Talk:Hungarian language

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Contents

[edit] Etruszk~Etrusc

Kúr Géza (Cleveland) szerint, aki Jules Martha etruszkológus irányát követi, az etruszk nyelvben elõforduló szavak "kb. ötven százalékának gyökere ma is közismert magyar szógyökér és vannak közöttük egészükben használt magyar szavak is. "

Az elméletet azonban egy tekintélyes olasz nyelvész, az utrechti egyetem emeritus professzora, Mario Alinei állította fel, aki ezen utolsó könyvében csaknem 500 oldalon fejtegeti azt, amely szeptember elején jelenik meg a Mulino Kiadó gondozásában.

S hogy az etruszkok Magyarországról érkeznének, mondja Alinei, azt a régészek már jó ideje bizonyították. Ez az elmélet visszaszáll a hatvanas évekre, Hugh Hencken «Tarquinia and Etruscan Origins» című könyvében teljesedett ki, amelyben a szerző nyiltan beszél a «titkok népének» a Kárpát-Duna-medencéből való bejöveteléről.

Persze van más is mint Annio di Viterbóval, aki 1498-ban az etruszk nyelv arám eredetét hangoztatta³, egészen a 20. századi legjelesebb nyelvészekig.

Azt hiszem a legjobb megoldás ha mi magunk olvassuk el a régi táblákat. Akkor továbbmehetümk a "Feherü várü hadü útról" egész a múltba.

Az etrusz leletek burgundiától a dunáig egységes kultúrát mutatnak a rómaiak betöréséig.

[edit] Sound file

Would be great if there was an ogg sound file to hear an example of the language being spoken. Is anyone able to supply that? --CharlesC 22:26, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

I can't provide such but you can listen to spoken Hungarian at Radio Kossuth channel of the Hungarian Radio. Adam78 23:36, 21 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for that. --CharlesC 23:30, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hungarian Wikibook

Hey guys, I just started a Wikibook for learning the Hungarian language! I would love for people to contribute, even if it's just organizing and adding information from this page.

Go here to help out!

== General==a

When you say the mark for the plural is "k," are you referring to verbs (as it seems) or nouns too? --RoseParks

Only for the nouns, although in many cases, conjugation of verbs looks similar.

Example: kérdés -- "question", kérdések -- "questions"; but három kérdés -- "three questions."

-Eek! Middle of commenting my change, it committed. Changed translation of "Hungarian" to "Magyar" because that's what everyone and all my dictionaries actually say. Cleaned up the link section which was messy. Have not looked over the rest much.the librarian

- This is imprecise. It's better to say that the approximation of pluralization uses -k, but it's really a form of expression in the indefinite. Hence the reason that words revert to their "singular" form once you attach a definite numerical quantity. And that, I think, would be RoseParks' legit confusion over verbs which can conujugate in the definite, indefinite, or both depending on the nature of the verb in question. 69.158.148.117 05:09, 8 November 2005 (UTC)Thomas Molnár-Boivin

--The -k suffix for plural nouns is imprecise in another way, namely that it does not apply to possessive constructs, where plural possessed entities are marked with a -i suffix. ( "autó" - car, "autók" - cars, "autói" - his cars. ) Unless you speak about body parts and organs that normally come in pairs. Except if you want to stress that you're speaking about both of them. Now, that's something that's guaranteed to drive anyone trying to learn this language mad. --Biziclop 23:59, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Make sure you know that Hungarian the adjective is magyar, and Hungarian the language is magyaru:l (dots over the u)

Hungarian (the language) is magyar (nyelv). Magyarul (without dots) means in Hungarian. Magyar ül (two words!) means: hungarian sits :) --vbzoli


Regarding the hungarian page: As a native hungarian I was surprised to learn about the letter pair <ky> (supposed to be the palatal consonant /kj/) in the section "hungarian orthography". I'm not a linguist, but I assume that it is a mix-up with the letter pair <ly> (also mentioned later on in that section). It is of course possible that the <ky> combination appears in certain words, but it is certainly not a palatal consonant, for that reason it also not part of the hungarian alphabet (unlike <ly>, which is). Then again, I might have missed something in all these decades. --Csaba

The orthography section was added by Pgdudda. I suggest that you ask him on his talk page (I suppose, that there are not many other people around here knowing enough about the issue); but since you are native Hungarian, you should know it and feel free to correct these parts of the article. -- Cordyph 21:58 Feb 9, 2003 (UTC)

What's the point behind screwing up accents? Is there any browser released in this decade which cannot handle ő and ű somehow? o~ u~ o^ u^ and others are not Hungarian accents! Or is there any point to write i' when í is even in 8859-1? --grin 00:24 2 Jul 2003 (UTC)

By all means fix it to use correct spellings. --Brion 04:15 2 Jul 2003 (UTC)
I did once, I'll do it again, but if someone "fixes" them again to 8859-1 then I'll scream. :-) Could there be any problem by using utf-8 characters? Do you know any browsers crashing or mishandling them in some unacceptable way? So far I tried not to avoid using utf-8 where it was appropriate. --grin 12:42 2 Jul 2003 (UTC)
Probably automatic misformatting by a broken browser...
UTF-8 unfortunately is also problematic with some browsers, including the current Internet Explorer for Macintosh and various versions of Opera. (On meta.wikipedia.org and wiktionary.org, which are UTF-8, it's not entirely a rare occurance for someone to wipe out non-ASCII characters across an entire page when making an edit.) Lynx and Links can also damage these characters, but they can be just as bad on Latin-1 text sometimes. :P So unfortunately, until we get a workaround or can force people to use better browsers :) we're stuck for now with Latin-1 plus whatever character entities are needed when dealing with the languages that don't primarily need other characters. (Polish, Esperanto, Japanese, Russian etc are using UTF-8.) --Brion 15:24 2 Jul 2003 (UTC)
In case someone reads this note from 2003: UTF-8 is not a problem for Macintoshes using OS X. Also for OS 9 it can be viewed (with multilingual support), but Wikipedia should ignore the dwindling mass of OS 9 users and just use UTF-8. For OS X, Win and Linux this is no problem. Trondtr 06:22, 9 September 2005 (UTC).

The theories on origin that were just added need polishing. Personally, I think whoever added them has an agenda since he writes Stichin's astounding work The 12th Planet. Stichin is a crackpot whose works assert that aliens colonised Earth, and there have been Wikipedia vandals who try to mention him in as many articles as possible. I'm going to remove the word "astounding" to maintain NPOV, and I would like to hear from others about whether to discard the mention of Stichin entirely. Kricxjo 18:48, 15 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Was added by (cur) (last) . . 18:26, 15 Sep 2003 . . 204.235.103.102 some anonymous contributor, and I do not have any view on the information apart from that it seemed to me as useless crap. :) I don't disagree in removing it. --grin 20:25, 15 Sep 2003 (UTC)
Ok, it's going. Kricxjo 20:36, 15 Sep 2003 (UTC)

"(Hungary is perhaps the only country which is surrounded by itself.)" What does this mean? Guaka 21:08, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)

Whether this is irredentism or merely pointing out that there are Hungarian speakers in all the regions of the countries bordering Hungary I cannot tell. Morwen 22:08, 27 Sep 2003 (UTC)
I hope explanation satisfies both of you: it's not irredentism, but I believe it could be heavily misunderstood. I didn't write it into the article: don't blame it on me :-) --grin 17:47, 28 Sep 2003 (UTC)

[edit] Steven Brust

Should this page mention the author Steven Brust who is of Hungarian origin and uses many Hungarian words/names in his stories? --Phil 16:43, Feb 19, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Provability of language origin?

I am ashamed to see people here trying to prove something they do not know. Also, it is shameful to ridicule any idea, just because it looks remote or impossible. For one, nothing is impossible and not even an acclaimed professor can restrict anyone here of speaking out. Like it or not this is a forum. You may say what you wish, of course acceptance is optional. I am sorry to say, this is exactly why you cannot break away from politics. Barking at each other is not a gentleman‘s way. Personally, using improper tone in this section is something what people should really think about. Since none of the sides seam to have the upper hand (in their Hungarian language origin theories), I think there should be some compromise. Perhaps rephrasing the first sentence something like this: The origin of the Hungarian langue is still being disputed. However, it is currently believed to be part of the Finno-Ugric languages, yet other theories point towards Turkic or even Sumerian origin. Here are some Other links about this language: http://www.iridis.com/dsabljic/Hungarian_language http://countrystudies.us/hungary/49.htm http://studentorgs.utexas.edu/husa/origins/language.html http://www.indiana.edu/~iuihsl/1history.html http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07560a.htm Be peace with you all.

All these sources say that Hungarian is Finno-Ugric, so I don't see your point. (I'm not sure what a department bulletin from 2001 has to do with anything; another of these pages is a mirror of Wikipedia. Another is a summary of info very much like this article, and gives no sources for the alternate ideas, all of which are by now discredited anyway).
We could also say that some believe Hungarian comes from Atlantis, but the origins of the language (whatever the ancestry of the people turns out to be) are not in doubt. No credible scholar believes it is anything but Ugric, and that Ugric is anything but Finno-Ugric -- the evidence is just too compelling. kwami 05:08, 2005 August 25 (UTC)
Well, I'm not sure what makes somebody 'credible scholar' but there are several other, less or well-documented competing idea about the origin of the Hungarian language, so I think we have an obligation *at least* to mention those explanations too, haven't we?
Peer review is what makes a scholar credible, just as with any science. Someone with a political or nationalist agenda publishing from his basement is not credible. Here in Wikipedia we call that "Original research" and do not allow it. I think we have an obligation to mention the Turko-Ugric War, but as a political/social event, not as a serious linguistic proposal. kwami 18:14, 27 September 2005 (UTC)
I see that the presentation of the Magyar language and origin is so overwhelmingly one-sided so as to render this reference material lame if not entirely useless. In particular, it is distressing to see that a single paragraph without useful links even mentions great and longstanding controversies about Magyar orings, and excludes all reference to allegations of a cultural purge promalgated by foreign interests and the competing theories. Readers could learn much about what is problematic in the scientific world today, about the dynamics of relying on so-called "peer review", scientific acceptance, and professional discrediting of persons taking a position contrary to that of controlling "scholars" by reading the book "Anatomy of a Controversy" by Adrian Wenner and Patrick Wells. It seems that the same type of censorship and reluctance to objectively admit (much less consider) contrary evidence articulated there, is well in practice on this very page, and among linguists in regard to this topic. [I daresay the length of time this comment survives will be an interesting metric of objectivity]. How very disappointing to see a resource that has the power to objectively illustrate the strenghts and weaknesses of each theory and arguement and let the reader decide among them is instead used for promulgating one view. Is it really so weak and unable to stand scrutiny that it REQUIRES such thorough sensorship of opposing views, else they would not survive? It certainly seems to be the case here. If so it is worthless propaganda as alleged, if not let it stand scrutiny. Post at least objective mention of competing theory and outline the actual controversy fairly. -Laci Ba'csi

Dear Laci bácsi, this is a wiki. Once you have sources to back up something and you can present them adequately on the talk page or the article's References section, you can go ahead and be bold; if however all you have is some generic dislike about the article without the slightest specific fact, I'm afraid nobody here can help you :) (And, your comment is likely to be archived after a while, but not erased.) KissL 08:42, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

I totally disagree. Hungarian scholars DO NOT all agree that Hungarian is Finno-Ugric in the same way as other Ugric languages. There is a great deal of good reason to believe Hungarian is an island and doesn't fit into any language group. Overall, Wikipedia did an outstanding job of describing the Hungarian language and deserves enormous credit but on this one point they are dead wrong.

