe where the Hungarian language is spoken. Based on recent censuses and on the CIA World Factbook 2006
Areas of Transylvania where Hungarian has co-official status (in the localities of those areas, at least 20% of the population is Hungarian).
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
Hungarian has about 14-15 million[1][10][11] native speakers, of whom nearly 10 million live in present-day Hungary. About 2.5 million speakers live in areas that were part of the Kingdom of Hungary before the Treaty of Trianon (1920). Of these, the largest group lives in Transylvania, the western half of present-day Romania, where there are approximately 1.4 million Hungarians. There are large Hungarian communities also in Slovakia, Serbia and Ukraine, and Hungarians can also be found in Austria, Croatia, and Slovenia, as well as about a million additional people scattered in other parts of the world. For example, there are more than one hundred thousand Hungarian speakers in the Hungarian American community and 1.5 million with Hungarian ancestry[12] in the United States.
[edit] Tags:Slovenia,Austria,Ukraine,Croatia, | |
| Official status | |
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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%.
[edit] Tags:European Union,Ipa, | |
| Dialects | |
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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 mentioned but not listed separately by Ethnologue, is spoken primarily in Bacău County in eastern Romania. The Csángó Hungarian group has been largely isolated from other Hungarian people, and they therefore preserved a dialect closely resembling an earlier form of Hungarian.
[edit] Tags:Hungarian People, | |
| Phonology | |
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Hungarian vowels
Main article: Hungarian phonology
Hungarian has 14 vowel phonemes and 25 consonant phonemes. The vowel phonemes can be grouped as pairs of short and long 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[13]
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 secondary stress on other syllables in compounds, e.g. viszontlátásra ("goodbye") pronounced /ˈvisontˌlaːtaːʃrɒ/. Elongated vowels in non-initial syllables may 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.
[edit] Tags: | |
| Grammar and syntax | |
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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. Unlike English, Hungarian has no prepositions, 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 ( a 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 over many centuries. Every Hungarian verb has two conjugations (definite and indefinite), at least 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 direct object. The "indefinite" conjugation is used for an intransitive verb or for a transitive verb with an indefinite direct object. These rules, however, do not apply everywhere. The following examples demonstrate this system:
János lát. ‘John can see.’
(indefinite: he has the ability of vision)
János lát egy almát. ‘John sees an apple.’
(indefinite: it does not matter which apple)
János 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 may be expressed in either of two ways: with the present tense, most commonly used when the sentence also defines the time of the future event, for example János pénteken moziba megy – literally ‘John on Friday into cinema goes’, i.e. ‘On Friday, John will go to the cinema’; or using the auxiliary verb fog (En:‘will’) together with the verb’s infinitive (formed using –ni): János 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.
János 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)
János egy almát lát. (or even Egy almát lát János) ‘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.')
[edit] Tags:Verbs, | |
| Politeness | |
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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): This way of politeness is grammatically the same as "önözés" or "magázódás", but adds a certain phrase, an additional verb "tetszik" ("like") to support the main verb of the sentence. For example children are supposed to address adults who are not close friends by 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 in certain situations and sometimes creates impossible grammatical structures, but is still widely in use. In such cases the smooth solution is usually using the simple "önözés" formula without "tetszik". 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' age, but whom they have known since they were young. "Tetszik" would make these people feel too old, but "tegeződés" seems too familiar. There are two ways to avoid this dilemma: one is to use the "tegeződés" in grammatical structures, but show the respect in the title: "John bácsi, hogy vagy?", and the other is using "önözés" to show respect in grammatical structures, while marking the person in a friendly, closer way with the title "bátyám" ("brother").
Te (tegezés, tegeződés or pertu, per tu from Latin): Used generally, i.e. with persons with whom none of the above forms of politeness is required. Interestingly, the highest rank, the king was traditionally addressed "per tu" by all, peasants and noblemen alike, though with Hungary not having any crowned king since 1918, this practice survives only in folk tales and children's stories. Use of "tegezés" in the media and advertisements has become more frequent since the early 1990s. It is informal and is normally used in families, among friends, colleagues, among young people, adults speaking to children; can be compared to addressing somebody by their first name in English. Perhaps prompted by the widespread use of English (a language without T-V distinction) on the Internet, "tegezés" is also becoming the standard way to address people over the Internet, regardless of politeness.
The four-tiered system has somewhat been eroded due to the recent expansion of "tegeződés".
[edit] Tags: | |
| Lexicon | |
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Examples with ad
Hungarian
English
Derived terms
ad
to give
adás
transmission
adó
tax or transmitter
adózik
to pay tax
adózó
taxpayer
adós
debtor
adósság
debt
adat
data
adakozik
to give (practise charity)
adalék
additive (ingredient)
adag
dose, portion
adomány
donation
adoma
anecdote
With verbal prefixes
átad
to hand over
bead
to hand in
elad
to sell
felad
to give up, to mail
hozzáad
to augment, to add to
kiad
to rent out, to publish, to extradite
lead
to lose weight, to deposit (an object)
megad
to repay (debt), to call (poker), to grant (permission)
összead
to add (to do mathematical addition)
Giving an accurate estimate for the total word count is difficult, since it is hard Tags: | |
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