Hungarian scholar Fred Hamori documented in pains taking detail how Hungarian has roots in both Turkik and Ugric languages. He also found contrasts between Hungarian and the Ugric language group. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.35.27.83 (talk)


Unfortunately, Fred Hamori is no more a "scholar" than I am. Stacey Doljack Borsody 02:07, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

Attention Stacy, Wikipedia's article on Hungarian Pre-History refers to Hamori as a Hungarian scholar. What more do you want? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.35.27.83 (talk)

Are you referring to the Hungarian prehistory article with the disputed accuracy tag and the single mention of Hamori in the "explanatory note", not even in the article proper? It is as bad as someone putting up a website with non-peer-reviewed "research". Stacey Doljack Borsody 05:05, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pronunciation of "Magyar"

Could someone please post the correct pronuniation for the word Magyar? A long while back someone who professed to speak the language told me that it was actually pronounced something like modger to rhyme with dodger. Is this correct or is it pronounced mag-yar like it looks? --Phil 16:46, Feb 19, 2004 (UTC)

No, but I'd have hard time to explain correct pronounciation. In SAMPA it is "mAd'Ar" (which is THE correct spelling, stress on first syllable). "A" is like arm in English or law in US English; "d'" is like duke in British or would you in US English; "r" is trilled (unlike US English or French). If you desperately need I can record it to ogg and link in. :-) --grin 17:18, 2004 Feb 23 (UTC)
Just a disambiguation in the rise of X-SAMPA (which transliterates IPA regardless of the language), the pronounciation of Magyar is /mAJ\Ar/ (or /mɑɟɑr/ in IPA). --grin ✎ 07:29, 2004 Jun 28 (UTC)

The word "magyar" is actually pronounced the way it looks...in Hungarian! The main problem in English is that people pronounce it "mag-yar", which is incorrect in the first case that "gy" is its own letter in Hungarian, not just "g" and "y", and it makes a sound that is very difficult for English speakers to duplicate. The closest example to the sound (as stated above) is "would you" in American English. The sound created with the Hungarian letters "gy" and "ty" is called a palatal stop, which doesn't exist in English. So, the non-technical way of pronouncing it would be to pronounce the "a" like the "u" in mud (American English pronounciation) and the "gy" like "would you". Also, the "r" is trilled. The most important thing is to not separate the "gy" into two sounds! --Hungarian83 02:16, 2005 Feb 15 (UTC)

Hungarian short "a" is ROUND, like in British "hot". —219.173.119.42 18:12, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I admit that the "u" in mud was a crude example of describing the Hungarian "a", but I believe that the "o" even in the British "hot" still has a distinct "o" sound to it, which is not really present in the Hungarian "a". Perhaps a better way of explaining it would be to say - Hungarian short "a" is ROUND, like in British "hot", but lacking the traditional "o" sound. Of course, I don't speak English with a British accent, and my English is affected by my Hungarian which may be complicating this. :-) --Hungarian83 08:00, 2005 Mar 13 (UTC)
I'm guessing the o in "hot" is [O]. And looking at the Hungarian page on Omniglot, Hungarian short "a" is [Q], which is basically a rounded [A]. So [mQJ\'Qr]? - Dysfunktion 02:12, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Phonology

The phonology section seems too brief. Though it does contain a link to another article on Hungarian phonology, I think it probably ought to summarize that article in a paragraph or two, rather than just tersely say "There are some sounds which do not exist in English..." --Jim Henry | Talk 18:11, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Okay, maybe I'll do something, but I personally think the Vowel harmony section should belong under Phonology, because it is handled in the phonology module of grammar. --Sicboy 21:05, 2005 Apr 12 (UTC)

[edit] amusing false cognates

(funny) Important words for English people to learn:

  • cheese: "sajt" (pronounce "shite")
  • wooden spoon: "fakanál" (pronounce "fuckin' hell" with strong Irish accent)

Don't tell them I told you. :) --grin 17:21, 2004 Feb 23 (UTC)

  •  ?Where's the little rabbit??: ?Hol a nyuszi?? (pronounce about ?Hole a new see?)
  • The greeting ?Hi?, ?Szia!? in hungarian, should be ?See ya!? talking with a little more speed than the normal english pronunciation..

(Gubbubu 11:03, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC))

[edit] Alternative theories on the origins of Hungarian

Linguistic crazies get everywhere. Hungarian is *not* descended from Sumerian, according to any normal linguist who has training in the field. It's just not a sensible option. It can be proven quite conclusively to be a Uralic language.

While I agree that it's unlikely for Hungarian to be descended from Sumerian, I have to add that it also can be proven quite conclusively to be a Turkic language. Alensha 17:06, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Hungarian is (as accepted by most linguists) an Ugric - Uralic language. The language is not Turkic, but major

portions of the VOCABULARY are, because for example hungary was occupied by the turkish empire for 150 years!

The remark -major portions of the VOCABULARY are, because for example hungary was occupied by the turkish empire for 150 years- from above is wrong and simplistic,because it is a known fact that hungarians had been in contact with people of turkic origin long before the conquest in 896. And even before the turkish ocupation hungarians had contact with people like petchenegs, cumans,and even settled them down in Hungary. Many hungarians have cuman ancestors. Even the words for denoting mother and father are of turkic origin,anya apa/atya in hungarian ana apa/ata in turkish.Thehun

If you are interested in the words from the time of turkish ocupation in Hungary check out at the Hungarian Electronic Library: TURKISH LOAN WORDS http://mek.oszk.hu/01900/01911/html/index2.html By the way hungarians fled the area occupied by the turks,which consisted one third of the country, the area depopulated.At the same time the turks,the reformation, the printing arrived in Hungary. At that time hungarians started to use their language in literature. The turkish occupation had little influence on the hungarian language in fact!!! Thehun

I can't find anything written to suggest that most linguists accept any such thing. I can find talk of a highly disputed' Ural-Altaic grouping. From what I can find, Hungarian belongs to Finno-Ugric and Turkish belongs to Altaic. Maybe just our terminology differs though. — Hippietrail 03:51, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Apart from all of these rock hard facts ("most people think so") I'd like to mention that it seems that linguistic could often not prove that a language originates from where unless they own a personal time machine, go back and find out. If a theory - let it be wild and eccentric as they just can be - have definitive supporters and cannot be proven false then it should be mentioned as a "not mainstream opinion". In Wikipedia I've met with pretty wild theories (sumerian, japanese, just to mention the two most popular ones) which have some support and they have as "rock hard facts" to prove their right as anyone else, they're just not widely supported (to put it nicely). My two cents... --grin ✎ 07:29, 2004 Jun 28 (UTC)

The question has a lot of political reference. The state that most hungarian linguists said that hungarian is finno-ugorian was a consequence of communism (and the austrian occupation before, in the age of the monarchy). F.e. most finno-ugorian nations (supposed to be the nearest relatives to hungarians) lived in Siberia, in Soviet-Union, so this conception was convenient to get hungarians across to communism and to follow their relatives "on the way of Lenin" (= into the socialism/communism ). More complex regards can be found (if my English would be better and my time would be more, I could say). Nowadays alternative speculations on the origin of hungarian language are more conventional or popular than they were years before, so the mention of them is suggested, despite of that the Academic oppinion is the truth of finno-ugorian theory. Gubbubu 11:03, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Dear Gubbubu, most theorists of Hungarian/Sumerian links show lists of words similar in Hungarian and Sumerian, with similar meanings. This is not the scientific way to discover language similarities, because it is very prone to coincidences. The proper way, that would be accepted by th academics, would be to find patterns of mutations, sound changes.
For example, see the Hungarian/Finnish words in the article: kéz/käsi and víz/vesi. Note that ending "-z" in Hungarian has the equivalent in Finnish "-si".
Actually, because former communist countries used their ancient history as propaganda, it seems that in most of them appeared "popular" fringe theories that are not really sustained by facts. Bogdan | Talk 13:43, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)

I'm not involved and interested in Hungaro-Sumerian theories so much, but there are theories with more probability (principally analogies with some Turkish-like languages). I think the justice is unattainable because of the distance in time, but I doubt in the correctness of a deleting process of alternative and not surely unscientific theories by someone who is convinced of one of them...Gubbubu 16:38, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)


If you insist on Finno-Ugric origin, then how can you count on the long list of words with "unknown origin"? And what about our heritage, hidden in the language? If you examine this more in detail, you will see, that we had a lingua franca between Finno-Ugric and this is why the resemblance of the two languages. It is fact: we have 500-600 words common, and the grammar. But this only means that we have met in some period of time, we communicated between each other, but this doesn't proove the origin. To my opinion, Hungarian is Scythian (but not sure about Sumerian), but aslo needs to be added, that a lot of Asian languages are mixed into it (Besermyan, Kun, etc.) Abdulka 12:44, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
The only things I like to insist on are logic and a consistent methodology. Every language has a list of words of "unknown origin". Why do you suppose that only the language was a lingua franca and the culture was immutable, unchanging? Why couldn't Finno-Ugric speaking tribes have met with an "Asian" culture and picked that up? Certainly the threads of culture don't prove origin either. If you like to eat at McDonald's that doesn't make you an American. Have you even studied any of the common cultural/mythological traits between Hungarians and other Ugric tribes? --Stacey Doljack Borsody 14:34, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Alternative theories and Hungarian politics

For the non-Hungarian people wondering what's going on with Hungarians and their theories about their own language. The origins of the Hungarian language have been debated since serious linguistic research began about in the 19th century.

In Hungary these theories have a lot of political baggage and and there is still a bitter debate going on. Claims are often made on political, rather than scientific grounds. One side (the finno-ugricist) often dismisses any questioning of their theory as "unscientific" and not worthy of debate. On the other hand, the followers of alternate theories often claim that the Hungarian Academy of Sciences pushes its "Antihungarian" agenda, trying to suppress the real truth about the origins of Hungarian. The alternate views often relate the language to that of some great empire building nation rather than the "fish-smelling" northern people. ;)

There are old and new theories relating Hungarian to Hunnic, Scythic, Turkish, Sumerian and even Egyptian and Japanese.

Anyway, this politically charged environment makes intelligent linguistic debate next to impossible in Hungary. The intensity is often close to that of the abortion debate in the US.

I hope this sheds some light on probably the most passionate argument you're ever likely to see on historical linguistics in Wikipedia. :)
Just wait for all the responses this entry will get. <ducks> :)

Cheers, Nyenyec 00:32, 21 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Thanx for the circumstantial elaboration, Nyenyec; yes I think all your word are so exact. Their own language and its science are so important for most hungarians; but it's so hard to find out the truth in such an atmosphere in wich we live for two hundred years. I think there is no accordance nowadays in the question (despite the categorical oppinion of most, but not all scientists and finno-ugrists) , so we must deal with some alternative theories. A hungarian, living in Hungary: Gubbubu 09:44, 23 Nov 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Imprecisions in the article

  • Hungarians are genetically related to Germans and Slavs: is this sure? I don't believe. Resources?
Yes. Magyars came to Pannonia as a relative small group of warriors that imposed the language to the people already living there. Of course there was also a genetic influx, but that was not enough.
The people living there were probably Slavs, Germans and maybe Romanians. In fact, people of South-Eastern Hungary, Transylvania, Serbia and Albania are very close genetically. They are genetically pre-Indo-European people that were "Indo-Europeanized" (and became Dacians, Thracians, Illyrians, etc), then succesively Romanized, Slavicized and Magyarized. Bogdan | Talk 12:17, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)
You mean Romans, not Romanians, unless you do believe in Ceaucescu's and other nationalists funny stories.:) T2k

Can you quote any specific sources on this? Thanks. Nyenyec 15:15, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

"relative small group of warriors"?? I actually recall reading many times that the Hungarian "conquering of the homeland" (honfoglalas) actually brought 300,000 Hungarians. (counting the peasantry, women, everyone) That is supposed to be at least twice (or more--I don't recall) the population that lived on the land prior to the conquest. --70.49.165.24 04:32, 26 July 2005 (UTC)
The amount of "pure-blood" finno-ugric hungarians was a mere 5,000 or so when they came to the Carpathian basin in 895AD. They were the top bosses and their extended families, who ruled the seven tribes. The rank and file, as well as the middle nobles and the warriors were also hungarians by nationality, but not genetics (their bloodline was turkish or kazarish). The only thing currently finno-ugric about hungarians is the language, the blood-line has long been lost, only some 2% of population shows traces of uralic DNA.
It is nothing weird or mystical, just consider that the carpathian basin is at a natural crossroads right in the middle of Europe, if counted from Vizcaya to the Urals. Therefore everybody plus dog marched across Hungary during the medieval and early modern times and of course all those armies did leave a lasting imprint in the hungarian girls, who are well-known very pretty. Therefore the population is quite mixed genetically. 91.83.19.112 (talk) 21:13, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
I think that, in as of much of Europe, there were many tides of peoples that held the territory and after left, were pushed out, or intermixed. I've also read that remains Celtic settlements have been found, predating Roman conquest of Pannonia and Aquincum (I wish I could remember which book I read this in). Let's face it - most of us are mixed, in some way or another. 69.158.148.117 05:17, 8 November 2005 (UTC) Thom Molnár-Boivin

[edit] Genetic, archeologic evidence "clashing" with Finno-ugric theory

In the current text there is a paragraph (emphasis mine):

However, significant evidence in some other sciences, including genetics and mainly archeology, still clashes with this theory.

In Genes, Peoples and Languages Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza writes (p.116). "As to Hungarians, about 12 percent of their genes have Uralic origin."

I'd like to know what are the sources of genetic evidence that lead to the questioning of the theory, especially since linguists do not imply direct relation between the origins of the language and the gene pool of the people speaking it.

Also what is this "significant archeological evidence" "clashing" with the Finno-ugric theory?

Thanks, Nyenyec 04:16, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Often, languages have nothing to do with genetics. Romanians are closer genetically to other Balkan/Central European people, like Serbs, than with Italians. So do Serbs, that are closer genetically with Romanians than with Russians or Poles. Does that means that Romanian is not a Romance language or that Serbian is not a Slavic language ? Of course not. You can say the same thing about English-speaking Indians and African-Americans of the USA. It's not that hard to learn a new language and then pass it on to your children. Bogdan | Talk 11:32, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Except when genetical evidences clashes a theory. But this is isputed. Gubbubu 14:49, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Exactly. Even the linguists who support the Finno-ugric theory do not claim that the origin of languages determines the genetic origin of people speaking it. Nyenyec 19:10, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

In Genes, Peoples and Languages Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza writes (p.116). "As to Hungarians, about 12 percent of their genes have Uralic origin." And of the remainder, 85% are Carpathian and 4% Caucasian, neither of which is Finnic. See SEMINO: HUMAN GENOM..

[edit] Cases in Hungarian

The current text says:

Some people debate if these relations can be called cases, arguing that this usage was only introduced by the Swedish linguist B. Collinder.

Who are these people and are there any sources for this? Nyenyec 19:10, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Back when I learnt Hungarian grammar in school (in the ’90s) we never called cases “esetek”, which may be the reason why there are people who argue that Hungarian even has cases. Then again, Finnish officially has, and they get them with independent suffixes too, as far as I know. No big deal -- Ralesk 08:56, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)
There are hungarian linguists (dr. József Végvári, for example) who say the terminology "case" was not correct to use when speaking about hungarian (and agglutinating) language(s), cause "case" was applicable only for inflectional(?) (flektáló - greek, koine, latin, ancient english etc.) languages. In agglutinating languegas (like magyar) we rather speak about "RAG"s (suffixes[?] - this translation is not so correct, too). That is true hungarian grammar books, written mainly for hungarians, don't use the word "case" at all, but for compatibility with the non-hungarian grammars and for ease understanding and learning hungarian language for foreigners "case" terminology is used more often. There are things make the situation more komplex: as I know, it is so hard to define in generall what is "case" (sintactists, morphologists etc. all have their own disciplines and definitions for "case" - like "race" (species) in biology. Gubbubu 14:24, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)
'rag' is I think 'affix'. Suffix is 'toldalék'. -- 195.56.92.60 15:42, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC) Ralesk really who can't care to log in.
Yes. FIXme, please, If you think i RAG you, you need not to SUFFer from a guilty conscience. Gubbubu 16:17, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Hahaha :D Man, you do have a weird sense of humour. -- Ralesk 11:43, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 :-)) (Weird? Yes, to rag means ugrat, bolondít - to joke, to make a bad joke with sb. - as my old english dictionary says, so don't missunderstood it :-) Gubbubu 13:00, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)

See also: Talk:Uralic_languages#Cases_in_Hungarian. Nyenyec 14:30, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)


I expanded the sentence about the use of cases in Hungarian grammar to a full paragraph. Someone (preferably a linguist) should review it. If you speak Hungarian you might find these links useful: ZSUZSA C. VLADÁR: The ablative in early Hungarian and Finnish grammars (PDF) and hu:Vita:Esetek a magyar nyelvben. nyenyec ☎ 17:09, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)


I found an English abstract at the end of the paper mentioned above:

"In the European cultural community, linguistics for a long time meant grammar as established by Greek, and transmitted by Latin, authors. As long as Latin remained the chief language of scholarship and written culture in general, grammar obviously meant Latin grammar, and its categories were regarded as universal and generally valid. When vulgar languages started to be described, the authors relied on the Latin model as a matter of course, using principles, categories, and terms of Latin grammar. The authors of early vernacular grammars had to turn this ‘dead’ grammar of Latin into one that was alive, they had to make it fit languages that were living, variable, and exisiting only in varieties. [...] The issue that lies behind the use of that term is this: How did the authors try to adapt Latin grammar, having few cases, to the description of Hungarian with its numerous different cases? In parallel with Hungarian grammars, the author also discusses some Finnish grammars. Grammarians of the latter language, also having a large number of cases, appear to have faced a similar problem in the description of the case system and, as the sources suggest, they arrived at similar solutions as the Hungarian authors did, albeit quite independently from them."

I hope this helps. nyenyec ☎ 17:27, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)


User:Mk270 deleted the entire paragraph:

The concept of grammatical cases was first used in the description of Latin grammar. During the centuries the terminology was also applied to describe non-Indo-European grammars, with very different grammatical structures from Latin. This couldn't be done without reinterpreting to a certain extent the notion of what a case is for agglutinating languages, such as those in the Finno-Ugric language group. Nowadays the term "case" is less widely used among Hungarian linguists to describe Hungarian grammar compared to centuries ago. Several Hungarian linguists believe that the concept doesn't fit agglutinating languages very well, and they prefer to use the term "(case) suffixes" and "endings" instead. For students, the case system for Hungarian is only taught in higher education.

...apparently, from his change comment, to get rid of the false statement in the first sentence. We need to rewrite the paragraph, not delete the whole thing. --Jim Henry | Talk 16:32, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

response below Adam78's text

Actually, I don't mind the whole paragraph has been cut out, since it's rather unscientific, especially its second half about Hungarian. If there is a case relation between two words (which can be found out from the required arguments), why not call the concerned word's suffix a case? Actually, the idea promoted in the above paragraph is mostly an unfounded, ignorant criticism of those who reject the Finnish relationship of Hungarian, although they have little idea about comparative linguistics, and they think "Hungarian is so completely different; everything is different about it", and all linguistics becomes insignificant when it comes to Hungarian... In fact, the case system is taught in every modern Hungarian serious linguistic textbook. -- Adam78 17:10, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

My change comment was slightly misleading, because I did not have enough space. I did edit it a few times before submitting it. There were more reasons for getting rid of the paragraph than just the falsehood of the first sentence. The reasons were:
(1) Latin was not the first language in which case-marking was discovered and formally described. This was almost certainly Sanskrit. See the Wikipedia entry on Panini for one of the chaps responsible.
(2) It is not true to say that applying case terminology to non-IE languages "couldn't be done without reinterpreting to a certain extent the notion of what a case is for agglutinating languages,". Case is just the role a noun is playing in a sentence. It might be marked syntactically or morphologically. It's not as though the concept of case needs to be "reinterpreted" to cope with minimally inflected languages such as English which mark noun case with syntax, or languages such as German where, notoriously, nouns are generally not case-marked but adjectives are.
(3) It is not true that the case-system is only taught in higher education institutions in Hungary. This claim smacks of the anti-intellectualism of the sort of people who wish to muddy the water about the origins of the Hungarian language.
(4) The claim that some Hungarian linguists don't think "case" (what, the English term, or some Hungarian "translation" of it?) applies well to agglutinating languages is either untrue, or to the extent that it is true, is only true insofar as the word "linguist" is not employed with its usual acceptation and is instead taken to mean "persons ignorant of contemporary linguistic theory, or persons not ignorant thereof knowingly misrepresenting the same", and thus to the extent that the claim it is true it is not sufficiently notable to merit mention in Wikipedia, or to the extent that it is sufficiently notable, it is only notable as an observation about Hungarian fringe politics or the fallibility and corruption of human thought and discourse in general, and therefore is out of place in this particular article, which is about a language too beautiful and serene to be sullied with such demeaning nonsense and untruth. Mk270 21:44, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

(the following text was lost when I was editing the above comment, as it was added to the page at roughly the same time) Mk270 22:15, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

Actually, this isn't true at all. The paragraph isn't "unscientific" at all, I think the sentence "if there is a case relation two words why not call ..." is unscientific. I asked linguists on an official hungarian linguist's phorum and they said there isn't even a common and widely accepted definition for "case". So this is an open scientific problem, we mustn't decide, but must give a chance for all oppinions. I will take the paragraph back. My grammar books (e.g. Érettségi témakörök, tételek - magyar nyelvtan - written by Balázs Géza, etc.) don't say a word about case system in hungarian language. The paragraph is a result of consense. Please don't delete it any more. Gubbubu 21:29, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

The fact that it doesn't say a word about cases doesn't mean anything. It's not a comprehensive textbook, only a high-school material. However, if you look into a modern and more comprehensive linguistic book, you'll find the description of Hungarian cases. See for example Új magyar nyelvtan (ISBN 963-389-521-9) or Strukturális magyar nyelvtan / Morfológia (ISBN 963-05-7737-2). I hope you won't behave in such a way that you reject something before reading it, and discard it before proving it's false. Convince your fellow-editors of your right before reverting the page, please, will you? And if you do revert something, please take its criticism into account. It looks like there were other problems as well with that paragraph, weren't there? You should have at least re-written the paragraph, omitting or rephrasing the questioned statements. This is just forcing your view on other editors. -- Adam78 23:40, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

  1. A "modern" azt jelenti, hogy szolgaian másolja a külföldi terminológiát?Mert ez a rossz szokás valóban terjedőben van, egyre színvonaltalanabb a hazai lektorszakma munkája. Ez a matematikakönyvekben és a biológiai szakirodalomban is jelen van, egyre terjednek az angol kifejezések; de ennek ürügyén ne lássunk bele a magyar nyelvbe olyan tartalmakat, melyek nincsenek benne, még ha félrevezetően és szerencsétlenül alkalmazzuk is az adott terminológiát. A "grupoid"-ot is hívhatjuk "magmá"-nak (ez az eredeti neve, a grupoid ezt kiszorítzotta, de most újra terjedőben van ehelyett az eredeti terminológia), de ettől a grupoid nem lesz vulkanikus anyaggá, megmarad matematikai struktúrának. Ugyanígy ha egy nyelvtankönyv tárgyalja is az "eset"-et a magyarban, mert kénytelen így nevezni (főképp ha politikai nyomás is van az ügyben) attól még nem biztos, hogy vannak a magyarban esetek.
  2. A bekezdés azt mondja, kételyek vannak azzal kapcsolatban, hogy vannak-e esetek a magyarban. Ez forrásokkal van alátámasztva, és így semmiképp sem törölhető. Az, hogy a magyarban vannak esetek, egy másik POV vélemény, azt is meg kell jeleníteni, de az egyik POV véleményt cenzúrázni nem szabad (NPOV).
  3. "If you revert something" you should say that to Mk270.
  4. If you have problems with the first sentence, then look for it, don't delete the whole paragraph. Gubbubu 00:04, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

May I ask you what this "official Hungarian linguist's forum" was and who you talked with? Adam78 23:44, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

  • [1]; a concrete topic I asked them in, for ex. [2]. Gubbubu 23:46, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
    • As you can read there, most of the nicks on this forum are real linguists, and most of them are far-far-far leftists. Mondhatni, csak épp Recskre nem akarják vinni a velük egyet nem értőket. Szóval nem mondhatod, hogy a saját véleményem irán elfogult forrást kérdeztem volna meg.Gubbubu 00:06, 20 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Egy fontos megjegyzés Gubbubunak. KÉRLEK SZÉPEN, FELEJTSD EL A NYELVÉSZETI OLDALAKON A POLITIKÁT! ÖRÖKRE. Egyetlen nyelvészeti elméletet sem lehet megcáfolni vagy alátámasztani olyan alapon, hogy a kiötlője ilyen vagy olyan politikai nézeteket vall(ott). Ha nyelvészetileg meg lehet cáfolni, akkor az el lesz vetve, még ha maga Teréz anya találta is ki. Ha pedig nyelvészetileg nem lehet megcáfolni, akkor érvényes marad, még ha maga Sztálin találta is ki. A politika nem érv a nyelvészetben. Úgyhogy soha többé egy szót sem akarok hallani itt a politikáról, rendben? Köszönöm.
    • Nincs rendben. A kulcsszó, hogy vannak-e források. Ha nincsenek, elvethető, ha vannak, nem vethető el. Ld. Wikipedia:Neutral point of view. Read it, thanx. Gubbubu 09:40, 20 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Hogy vannak-e források, az önmagában kevés. A másik kulcsszó az, hogy releváns legyél: Wikipedia:Stay on topic. Erről van most szó. Amíg nem bizonyítod, hogy a politika on-topic (releváns) a nyelvészeti kérdések taglalásához, addig az a saját POV véleményed, amit nem keverhetsz bele a cikkbe.
  • The question of whether sources are available is far from enough. The other question is that you should be relevant: Wikipedia:Stay on topic. This is the issue now. Until you prove that politics is "on-topic" (relevant) for treating linguistic issues, it will remain your own POV opinion which you may not mingle into the article.

-- Adam78 14:48, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

Stop. You are mixing politic with linguistics using defaming verbs and nouns ("anti-intellectualistm", "muttering" etc.) I say, regarding to the policy Wikipedia:NPOV that we should correct the paragraph and not to delete it - this isn't politics. Gubbubu 15:59, 20 August 2005 (UTC)
  • An important remark for Gubbubu. PLEASE FORGET POLITICS ON LINGUISTIC PAGES. FOR EVER. No linguistic theory can be refuted or backed up on the base that its author has or had any particular political views. If it can be linguistically refuted, then it will be discarded, even if Mother Teresa thought it up herself. And if it cannot be linguistically refuted, then it remains valid, even if Stalin thought it up himself. Politics is no argument in linguistics. So let me never ever hear any more words about politics here, OK? Thank you.
    • Part 1). Sorry, I don't understand why do you say this. I haven't said that the paragraph must be taken back because it is political correct (or incorrect). I said it must be taken back because there are resources, so it can't be deleted. What I said about politics to you was just a remark.
    • Part 2) Sorry, but we can't forget politics. In Hungary linguistic has a lot to do with politics, we can't close our eyes above this. Just see the link I gave you about the linguistic forum. Those topics were full of politics ("who is Chomsky and why do we hate him", "why people of alternative linguistic theories are on the >>historical<< far right-wing" (by the admin Kalman), "who is Géza Balázs and why do we hate him" etc.). And read this sentences: It is not true that the case-system is only taught in higher education institutions in Hungary. This claim smacks of the anti-intellectualism of the sort of people who wish to muddy the water about the origins of the Hungarian language. What's this if not politics? Please tell your friend not to take over political censorship over this topic and don't delete oppinions they are not familiar with, instead of shouting with me. Gubbubu 09:38, 20 August 2005 (UTC)
No-one is shouting at you.
With regard to the sentences of mine you quote, the first has nothing to do with politics, so your argument doesn't apply. The second is probably political, yes, so I'll withdraw it; I can't justify it without more information, and it would be hypocritical for me on the one hand to say "keep politics out of the language page" and then use arguments which might be politics-related in the talk page!
You do not justify why you have introduced false information back into the page.
You reintroduced as your own the claim that cases were first used in the description of Latin grammar.
I believe that you may have done this BEFORE you were able to read my four points above in this talk page; I know there was some confusion last night, as Wikipedia was slow and you and I were editing at the same time.
I am going to remove the paragraph again. If you reintroduce it, please make sure you adequately deal with the four reasons stated as to why it should go.
Mk270 10:15, 20 August 2005 (UTC)
No one, Only Adam78. ("KÉRLEK ..." or "PLEASE FORGET 4 EVER" etc.)
Your first sentence has nothing to do with politics, it's only false. :-)) Case system is not material of maturation exams and it is not in basic and medium-level grammar books. Your second sentence is false, too (and has to do with politics, as you said).
If an informationj - only the first sentence is false, then cut that, not the whole paragraph. Gubbubu 10:58, 20 August 2005 (UTC)
(1) Latin was not the first language in which case-marking was discovered and formally described. This was almost certainly Sanskrit.
Thanx. Now, why didn't you correct then? I think because your cases for cutting weren't scientific, you were disturbed by "unintellectual" far right-wing "muttering" (The usual unintellectual muttering I can read in Magyar Narancs and other unintellectual far left-wing papers). I can't see any other reason.
(2) It is not true to say that applying case terminology to non-IE languages "couldn't be done without reinterpreting to a certain extent the notion of what a case is for agglutinating languages ...".
I can't say more: It is disputed case system was applicable to Hungarian (and we gave resources, as I remember). This is a fact, no matter what is your oppinion about it. Maybe your oppinion is that case system exists in Hungarian, and these disputes are unintellectual, but this is your POV oppinion. - I can do anything about this. See Wikipedia:Neutral point of view.
(3) It is not true that the case-system is only taught in higher education institutions in Hungary.
The fact is that it is true. Show me three medium-level hungarian grammar books talking about case system in hungarian (in abroad, case system maybe is the part of "lower" education. But why? Because is the integrated part of indo-european languages. Foreign grammar books talk about csae system in Hungarian language, but far right-wing unintellectuals says that only because they couldn't think in other paradigms, as they not know any other paradigm. Grammar books written for foreign learners of hungarian language talk about case system, but the cause of this is that want to ease learning. It's only a metaphor, in hungarian there aren't cases, or aren't cases in similar way as they are in the indo-european languages).
(4) The claim that some Hungarian linguists don't think "case" (what, the English term, or some Hungarian "translation" of it?) applies well to agglutinating languages is either untrue, or to the extent that it is true, is only true insofar as the word "linguist" is not employed with its usual acceptation and is instead taken to mean "persons ignorant of contemporary linguistic theory, or persons not ignorant thereof knowingly misrepresenting the same", and thus to the extent that the claim it is true it is not sufficiently notable to merit mention in Wikipedia, or to the extent that it is sufficiently notable, it is only notable as an observation about Hungarian fringe politics or the fallibility and corruption of human thought and discourse in general, and therefore is out of place in this particular article, which is about a language too beautiful and serene to be sullied with such demeaning nonsense and untruth. Mk270 21:44, 19 August 2005 (UTC)
Sorry, but this is unintellectual left-wing muttering for me :-)), about "fringe politics" (well, Nádasdy and similar linguists who write in Magyar Narancs, a fringe left-wing gutter-press are fringe). And it's more and more obvious your motivations on cutting the paragraphs are ideological. Gubbubu 10:58, 20 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Sajnálom, hogy "KIABÁLTAM" – de úgy látom, még mindig nem érted, miről beszélek. Senkit nem érdekel itt, hogy te mit tartasz ideológiai alapúnak. Amit te ideológiainak tartasz, azt én paranoiának tartom. Itt viszont sem annak nincs helye, hogy én téged paranoiásnak nevezzelek, sem annak, hogy te bármit ideológiainak nevezz. Lehet, hogy paranoiás vagy, és lehet, hogy igazad van abban, hogy ez ideológia. Lehet, hogy mindenki egyet fog érteni ebben veled, lehet, hogy senki, de ez kinek-kinek a magánvéleménye marad, amíg nem kerül elő nyelvészeti érv. Ez tehát azt jelenti, hogy a politika itt még akkor sem érv, ha igaz, és ha netán vannak is hozzá hiteles és megbízható források. (!) Talán szomorú dolog, de így van. Kívül esik a nyelvészet eszközein. Irreleváns. Matematikus vagy és logikus, ha jól tudom, tisztában kell lenned vele, hogy létezik releváns és létezik irreleváns. Tisztában kell lenned vele, hogy a kutatási és bizonyítási módszereket így vagy úgy definiálják, és ezek csakis olyanok lehetnek, amelyeneknek lényegileg köze van az adott területhez. A történelem sem foglalkozik azzal, melyik uralkodónak voltak házassági problémái, még akkor sem, ha ez döntötte el sokmillió ember sorsát. Ez lehet, hogy nagyon érdekes kérdés, de külön terület. Ha egy tudományterülettel akarsz foglalkozni, bizonyos típusú érvekre kell hivatkoznod, amelyeket érvényesnek tekintenek. Ez olyan, mint a sakk. A ló akkor is ugyanúgy léphet, ha kicsi és ócska táblán játszol, és akkor is ugyanúgy, ha nagy és gyönyörű táblán. Soha nem lesz érv az, hogy a lónak ronda a feje vagy egy gonosz ember készítette a figurát. Ha nem vagy hajlandó elismerni a játékszabályokat, az általános iskola első osztályába sem engednek be. Függetlenül attól, tetszenek-e ezek a szabályok, vagy sem. Ha nem értesz egyet, új játékot találhatsz ki vagy új tudományterületet alapíthatsz. Ez elég rossz, de meg kell barátkoznod vele, ha az élet általános iskolájába akarsz lépni és tovább.
  • I'm sorry I "SHOUTED" like this – but it looks you still don't understand what I speak about. Nobody cares here about what you consider ideological. What you consider ideological I consider it a paranoia. Here, however, there is no place for me to call you paranoid, neither is there place for you to call anything ideological. You may be paranoid (and may not), and you may be right about this to be an ideology (and may not). Maybe everyone will agree with you, maybe no one, but it will remain everyone's private opinion until a linguistic argument comes up. Therefore, it means that politics is not an argument here even if it's true, and even if there are trustworthy and authentic sources available for it. (!) It may be sad, but that's how it works. It's outside of the means of linguistics. Irrelevant. You're a mathematician and logician, as far as I know, you must be aware that there exist relevance and irrelevance. You must be aware that sometimes the means of research and verification are defined in a way or another, and these can only be such which have something essential to do with the given field. Even history doesn't deal with whether a ruler had problems with his marriage, even if it decided the fate of several millions of people. This may be a very interesting question, but it's a separate field. If you want to deal with a field of science, you must refer to a certain type of arguments which are considered valid. It's like chess. The knight can move the same way if you play on a small and poor board, and it can move the same way if it's a big and beautiful board. It will never be an argument that the knight has an ugly head or it was made by an evil person. If are not willing to recognize the rules of a game, you won't even be admitted to the first class of a primary school. Independently of whether you like these rules or not. If you don't agree, you can make up a new game or found a new field of science. It may be pretty bad, but you must befriend yourself with it if you want to enter the primary school of Life, and further on.

-- Adam78 12:06, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

Senkit nem érdekel itt, hogy te mit tartasz ideológiai alapúnak.
Akkor engem miért érdekelne, hogy te és Mk270 mit tartotok ideológiai alapúnak? szerintetek a bekezdés ideológiai alapú, szerintem nem.

Ez tehát azt jelenti, hogy a politika itt még akkor sem érv, ha igaz, és ha netán vannak is hozzá hiteles és megbízható források. (!)

Egyetértek. Ha hiteles, megbízható források vannak, akkor a politika nem érv. Most vannak. Így abba lehet hagyni az "unintellektuális" és hasonló gyalázkodó jelzők használatát. Én ezt nem használom azokra a nyelvészekre, akiket nem tisztelek, és nem törlöm az ezen iskolába tartozók véleményét, és nagyon megkérlek, hogy ti se tegyétek - öntsünk tiszta vizet: úgysem fogom engedni. Gubbubu 15:29, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

Tisztában kell lenned vele, hogy a kutatási és bizonyítási módszereket így vagy úgy definiálják, és ezek csakis olyanok lehetnek, amelyeneknek lényegileg köze van az adott területhez. A történelem sem foglalkozik azzal, melyik uralkodónak voltak házassági problémái, még akkor sem, ha ez döntötte el sokmillió ember sorsát. Ez lehet, hogy nagyon érdekes kérdés, de külön terület. Ha egy tudományterülettel akarsz foglalkozni, bizonyos típusú érvekre kell hivatkoznod, amelyeket érvényesnek tekintenek. Ez olyan, mint a sakk. A ló akkor is ugyanúgy léphet, ha kicsi és ócska táblán játszol, és akkor is ugyanúgy, ha nagy és gyönyörű táblán. Soha nem lesz érv az, hogy a lónak ronda a feje vagy egy gonosz ember készítette a figurát. Ha nem vagy hajlandó elismerni a játékszabályokat, az általános iskola első osztályába sem engednek be. Függetlenül attól, tetszenek-e ezek a szabályok, vagy sem. Ha nem értesz egyet, új játékot találhatsz ki vagy új tudományterületet alapíthatsz. Ez elég rossz, de meg kell barátkoznod vele, ha az élet általános iskolájába akarsz lépni és tovább.

Akkor légyszíves maradjunk a nyelvészeti érveknél. Érvek nélkül ne töröljetek semmit - és eddig egy releváns érvet sem kaptam. Gubbubu 15:29, 20 August 2005 (UTC)
  • I'm sorry I "SHOUTED" like this – but it looks you still don't understand what I speak about.
    • No problem.
  • Nobody cares here about what you consider ideological. What you consider ideological I consider it a paranoia. Here, however, there is no place for me to call you paranoid, neither is there place for you to call anything ideological. You may be paranoid (and may not), and you may be right about this to be an ideology (and may not). Maybe everyone will agree with you, maybe no one, but it will remain everyone's private opinion until a linguistic argument comes up. Therefore, it means that politics is not an argument here even if it's true,
  • Then why should I care what User:Mk270 considers ideological?? He considers the paragraph ideological, and you're right no one should care with this. We must correct the first sentence - that's all our work.
  • and even if there are trustworthy and authentic sources available for it. (!) It may be sad, but that's how it works. It's outside of the means of linguistics. Irrelevant.
  • Stop, man! If there are authentic resources we must give chances for the oppinion! I beg you, please read the policy Wikipedia:Neutral point of view. "There are no cases in hungarian" - this is an oppinion, true or false. I'm not sure whether it is the oppinion of the Academy and the majority of linguists, but this oppinion exists. So when you delete this paragraph you delete facts. I can't let it, sorry, because it hits the NPOV policy. User:Mk270 is not that man who must decide whether this oppinion is correct or not. Not you and not me: we only collect this oppinion and write it into the article.

You're a mathematician and logician, as far as I know, you must be aware that there exist relevance and irrelevance. You must be aware that sometimes the means of research and verification are defined in a way or another, and these can only be such which have something essential to do with the given field. Even history doesn't deal with whether a ruler had problems with his marriage, even if it decided the fate of several millions of people. This may be a very interesting question, but it's a separate field. If you want to deal with a field of science, you must refer to a certain type of arguments which are considered valid. It's like chess. The knight can move the same way if you play on a small and poor board, and it can move the same way if it's a big and beautiful board. It will never be an argument that the knight has an ugly head or it was made by an evil person. If are not willing to recognize the rules of a game, you won't even be admitted to the first class of a primary school. Independently of whether you like these rules or not. If you don't agree, you can make up a new game or found a new field of science. It may be pretty bad, but you must befriend yourself with it if you want to enter the primary school of Life, and further on.

I don't know what to do with these last sentences. If something is irrelevant, well they are. I agree in that we should stay on the topic. and our topic is the disputed paragraph. I think the article needs this (with a correction of its 1st sentence). Gubbubu 15:47, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Deleted resource

[3].

Dear Adam78! You deleted a resource link from the article. I don't mind what's your oppinion about "gyökelmélet", but it writes - you are right, writes a little, but writes - about the history of applying cases in Hungarian grammar. Please talk before you delete something (and would you be so kind to take it back?).

Please pay close attention - for example - for this table on the linked web page:

  LATIN MAGYAR
 
Alanyeset
Birtokoseset
Részeseset
Tárgyeset
Távolítóeset
Megszólítóeset
Egyes szám Többes szám
populus populi
populi populōrum
populi populis'
populum populos
populo populis
popule populi
Egyes szám Többes szám
nép népek
népé népeké
(a) népnek (a) népeknek
népet népeket
néptől népektől
Ó nép! Ó népek!

And please READ, THINK, TALK and ACT, in this order. If you mix this order, you shot the suspected person before asking him. Don't do that, in the long run I can't tolerate this style of behavior. Please learn to tolerate those oppinions what you don't like. I do that too. Thanx. Gubbubu 21:27, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

I read into the article about its key concepts, rag, rügy and so on. This part may be a witty series of association, but it has nothing to do with linguistics. If the author wants to deal with archaic relationships of language, he should use archaic words, and possibly archaic forms of them. Ruha, however, came from the Slavic languages, so it's not even an archaic Hungarian word. How can he want to prove any important feature of Hungarian with this word? The article is full of unscientific opinions, which are amusing to think about, but these are not linguistics. (Do you know the poems by Dénes Kiss? They are quite similar. Witty and amusing, but nothing more.) The article is full of personal opinions which have little to do with his own topic. This is not the way a scientific piece of work looks like. It's a kind of literature, written on occasion of the language. – I can hardly believe of you that you can take it seriously. You're too intelligent for that. How can you expect anyone to take it seriously? Let's not take each other for fools, please.

You are shadowboxing. The key concepts of the article has nothing to do with our present talk: this is irrelevant for us now. We don't have to decide whether these are scientific or unscientific, because these aren't in the "Hungarian language" article. But the Végvári article wrtites some word about case system in its first twenty-thirty paragraph. You are right the article bends then to an other topic (what is RaG), but that is not interesting for us now. Gubbubu

If you want to refer to a table, cite the table. But even citing the table isn't really worthy, because today's linguists don't use these cases for Hungarian (see what they use), and whatever cases they apply, they apply them for totally different reasons than linguists several hundred years ago (this table shows Hungarian linguistic attempts of those times). It is clear for everyone that Hungarian and Latin cases cannot be directly mapped onto one another. What you're doing is called shadowboxing in a figurative sense: refuting an argument which resembles what the other person said, but is actually different from it – and expecting the other person to believe that his own argument has been refuted.

I think you are shadowboxing. No one says modern linguists try to identify cases in Hungarian as cases in Latin. That part of the article only writes about the history and the starting of the "cases in hungarian" paradigm. But Dr. Végvári says even so the first grand mistake was here. So Végváry tried to give two simple example for an agglutining and an inflecting language, to show that there are "paradigmatical", essential and inevitable differences. E. g. inflection is a closed system, with its seven cases. The hungarian suffix system is opened: there are many variations, so that we must make difference between twenty-forty cases. Végváry says this is not elegant, and maybe there are other, more simple chances to classify semantic relations in hungarian (see Occam's Razor, too). Gubbubu

However, please remember the answer you received at Nyelvészforum [Linguists' Forum] to your question:

"Van-e különbség esetek tekintetében mondjuk az agglutináló és flektáló nyelvek tekintetében. Pl. az eset fogalma van-e valamelyik ilyen nagyobb nyelvtípushoz kötve?"
The answer was: "Nyelvtípushoz nem köthető, mindenhol van." [It (i.e., a case) cannot be connected to a language type; it exists everywhere.] (2004. november 26.)

So, what makes you think then that the term "case" should be avoided for Hungarian? Honestly: are you going to look for a linguist who says "Yes, cases really don't exist in Hungarian / Uralic languages", and he will be The Authentic Person And The Ultimate Resource for you, because he says what you want to hear? -- Adam78 22:31, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

You haven't quoted the environment of this oppinion and other oppinions! This is so manipulating! The answer wasn't this! The complete quote:
Erre frappáns választ nagyon nehéz lenne adni. Egyértelmű definíció semmi esetre sem adható a mai állás szerint, nagyon különböző vélemények léteznek arról, mi is akar lenni az eset. Nyelvtípushoz nem köthető, mindenhol van. Más-más rendszerben (nominativus-accustaivus, esetleg ergativ-abszolutiv, netántán vegyes 'split ergative'), de ez sem nyelvtípus, hanem nyelvfüggő. Meg hát hogy egyes eseteket mire használnak, az megint nagyon különbözik. Van egy könyv, ami szerintem érdeklődő laikusnak hasznos lehet: BJ Barry: Case. A CUP-nál jelent meg, a SEAS könyvtárában megvan, de sajnos nem adják senkinek. Állítólag még akarnak beszerezni belőle. Persze ez sem örök igazságok tárháza, vannak benne nehezen védhető dolgok, van, ami rendben van, de mások máshogy látják, de isteni ptijantjatjara példákkal jön, és a különböző rendszerek működését jól le lehet szűrni belőle. Magyarul sajna nem tudok olyasmit, ami így összefoglalná a témát.
i.e.:
Hard to give exact answer to this question. An exact definition can't be given by our recent scientific knowledge, there are so-so different oppinions, what "case" wants to be. It cannot be connected to a determinate type of language, cases exist everywhere. Maybe differently in some languages (nom-acc, maybe ergative-absolutive).
and when I asked whether the Academy has a well-defined point of view, Kalman said:
Well, the Academy has a well-defined point of view about everything :-)). As I remember, they define nominal case suffixes (attention! not cases! case suffixes!!) as a grammatical instrument for sign the bővítmény-relations [i.e. ~~the "parts" of the sentence]. They don't define the idea of "case", but surely they think that is a grammatical sign of an "in-sentence-relation" [sorry for misstraslation, I'm not good at English linguistic terminology). Etc.

Let me quote a bit more from the answers you received at the above discussion forum. (Date: 2004. november 26, péntek, 23:31)

  • "Védhető álláspont egyébként, hogy pl. az angol elöljárószók rokonok a magyar szemantikai esetek ragjaival." – ["By the way, it is a defensible view that e.g. the English prepositions are relatives to the suffixes of Hungarian semantic cases."] Note that the question here only concerns the status of the English prepositions, not the Hungarian cases.
  • "Mindenképpen elkülöníthetőek szerkezeti esetek, amelyek egyértelműen csakis a Kálmán által említett mondattani viszonyok jelölésére szolgálnak (általában a nominantivuszt, az akkuzativuszt és a dativuszt sorolják ide ...)" – ["By all means one can separate structural cases, which unambiguously serve only to denote the syntactic relationships mentioned by Kálmán (one generally classifies nominative, accusative and dative into it)"]
  • (at the end of the same paragraph): "A magyar másfelől hemzseg tőlük ugyebár." – [On the other hand, as we know, Hungarian language is swarming with them (i.e., with the structural cases)."]

But you could be informed of all these if you visited a library (as far as I know, there are more than sixty in Budapest, so you could perhaps find one). This is contemporary linguistics.

I hope your reaction will not be to these that you keep searching until you manage to find someone to support your own view. I'm not sure this method would be honest and convincing for a scientist.

-- Adam78 00:37, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

Gubbubu, would you kindly stop accusing me of not being on the far-right? You have insufficient information to infer my political views from what I post here, and inferences from them are irrelevant, as what I say about linguistics is true or false independently of what I think about politics. You claim my motives in cutting the paragraph are ideological, but you don't actually flesh out that argument. What's the ideology? How does it undermine the actual reasons I stated in any way? If my motive were ideological, which it was not, why would that even matter?

You are conflating factuality, NPOV and notability in your arguments.

It is true that there are people who believe that it possible for a language not to have cases. There may in fact be such languages, though I doubt it. If you really think that such a thing is possible, please give a description of how you think such a language would work.

What do you actually MEAN when you say that Hungarian has no cases?

I think it's fair to say that the notion of "case" has had to be reanalysed. That's really not a point about Hungarian, though, is it? Personally, Hungarian was the reason I reanalysed my view of the locative in Latin, but I'm pretty sure that's not why linguists in general did so in the course of the twentieth century.

I do accept that as a matter of FACT there is a dispute, but I don't accept its notability. I've already stated that and you've not answered that point in respect of notability, only in respect of fact.

I can see the POV you are trying to get into the article, and how it ought to be incorporated. Mk270 14:11, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

My answers:

  1. Don't call our oppinions "unintellectual". Stop it. I've stopped talking about politics now (but you have started it :-); and my last politized comments were only jokes ("that is a far left-wing mutter for me :-))" - please pay attention for the smiley in that, it was a parody of your comment before).
  2. "Notability" is a subjective expression. Please give me an exact test or metric system what decides an oppinion is notable or not. Then I can measure the notability of this linguistic dispute and give you its notability quotient. But it is "notable" very much - how the hell a dispute on paradigmatic differences of language classification could be unnotable?
  3. How can I imagine there are no cases in Hungarian? How can I prove my oppinion? I don't have to. First of all, it's not my oppinion. It's not my POV. So please ask Hungarian "alternative" linguists. And no matter they are right or not. I haven't written "In Hungarian there aren't cases". This is POV. I've written "some linguists says in Hungarian there aren't cases". This is - a fact. As no matter God is the creator of the world or not: we must show the oppinion of religions and the oppinions of atheists. Wikipedia gives space for every oppinions from cited first-order, secondary, third-order etc. resources. This is our NPOV policy. And I gave a resource. That's all, folks. Gubbubu 23:47, 21 August 2005 (UTC)
Thanks for responding. Just as your political comments were only jokes, mine were intended for amusement value as well. Sorry about that :).
As to "unintellectual", I think I said "anti-intellectual(ism?)". The way these discussions work is that linguistics itself comes under attack, whenever this is necessary for overcoming some claim. I'm thinking of the argument earlier about Finno-Ugric cognates; it's possible to characterise the notion of systematic sound correspondences, in practice, as being so complex as to defy immediate understanding by people who aren't historical linguists, and then to assert that it must be false or tenuos on such grounds alone. That's what I was trying to get at when I said the contentions "smacked" of anti-intellectualism (I hope I'm not misquoting myself too badly here).
I note that you're claiming that I was attacking "our" opinions, in your first paragraph, but portray some opinions as "not my" opinion in the third. I assume these aren't the same?

Mk270 18:12, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Notability and crackpot theories

So if I understand correctly it came down to whether these "alternative theories" are notable enough to go in the article.

To Gubbubu: there is a certain degree of notability a given view needs to reach before it can be mentioned in an article. Crackpot theories usually go into their own articles. You won't about Heribert Illig or Erich von Däniken in the main history articles.

So the question is whether these "alternative theories" are important enough to be discussed here, or are they crackpots who should only be mentioned in their own article (at best).

I'm not a linguist, so I won't even try to judge this. But to me it's a hint that the website you quote (kitalaltkozepkor.hu) is dedicated to Heribert Illig...

-- nyenyec ☎ 00:51, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

No, this is a site and a forum of much hungarian-related alternative theories. I don't know whether Dr. Végváry is an adherent of Illig's theories (and as I know him from his letters, he don't deals much with theories like these - and don't deals too much with middle-ages history if it is not necessary for his linguistics), but I know an other alternative scientists, Dr. Bakay wrote that it is unprobable. And what does it mean "crackpot theories"? I think the paragraph is too short to open a new article, anyway, "crackpot" is a very subjective verb (crackpot theory for me is that what I don't like). Gubbubu 09:12, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

Bakay is not a linguist, he is a historian. I can't tell if Végváry's theories are notable or serious enough to be included in this article. I leave that to the linguist editors. -- nyenyec ☎ 15:04, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
No one said he is a linguist (I wrote: alternative scientist - but this is not true, he is not alternative, only antidogmatic in a special meaning of this word). I must repeat: READ, THINK & WRITE please, in this order. Thank you for leaving that. Gubbubu 17:09, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
I haven't wrote that you wrote that he was a linguist. :) Since this is an article about linguistics, I don't think his views count much here. -- nyenyec ☎ 17:21, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
What views of him? Where have his views been mentioned? Gubbubu 19:34, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Vowel harmony

I really dislike the vowel harmony examples. szirt is not composite order and is not archaic as implied, only the szirtok form of the plural is archaic (can be found in XIX century poems).

This is right. Gubbubu

I changed it to béka. The example of exceptions is incorrect: egy is quite regular and egy-kor is just using a suffix with only one form. This example has nothing to do with e being a neutral vowel, öt-kor would get just the same suffix. I did put an example with derék instead.

Thanks.

I did not, however, put in an explanation for why híd and company have behave like back words. AFAIK there used to be a back vowel like the Russian yeri. When it disappeared, the endings did not change. If somebody with more knowledge on this matter could add this info, that would be great. --Tappancsa 00:36, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I corrected originally the part "vowel harmony" mainly. The original version was much more incorrect, and I tried to give a better one, but as I couldn't correct all mistakes (and made some new), it wasn't good enough. This topic is quite hard, as i know there isn't an absolutely exact linguistic modell (without exceptions) for vowel harmony in hungarian language. Gubbubu 23:20, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Please see the page Hungarian phonology, maybe it can help you. And yes: There was a yeri-type sound sometime, that's the explanation for híd, but leaves derék etc. being a harder question... --Sicboy 00:36, 2005 Apr 7 (UTC)

[edit] Figures for Sweden

The 35,000 figure for Sweden seemed so unlikely that I removed it altogether. I'd be surprised if Hungarian speakers in Sweden were even in the thousands. Ethnologue mentions nothing of Hungarian speakers in Sweden, so please cite a source for this claim. - karmosin 16:42, Mar 9, 2005 (UTC)

Those people probably fled in late 1956 after the anticommunist revolution was crushed by the soviet red army. Those people ended up everywhere, USA, Australia, Argentina, UK and possibly the scandinavians also accepted some of the total 200,000 people. 91.83.19.112 (talk) 21:03, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] complicated

I don't think hungarian is so complicated (but this is my mother tongue, so I don't count). But foreign learners really say often hungarian is so hard to learn. Gubbubu 01:16, 27 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Every language has its complications - and in hungarian, it's the "cases"/adfixes for nouns that really tri[ up those whose mother language is non agglutinizing. By comparison, it could be easily said that English is hard to learn because of irrational spelling and irregular grammar, or that French or Portugues are difficult due to their elaborate verb tenses/moods and genderization of nouns. 69.158.148.117 05:30, 8 November 2005 (UTC) Thom Molnár-Boivin

I am a native speaker, but at one time, I let my Hungarian "go" and I had to re-learn it about 10 years ago. It is now clear to me what makes Hungarian so hard. Look at a Hungarian-English dictionary and try to divine the meaning of "hű" and "hő" and then add "fűt" to the mix. Such simple words and such a variety of uses! And they sound so alike, that the mind wants to use the wrong word all the time. It's a lot more like learning an Asian language (with wildly different meanings based on intonation and small sounds). So here's a list of things I've noticed from re-learning Hungarian. Hope it helps:

  • Most words are compounded, even short ones. Knowing where to break up words, and whether it imparts any further meaning to the text or speech, is the sticky wicket.
  • To correctly translate, watch the prefixes and suffixes (mostly suffixes). Drop the suffix, to find the "root word" and look that up in the dictionary. Careful of "fel" and "felé" for example.
  • There are fewer words that mean similar things. For example, "szán" can mean: pity, compassion or commiseration. The exact meaning is based on context and intonation.
  • Spoken Hungarian is intoned to include implied meaning. Asking for a favor sometimes doesn't include the word for "please" but the tone of voice is made pleading and gentle so that "please" is implied.
  • There are regional differences in usage and grammar. When I travelled to Budapest, it was obvious that I grew up speaking a variant.
QuickieWiki 16:28, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] History of the language

I'd love to see a short summary of the history of the language on this page, especially with some info on the language reform. (I'd also love to write about it but I'm afraid I'm not competent enough.) Alensha 23:14, 26 May 2005 (UTC)


I am a canadian who lived in Hungary for 9 months and could barely get the basics of the language it was so complicated. In comparison, I learnt Spanish upto an intermediate level in Chile during a similar length of time. Much easier for me.142.46.72.254 19:16, 1 October 2005 (UTC)Orval

Overall, Wikipedia deserves enormous credit for this outstanding article on the Hungarian language. I am blown away by the depth of Wikipedia's article on Hungarian language and its history. However, I know for a fact some Hungarian scholars believe Hungarian doesn't fit nicely into the Ugric group of languages. One scholar said, "Hungarian is either Ugro-turkik or Turko-ugric I dont know which one." God Bless Wikipedia for this outstanding article on my favorite language!!!!!!!!!!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.35.27.83 (talk)

[edit] Phonology paragraph

One can read "There are some sounds which do not exist in English, such as /ɟ/."

It seems to me that duke is pronounced by some in the UK like /ɟu:k/, that is, the d is performed by pressing the tongue against the middle of the palate... I let some native speaker correct this fact if indeed needed!
/kv/ or /ø/ might be better examples of unknown sounds in English. /r/ also, except in dialectal speach.

Régis Lachaume

Hmmm, I think /ɟ/ is used only in BBC English, and even that's not exactly the Hungarian sound. It's rather [dju:k]. /kv/=?? --Sicboy 18:49, 2005 Jun 10 (UTC)
/kv/ is not a sound in Hungarian, not even in English. Of course, in English /k/ can only be followed by /w/, never by /v/, but that's simply a restriction on the occurence of phonemes, as they usually exist in languages. I think Lachaume got confused about the fact, that the latin grapheme <qu> is pronounced exclusively /kw/ in English, but exclusively /kv/ in Hungarian (be it written still as <qu> as in quadriga or already as <kv> as in kvint. About the 'duke', I think Sicboy is right, the BBC pronounciation is [dju:k], which is different from [ɟu:k] (even if 'I' do pronounce it the latter, having Hungarian as mother tongue). /ø/ is indisputably a sound English does not have. -- Szabi 15:31, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

I've just edited to give a brief summary of the phonology. I left the example of /ɟ/ (definitely not standard English) but edited the text a bit. Also changed title to "Sounds" in accordance with the Wiki language template. Gailtb 06:20, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Hungarian spoken by ... - war

It seems some people think the old (not so accurate) numbers of people speaking Hungarian in Hungary and other countries are a little exaggerated. Why, okay, but I think the new numbers are not the best as well, as in most countries (yes, in Hungary too), government always tells a smaller number about speaking of population of their minorities.

Please tell me some example yet what minority is told to be smaller in Hungary. Gubbubu
AFAIK government numbers point out that ~1-1.5% of Hungarian population is Roma, while the truth can be near 5-8%.
You have to differenciate between ethnic Roma and people speaking Roma, so, referring to the original entry (not signed) and not to Gubbubu's, your argument is not right. The Roma language is seldom spoken among Hungarian Roma. -- Szabi 15:34, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

--Sicboy 22:49, 2005 Jun 16 (UTC) But the number about 9.5mio people speaking Hungarian in Hungary is ridiculous, because I think there are no permanent Hungarian citizens not speaking Hungarian today. The title of the linked page is: "Population by mother tongue, main demographic, occupational characteristics and sex". And: "Did not wish to answer: 513 089". Of those not living in Hungary I feel it necessary to comment this: the 2001 census was the first one since the WWII when people were asked about their nationality, religion and mother tongue; but answering these questions was optional, to avoid controversies. And as you can see many people "did not wish to answer". So I think it would be better to come to a compromise about these figures, at least better than just editing them every day. --Sicboy 22:03, 2005 Jun 15 (UTC)

[edit] I should like v. I would like

Regarding the recent reverts,

"I should like" is rarely ever heard today, though still considered "proper English"; but "Fowler's Modern Usage" is no longer considered "Modern"! (It's actually quite old now, and terribly out of date!) Codex Sinaiticus 00:40, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] offer

If you get a copy of X-Sampa, Hungarian in here before the end of the week, I'll upload the files for the corresponding sounds/letter combinations illustrated by a word as said by a female and male speaker, recorded as .ogg files, complete with comments on peculiarities. Anyone interested? Habib 07:14, 13 July 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Derékbe vs. derékba

Google fight says "derékba" is used more than 100 times as often as "derékbe" on the Web. Browsing further among the results for "derékbe", look what I got:

A derék(1) főnév ragozva mindig mély hangú: derékba, derekat, derekak, derekam, derekunk stb. A derék(2) melléknév hangrendileg ingadozik: derékbe v. derékba; derekat v. deréket; derékül, derékul v. derekul; derekabb (v. derékebb). [4]

(In English: derék as a noun is always deep-ordered, while as an adjective it can be either order.)

To prove this further: does anyone (speaking Hungarian) think "derékes" is a correct alternative for "derekas"? ;)

KissL 11:25, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

No, I don't think. Gubbubu 23:45, 29 July 2005 (UTC)
Hey, nobody ever thought that, but derekam, derekas are always used like that, while derékbe can (well at least I think) turn up sometime. So why use the derékba example, when derekam is just a perfect example. It is possible in Hungarian, that a word has back suffixes in some forms and front in other forms. E.g. nobody says *férfiek, *férfies; but férfiben, férfinek is common (although férfiban, férfinak is good too) --Sicboy 16:46, 2005 July 29 (UTC)
We don't use derékbe. This form is not only rarely used, but really false. Férfiben is a very unusued form, too. Gubbubu 23:45, 29 July 2005 (UTC)

Lots of people say "férfiben". Moreover, Google has 68 hits for "derékbe", which means it is actually used. Language is apparently changing! In fact, the community of native speakers can be the only judge to decide what exists and what does not. Correctness, historical basis, literariness etc. are other things. -- Adam78 17:36, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

Well, I suppose the article should be talking about correct forms only – and considering a word form correct when the number of its occurrences is still below 1% will make us accept virtually everything as such. For example, the patently ridiculous "2-őt" has 7,620 Google hits versus the 62,700 hits of "2-t", so "2-őt" is even over 10%. (Don't try googlefight in this case, it screws up anything with "ő" in it.)
Of course, this doesn't apply to forms predominantly used in a certain dialect or limited geographical area, but AFAIK "derékbe" is not so. It might once make its way into common usage, but IMO it clearly hasn't yet. Also, not all of those 68 hits (which, if you view all of them, turn out to be 42 :) except for duplications) use "derék" as a noun. That said, I'm always OK with an "even less ambiguous" example, so I don't want "derékba" back.
"Férfi" is again a different thing, it usually has deep-ordered suffixes because originally it was "férfiú", a deep-ordered word with two neutral vowels and a deep one at the end (but even if it were composite-ordered, it would require deep-ordered suffixes). With the rapid disappearance of the last vowel, the sound order of the word is changing accordingly, which can easily be accepted (even predicted) as a natural change of the language. Correspondingly, "férfinek" appears (on the web) in almost 20% of the cases, which is significant. KissL 09:16, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

Basically I agree with you: "derékbe" is not significant and the article should speak about correct things. In connection with "derékbe", I actually replied to Gubbubu, who said it was "really false", which is nonsense. Yes, "lót" is incorrect because an adult Hungarian speaker will say "lovat" ["horse", irregular accusative]. But we see there are adult Hungarian speakers who say "derékbe", so we can't say it's not non-existential, it's just peripheric. ("Derékbe" obviously has the analogy "kerékbe", which may well affect its usage.)

By the way, I don't think "2-t" and "2-őt" are good examples since it's only the knowledge of orthography, which is very important culturally and everything, but is, in itself, not part of the language. There are/were languages which are/were spoken by nations who didn't have writing systems at all, so orthography doesn't and can't exist, yet, correct and incorrect things can be clearly decided. People who write "2-őt" will equally say "kettőt" as those who write "2-t", so it's not a linguistic difference.

Anyway, in Wikipedia, we must try to provide the most correct, most common and most widely accepted examples for those interested in Hungarian language. -- Adam78 23:50, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

Agree with the last post, but I recommend not using the word correct as its usage is ambiguous. The main point in this article we try to provide the spoken standard, that is used in the media, not-too-high literary, newspapers, and in the speech of Budapest middle-class (if such exists:). I tried to argue that the word derékbe (and férfinek) might be used by some, and so, why not replace it with a much less ambiguous example. But I think, everyone has agreed with that :) --Sicboy 15:40, 2005 August 2 (UTC)


There used to exist a 'deep i' in early Hungarian (I think a close central unrounded vowel, similar to the slavic yery) - that's the reason behind férfiak, it's not connected to the férfiú form. / source: Antalné Szabó Á. - Raátz J.: Magyar nyelv és kommunikáció tankönyv a 11-12. évfolyam számára. Budapest, 2003. ISBN 963-19-2482-3 /

Anyway, for derékba, I cannot give such a reason :(

Torzsmokus 00:32, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Passive voice

Okay, new topic. "The passive voice is almost extinct, but can be found in old literary texts." is the crucial point. Now, what is the passive voice in Hungarian?? I think it is not extinct, rather it has never existed! The -tatik/tetik is not a "passive voice", because this categorization is based on languages different from Hungarian (see the problem of case). Using the term "voice" you imply that it is in the inflection of the verb (such as other moods, person, number, etc.). But in Hungarian it is (was) just a derivational suffix, just like the -hat/-het, or -gat/-get suffixes, which have been never called the "possibility mood/voice" or "frequency mood/voice"...

However, the structure van + verb in gerund is used very frequently like a passive, however it has other usages as well (e.g. perfective) so it can't be called "The Passive Voice In Hungarian" as well. (oh yeah, and that's why it is not a germanism or whatever:) --Sicboy 15:52, 2005 August 2 (UTC)

Agreed on my part. I edited it out and placed an HTML comment about it to the place where I think it should be discussed. I'm not familiar with the exact terms used by linguists, so I'll let you rephrase it if necessary and move it out of the comment afterwards. KissL 16:19, 2 August 2005 (UTC)
Thanks, I think it is alright now. We could uncomment this sentence, when there are more (and better structured) information on the conjugation of verbs, e.g. gerund, participles and derivational suffixes. But I think when these will be added, they can be replaced to a proposed Hungarian grammar page, with many tables etc. already on this page. --Sicboy 18:29, 2005 August 3 (UTC)


The "passive voice" expression, IMHO, does not imply an inflectional structure. It rather describes a grammatical structure to express a certain relationship. Wheather the structure is inflecting or agglutinating is of no interest. Btw, it was last week that I saw -tVtik in a newspaper. It's definitely not extinct (I use it sometimes, when apt, as well). It's an other question, when it's really "passive voice" and when it's a "simple" "csináltató" mood (which is, IMHO again a difference in grammatical terms, but might have the same syntactical sign). -- Szabi 14:31, 5 August 2005 (UTC)
Well I think emphasizing the "passive voice" as placing its mention to an important place is misleading. It's like stating, that Hungarian has a feminine gender by affixing -né to a noun. It is even used in some occasions but there is nothing that far from the feminine gender...
The difference between the passive suffix -tAtik and the causative suffix -tAt are
  • the causative is never an "ik-verb", the passive is always
  • the syntactic and semantic structure of the sentence is totally different: valami íratik valaki által "something is written by somebody" --><-- valaki írat valakivel valamit "somebody gets someone write something" (?). Thus, the two suffixes can never be confused.
(and again, it is not a "csináltató"=causative mood it is just a derivational suffix like -gAt, -kOdik etc.) --Sicboy 00:39, 2005 August 8 (UTC)
I still think we should mention it - not because the passive voice is important in Hungarian, but rather because it is important in English. We shouldn't forget that we are describing the Hungarian language for speakers of English here. KissL 08:31, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

Sicboy, you claim "Using the term "voice" you imply that it is in the inflection of the verb"; this is not true. Passive voice is nothing to do with inflection. In English, it's hardly done by inflection, is it? Passive voice is where the number of arguments a verb has is reduced by one: "I(1) gave the book(2) to her(3)" becomes "The book(2) was given to her(3) / To her(3) was given the book(2)", and the thing which was the object of the verb becomes the subject.

Too often in discussions of Hungarian, people have claimed that since a particular feature is achieved differently in Hungarian, it does not exist in Hungarian. This is often nonsense, and should cease. 09:23, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

Well, sure, maybe it was a mistake. Anyway I tried to imply that the usage and importance of the Hungarian -tAtik suffix is different from the English passive, and should not be mentioned on that place. However, Kissl's argument is considerable, but I still think that the place of this sentence is rather in a more developed, independent grammar page. That could make this article clearer as well. --Sicboy 14:40, 2005 August 13 (UTC)

[edit] Sumerian

you seriously have to cut down on the "Sumerian" stuff in this article, if it is to be any good. Do a Ugro-Sumerian hypothesis article or something if these claims really must be discussed. They are, of course, pseudoscience, and an article about the Hungarian language should be based on facts, not on kooky root etyomlogies. dab (ᛏ) 15:00, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

Yes, this should at most be mentioned as mythology, or as a passing fancy historically, like the idea that all languages descend from Hebrew. kwami 23:01, 2005 August 22 (UTC)
There is plenty of evidence to allow for some speculation on the part. I would hardly qualify it as a "myth". It can go as an unproven theory. --64.164.69.221 01:32, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

No, there isn't, because it doesn't show such regular sound correspondences as Italian and Spanish and French etc., or English and German etc., or Russian and Czech etc., or Hungarian and Finnish etc. etc. etc. All the vocabulary similarities between Hungarian and Sumerian are by chance and without any kind of regularity (whether form or meaning), which occurs between any two selected languages of the world. Besides, such words are compared from Hungarian which didn't even exist at the supposed time of the shared time of the two nations, since many of the words involved in this research are loanwords in Hungarian, from a much later time than it could be possible within the Sumerian theoretical framework. -- Adam78 12:12, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

First of all, the phrase "unproven theory" is tautological. All theories are unproven. You can't "prove" that the world even existed yesterday. You only get proofs in mathematics.
Secondly, a theory requires the testing of predictions. You can do this with Uralic: you can make predictions that, for example, regular sound changes from Ugric words would lead you to expect certain forms if any of the Fennic languages had cognates; you look, and voilà, there they are. This was most famously demonstrated with the laryngeal theory in Indo-European: de Saussure hypothesized, based on comparitive evidence from the Indo-European languages, that the proto-language must have had certain weak consonants in some words that have disapeared completely from all known languages. Some years later Hittite was discovered (through the decipherment of its texts); lo and behold, Hittite had /h/ just where de Saussure predicted it would be. Now that's a theory (albeit an "unproven theory"). Uralic is similar. Ugro-Sumerian is nothing of the kind; it's a hypothesis that never went anywhere, and which now seems less likely than when it was proposed. kwami 18:28, 2005 August 23 (UTC)

>:) I was told and have read that the connection between the languages is that both of their grammars are agglutinative... that words used in a sophisticated city society in Iraq more than 2000 years ago should not sound the same as words used a thousand years later in the Crimea by their supposed descendents who were primarily horseman and whose only concept of a "permanent structure" was the pole that held up the tent of the lead cheif wouldn't surprise me a bit. (but hey, one person's speculation is another's deductive reasoning)

Phonetic correspondences are the only way to establish genetic relationships. That two languages are both agglutinative doesn't mean anything, a good many (even most?) of the world's languages are agglutinative. Often languages can be related without having similar grammar. English, nearly an isolating language, is related to Russian, a synthetic language. Estonian is related to the other Uralic languages even though it has some striking grammatical innovations. CRCulver 00:18, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Not really adjacent

"The Hungarian language is a Finno-Ugric language spoken in Hungary and in adjacent areas of Romania[...]"

In Romania, the language is spoken mostly in the counties of Covasna and Harghita, both situated in the center of the country and pretty far away from the hungarian border.Of course you'll find speakers in most of Transilvania, but those two counties are by far the most representative.

If I call any sicul to write here by his name and wher from live Than You will be changes your map?

(sicul is the latin word of "Székely" but it is crude english portal and I dont know they how call that peeple.)

E_S

[edit] Case again

Just a comment on case. Case does not mean the form of a morpheme, as agglutinative or inflectional, it refers to its behavior. (Though, granted, the two are related.) Some of the Hungarian cases behave like core cases in other languages (such as I me my in English), whereas others seem to correspond more closely to English prepositions. Because all languages are rather fuzzy in their behavior, we end up with a continuum of core case - non-core case - adposition. Each morpheme will have to be argued separately, and for some no agreement will be possible, because things don't always fall into clear-cut categories. (And Hungarian is certainly not likely to match Latin or Greek, whether it has case or no.)

Also, Hungarian "case" involves verbal aspect. We have something very similar with English prepositions: he ate the cake vs. he ate up the cake, where "up" indicates the aktionsart of the verb rather than the case relation of the noun. The Slavic languages of course are famous for this kind of thing. As far as I know, no linguist, Hungarian or otherwise, has ever worked out the aspectual ramifications of the Hungarian "case" system. We can argue about it all we want, but this can only be resolved with additional research. kwami 02:28, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

Can you give me an example where aktionsart has (or may have) anything to do in Hungarian with cases or case suffixes? To be frank, I've got no idea what you're speaking about. Adam78 12:21, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

I can't say much, as I don't know the language myself. This is just what I've picked up from listening to people who do study Hungarian: How the case system is actually used in conversation, as opposed to what the grammar books say.

Do you get the idea in English? I could say "I ate my dinner", or I could say "I ate it all up". That's the form used in Little Red Riding Hood: the Big Bad Wolf ate the grandma "all up". The "up" does not behave as a preposition here, or even a directional adverb, as in 'look up'; rather, it may be more illuminating to say that it qualifies the aspect of the verb, making it perfective, perhaps. It gives the idea that the eating was done to completion (even when the word 'all' is not used). The claim is that the Hungarian 'case' system is put to similar uses. The sublative -ra, -re is supposedly used like a perfective, like "up" in English, for example. Supposedly in actual conversation, as well as in written texts, many suffixes behave very little like a case system, and more like aktionsart. That's really all I know. It's quite possible that others behave more like case (accusative, genitive, dative are frequently rather basic, and not just because of Greco-Latin tradition), and that others function more like prepositions. It's also likely that they have dual roles, just as "up" is often a true preposition (or at least a directional adverb) in English. Anyway, it's likely to be a complex story, and each suffix is probably idiosyncratic, just as each "preposition" (many of which aren't actually prepositions much of the time) is idiosyncratic in English. kwami 18:31, 23 September 2005 (UTC)

I can imagine two things:

  • either some verbal prefix require some case suffixes (which does occur) – but in these cases it's the verbal prefixes that semantically carry the aktionsart, not the case suffixes;
  • or there are a few words which have this -ra/-re suffix, which words happen to carry this meaning (or rather, the "really much", "extremely", "like hell" meaning), like marhára, baromira, kurvára in slang – but these are individual, isolated cases (in my opinion) and your acquaintances might have overgeneralized its significance.

These are my hints. To say anything more, I should know the exact cases your acquaintances encountered...

Adam78 18:44, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, I don't know the details, but my impression was that it was neither of the above. Rather, it was when the suffixes were used in conversation with regular nouns that didn't require them lexically. Also, -ra/-re was simply one example I was given when I asked about this; it was not the only suffix to behave this way. What she thought she was finding was that most of them behaved this way. But as far as I know nothing like this has been published, so it's nothing we can use directly. kwami 19:10, 27 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] sond correspondances

Added some Ugric and Fenno-Ugric sound correspondances. Yes, I know these would normally go in the articles about the families, but since the relationships of Hungarian remain contentious outside linguistic circles, I thought it would be prudent to give some evidence for the classification here in this article. kwami 20:22, 29 September 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Word order issue - date

The article states that word order of Hungarian dates is "big endian". However, if I'm not mistaken, this has nothing to do with endianness, but is simply related to the word order of possessive relation, which is the opposite of the English one. See 2007. január(jának) elseje = the first of January of 2007. Anyone got any sources on this? Zigomer trubahin (talk) 03:13, 20 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] not NPOV?

Hi!

I do believe, that now the article is of a NPOV, at most unsignivicant un-NPOVs remain. It seems to be the remains of old (sumerian etc, etc...) versions of the article. Therefore I suggest removing the somewhat disturbing and unpleasant NPOV-template from the top.

I will do so, if you don't object or don't have good arguments against it. -- Szabi 21:45, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

I object. The artile still has a tainted POV. Now I am not a linguist but I think that a POV is inherent in this article. As was pointed out before it has to do with Hugarian and greater European politics. In particular the debate between weather Hungarian is a Turkic language or not. This is also related to questions of the genetic origin of the Hungarians. The POV I see can be summed up thusly: Hungarians are genetically, linguistically, and cultually "as european" as frenchmen or germans. They are european because they are not linguistically or culturally at all like those Turkish people living to the south. The POV in the article is posed as the opposite to the POV. This while eveyr primary source I have read on the Huns, OnOgurs,Avars, Magyars, then Hugarians tells me that they and their language are as turkic as Suleman and the sublime Porte.

That and I am a physicist by trade and linguistics seems based on POV and simply convincing a majority that you POV is correct based on logic. Without experiment all you have pseudoscience anyway. --Hfarmer 06:09, 2 November 2005 (UTC)

Hungarian is not Turkic, although there were theories that it was Turkic. It is Uralic. According to scientists. Daydreamers say it is Sumer, or Parthus, or even from the Sirius. Well these may be right :) but the main point is that Hungarians are, as you say, genetically and culturally very much like its neighbours, Western Slavs and Germans (and all Europeans). However, its language is not Indo-European. Neither Turkic. Linguistics is not based on POV however, historical linguistics have methods to show if a language and another language are related. These are exact methods. Using these you get that Hungarian is Uralic, and French is Romance. You can say you have better methods: show them. If you say these linguistic methods are not right: okay, then Hungarian is not Uralic, French is not Romance, and Cockney is not English. Did you win anything? --Sicboy 21:54, 6 November 2005 (UTC)


Here is a good experiment. Take native speakers of a Uralic language and native speakers of a Turkic languge, and put them in a room with a native speaker of Hungarian. Pick people who are simmilar in appearance, so as to filter out the effects of racism on anyones part. Take every precaution to make sure the only variable is language. Run the test with Hungarian and different combinations of uralic and turkic languages. Observe who can understand whom. Repeat this many many times to get statistically firm results and damp out errors or biases. If the majority of the time the Hungarian speaker and the Uralic speaker can understand eachother then Hungarian would be closely related to Uralic. If the majority of the time the Hungarian speaker and the Turkic speaker can understand eachother then Hungarian is more closely related to Turkic. This is what a scientist would do(short of a team of physicist building a time machiene). The whole experiment would be analogous to mating two annimals to see if they produce offspring and weather or not those offspring are fertile, hence they are related.

What linguist do is sit around and philosophise about how they feel about a language. :-|:-\ :-/ :-( are the faces of Physicist who look at that and have to put up with such people calling themselves scientist.

That said, I can cite current authoratiative linguistic sources that say that Hungarian is a Turkic language, or at least a Turkic language influenced by Urlaic. About the Hungarian language, University of Texas.Hungary blocks Hun minority bid. or this [http://www.filolog.com/languageStrangeCake.html Hungarian Language School].Read the balace of these articles and you see that linguist are at best split on the matter of where to put Hungarian . I am inclined to think that linguist are heavily influenced by politics, fasion, and racism. Right now it is more in vouge to be related to Slavs than to Turks. --Hfarmer 22:54, 7 November 2005 (UTC)

Hi Hfarmer, I'd like to point you to Finno-ugric languages, Uralic languages and their talk pages to learn more about this debate. -- nyenyec ☎ 23:49, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
So, Hfarmer, if you wanted to know whether cats were more closely related to dogs or to parakeets, you wouldn't sit around and philosophise about comparative anatomy and genetics, but instead would put a representative sampling of cats, dogs, and parakeets into a room to see if they could breed?
It might be a good idea to read up on a subject before a claiming to know the answer. Would you take me seriously if I were to propose an experiment to measure the mass of the neutrino, if I had never heard of Newton or Maxwell?
I suggest that you read up on comparitive or historical linguistics.
As for your "authoritative" sources, you're not serious, are you? The first is a student web page. The second is a BBC news article that says nothing about Hungarian linguistic relations (and in any case it's a news article! Would you expect the BBC to get physics right?), and the third completely contradicts you. Here's a quote:
Actually, the Hungarians themselves had lost all memory of their Finno-Ugric origins. They thought they were a far-off branch of the Turks and/or Mongolians, and that ultimately they derived from the Huns. For many centuries this was the accepted theory taught in schools and, even after being ousted from serious scholarship by the Finno-Ugric discovery, it survived as a neo-romantic and neo-nationalist legend, so much so that Attila is now one of the most frequent Christian names among Hungarian men.
kwami 00:54, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
(By the way, everybody, his [third ref is a well written short article, and a nice read. I recommend it. kwami)

Kwami ask...

"So, Hfarmer, if you wanted to know whether cats were more closely related to dogs or to parakeets, you wouldn't sit around and philosophise about comparative anatomy and genetics, but instead would put a representative sampling of cats, dogs, and parakeets into a room to see if they could breed?"

Yes, or I would take samples of their tissue to a genetics lab and ask them to classify to what species these animals belong and how these animals are related. The way you set up your question takes what I propose to a absurd length but it is the basic idea. A better example would be taking several animals of the same type such as two or three allegedly different species of Crocodile and seeing if they can breed. Such an experiment is crude but the results are ultimately the same as what expensive DNA testing would tell you about related ness.

In the case of language families what we would need is three large samples. At least 1000 native speakers of Hungarian who know no other language. A random sampleing of persons who speak a random sampling of Turkic languages. Last a random sampling of persons who speak a random sampling of Uralic languages. Instead of putting the people together physically we could just take audio recordings of the speaker's of Urlaic and Turkic languages saying certain phrases in their languages. Then see how well Hungarian speakers can interpret the phrases. Large samples at least 1000 people saying a large number of different phrases would be necessary to give a statistically significant result.
If the Hungarians after hearing these samples can on average interpret the phrases from language family A better than those from language family B it would indicate a deep connection to language family A.
Including a sampling of the many other Turkic languages other than Turkish would remove the bias that Turkish loan words would put into the results. As a matter of fact we would have to leave Turkish out of the sampling of Turkic languages to ensure that the results were not skewed.
Furthermore biological decent and language relatedness are not correlated. As a matter of fact I can cite recent DNA evidence which concludes the following. Hungarians, specifically Magyars, are of Turkoman origin with recent admixture of German and Slavic haplotypes.

C. R. GUGLIELMINO1, A. DE SILVESTRI2 and J. BERES

I will admit on the issue of language you may have an argument but in the face of DNA you cannot argue. In science the experiment is the final arbiter of disputes. Kwami you should not resist what I propose. With experiments like what I have described Historical Comparative Linguisticscan be elevated to the noble realm of laboratory sciences and gain much enlightenment and credibility.
Note the matter of fact and unemotional tone of my response. I just want Wikipedia to be as accurate up to date and non Idealogical as possible. That means being complete. The people that come here trust us to provide them with all the facts that are pertinent and to back them with Authoratative links. I provide such links whenever I write on something on which I am not an expert myself. One also has to take the whole context of the link in to account. For example the line kwami cited is preceded by
"Their names (e.g. Árpád, Gyula for men, Emese, Sarolta for women) were also Turkish, as were their clothes, weapons, kitchen

utensils and burial rites. Thus it is not surprising that the Byzantine chronicles which first mention the Hungarians (around 950 AD), call them "Turks",Hungarian Language School"

Dont take our words for what the article says see for yourselves. THINK critically!

--Hfarmer 06:35, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

What you propose is so basic to linguistics that it isn't even mentioned most of the time. You only come across it in, say, debates about how many languages Mixtec is, or German. Of course, if two forms of speech are mutually intelligible, they're considered dialects of the same language (they might be distinct ethnolinguistically, but that's a separate point). However, applying this to Hungarian, Finnish, and Turkish isn't going to tell us anything more than trying to breed cats, dogs, and parakeets. (You say you're willing to go to a geneticist for answers, but not to a linguist? This strikes me as a bit bizarre.) If two forms of speech have no intelligibility, intelligibility tests will only tell you they aren't closely related. They will tell you nothing about more distant genealogical relationships. It really would be easier to discuss this if you had some idea of what you were talking about -- read up on it, okay? kwami 06:49, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Nature versus nurture and languages

Hfarmer, you're speaking about two different things: genetic testing is one, and experimenting with people understand each other is another. Don't confuse them! The first is about derivation, origins, the second is about neighbourhood, environs, setting. Imagine a child who was born to parents of one culture and who is adopted and brought up by parents of an entirely different culture (say, a Pakistani child by Canadian parents). Who will he more resemble, his natural or his adopting parents? He'll retain some characteristics from his birth and natural parents, but he'll also show several characteristics from his upbringing parents -- that is, both factors will be visible to some extent. – The case is similar with Hungarian language: it is genetically related to Uralic languages, but its Uralic features don't show up obviously since Hungarian lived in a Turkic environment for centuries. (You'll also equally see Canadian and Pakistani traces in the child.)

If you only analyse people's speech, you'll only analyse their nurture, their upbringing, their adopted parents and you will not know anything about the genetics of the language. Decide which you're more interested in: genetics or outer appearance. They are sometimes different. Languages are usually so much exposed to other languages during thousands of years as if children were brought up by alien parents. Genetics and outer appearance often say different things. It's your choice to select which you listen to. Even if the child will act as a perfect Canadian (with Canadian habits, customs, speech, manners, style, interests, clothes, hobbies, education, language, way of living and everything), his genes will remain Pakistani until his death. Hungarian could be a thousand times more like Turkish, and it would still remain Uralic in origins. Because classification deals with origins, rather than appearence. Just like genetics does. -- Adam78 14:22, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

Along those lines, here's what Lyovin says about Hungarian, which he classifies (surprise!) as Ugric:
The ancestors of modern Hungarians arrived into present-day Hungary around A.D. 896 after a series of migrations from a region just west of the Urals as a part of a military coalition of Magyar and various Turkic tribes.
and, of Uralic languages is general, about "labial" harmony (vowel harmony in rounded vs. unrounded vowels),
labial harmony occurs in Hungarian, Eastern Cheremis, and Selkup, all languages which have been under Turkic influence.
kwami 00:09, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
Hfarmer, your experiment about taking a speaker of Hungarian, another of a Turkic language, and another of a different Uralic language would be invalid scientifically. You would need control groups. What were to happen if you put together speakers from known related langauges, like Spanish, Farsi, and Armenian? Or what about two sets of speakers of Hungarian, Turkic, and a different Uralic language and you tell one set that their languages are related and you tell the other set that their languages are not related? The only thing you may prove is that the feature of mutual intelligability is not a requirement for language relatedness. --Stacey Doljack Borsody 03:14, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Mistakes?

I noted two items from the beginning of the article that appear wrong somehow.

"The Hungarian name for the language is magyar [ˈmɒɟɒr̪]."

Isn't the name for the language magyarul?

"The largest diaspora concentration is in the now Romanian counties of Transylvania ..."

Is it inappropriate to use the term diaspora in this context? The presence of the Hungarian (Székely) population of Transylvania is not a result of a large movement of refugees who were driven from their homeland. Perhaps a better term would be 'minority'? IIRC, the Csángo population could be considered a diaspora.

--Stacey Doljack Borsody 18:56, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

  • The Hungarian name of the language is "magyar". "magyarul" means something like "in Hungarian".
    • ("magyarul" means exactly "in Hungarian". Gubbubu)
  • I agree that diaspora is not a good description! Gailtb 19:52, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
      • Agree, should be erased the term diaspora. Diaspora is maybe likely in US,...Still, Csángo population could not be considered a diaspora.-- Bonaparte talk 18:00, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Two Quotations?

Why are there those two quotations at the bottom of the article? The Sir John Bowring one discloses information now widely accepted as being false, and neither is particularly notable. Mk270 17:26, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Alinei's theory?

Perhaps Alinei's theory about the origin of the Hungarian language could also be of interest. In a book published in 2003 Alinei makes a case for Etruscan being an archaic form of Hungarian. Aside from similarities in magistrature names, there is an extensive list of grammatical and syntactical similarities, some appear to be rather fundamental: agglutination, vowel harmony, how prepositions are used in conjunction with indicative pronouns, etc. Also, the theory has generated testable hypotheses, and sensible interpretations of inscriptions on some Etruscan pottery. Balazs 18:25, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Nearly all reputable linguists consider Mario Alinei to be a crackpot. Mentioning him in an article on the Hungarian language is like mentioning flat-earth theory in an article on cosmology. All the similarities between Hungarian and Etruscan that you mention are typological similiarities, and they prove nothing at all. The only criterion that can decide a genetic relationship between two languages is regular phonological correspondence. CRCulver 18:52, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
Please provide some references to Mario Alinei being considered a crackpot. While I am aware that his Etruscan-Hungarian theory is not widely accepted, I had quite the opposite impression of his general standing in the eyes of the scientific community. --70.53.131.122 20:50, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

I would not have claimed that Alinei's theory is proven. I am sure that the theory has more solid basis than the Sumerian hypothesis that is on the page though. Your metaphor is an interesting one in this case, since Galileo himself did not receive the best possible treatment during his time. Moreover the PCT workgroup does include a number of linguists. But in any case a short paragraph of pros and cons would not hurt. Balazs 10:06, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Yes. Alinei's theory should appear. There is no *rational* reason why it should not. Especcially since, as you note, the Sumerian nonsense is given note. --70.53.131.122 20:51, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Would anyone confirm?

When I add up the number of persons speaking the Hungarian language, I got appr. 12.1 million + the additional one million in other parts of the world. However, at the start of the article one can read about 14.5 million Hungarian speakers, and the summary table states a total of 15 million speakers. (In my oppinion, 13.1 is the correct value.)

And: I don't speek Finnish so I don't know which side of an example is broken. Nonetheless, Hungarian "forr" (boils) is clearly not "snow flurry" (hófúvás).

[edit] Dialects Question

In the article, it states "The Hungarian Csángó dialect, not listed by Ethnologue, is spoken mostly in Bacău conty, Romania. This minority group in Moldavia has been largely isolated from other Hungarians, thus they preserved a dialect closely resembling medieval Hungarian."

What does "this minority group" refer to? The Hungarians in the Romanian county (meaning the 'Moldavia' reference is incorrect), or is the word 'this' incorrect (maybe a leftover from a previous edit)? Can anyone clear that up?

Istvan 22:16, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

It refers to the csángó minority group, it is correct. --Sicboy 23:43, 4 February 2006 (UTC)
Ok, since you changed the reference I see now that my confusion wasn't about the minority group, but about their location. Bacău County is only one of several that comprise the region of Moldavia (I was thinking of the country of Moldova, as opposed to the region). The way the two sentences are written, they effectively equate Bacău county with Moldavia, whereas the former is a subset of the latter. What I believe is correct is that within Moldavia there are a lot of Csángó speakers, and they are most heavily concentrated in Bacău County.
Since 'Csángó' is now linked, and that entry talks more specifically about the region and the ethnic group, I cut the 'Moldavia' reference altogether. Anyone with further interest will discover more about the region(s) if they follow the links. Istvan 18:43, 5 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Two words for "red".

I was just reading about the fact that Hungarian has two different words for the color "red" and at one part I read, "According to Berlin, B and Kay, P (1969) Basic Color Terms, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, Hungarian is unique in having two basic colour words for red.".

Well, it turns out that this is false. I am a native speaker of Portuguese, and my language also has the strange situation of two actual words for the color red. In Portuguese, the most used word for "red" is "vermelho", but "encarnado" also occurs very often. The exact difference between "vermelho" and "encarnado" is not clear, they simply seem to refer to the very same color. Some people stick to the word "vermelho". some to "encarnado", and others just say the first of those two words that comes into their minds whenever they want to say "red". So, Hungarian is not the only language with this particular feature. I would recommend removing that part of the text that I quoted from the article.

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 81.193.57.161 (talk • contribs) 03:04, 19 February 2006.

Thank you for your comment. However, I must check a few things before we could say Berlin and Kay were wrong because they had four definite criteria for calling colour names "basic colour words" as such.

So, is it true for those two words in Portuguese that

  • both of them consist of one single morpheme (eg "light-brown" excluded in English)
  • both of them are often used (eg "indigo" excluded in English)
  • both of them can be applied to a wide range of objects (eg "blond" excluded in English) and
  • neither of them are part of another colour category (eg "scarlet" excluded in English, being a kind of "red") ?

If your answer is definitely "yes, yes, yes and no" about the two words in Portuguese, then the Berlin and Kay statement should indeed be removed from the article.

Adam78 02:42, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Is "encarnado" from a dialect? I tried looking up "encarnado" on freedict [5] without success. Freedict translates "red" as "vermelho" only. Then I found pt:Encarnado. Babelfish translates that word as "flesh-color". --Stacey Doljack Borsody 03:07, 19 February 2006 (UTC)
One point to add to Adam's comments. The description of the two words in Portuguese seems to be saying that they mean the same thing. Berlin and Kay were examining how the colour space is divided up - two words which refer to the same thing are not really two different colours. An essential point is that in Hungarian the two words mean different colours. Gailtb 08:31, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

When I asked native Hungarian speakers about this, I was told that Hungarian is similar - one of the words means something like 'flesh-colored', and is not a generic color word. That is, it is more like English 'blond'. Russian truly does have an azure/blue distinction, but were B&K perhaps wrong about Hungarian? Any native speakers out there want to comment? kwami 17:11, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Both names can be applied to a wide variety of things but they are seldom interchangeable. Piros is basically a vivid red, the most common hue of "red" as such, and vörös is basically a dark red but there's nothing in their morphology to show this distinction. Vörös has an old variant veres which makes its connection more clear with vér, blood (rather than flesh) so that forms the base of comparison for other things, but blood itself is often referred to as piros.

As it's written in the article, both colours have different associations:

  • piros: usually applied to inanimate, artificial things, as well as for things seen as cheerful or neutral,
  • vörös: animate things, as well as for serious or emotionally involved/affected things.
  • piros: red pencil, red ink, red sign (prohibition, disqualification or a tourist mark), the red line of the metro, a red-letter day in the calendar, the red nose of a clown, rose-cheeked looks, red lips, whatever red clothes, red flowers, red apple, red peppers and paprika, red cars, red cards (hearts and diamonds), red traffic lights, eroticism and red light district, the red stripes on flags and a few plant and animal names (eg poppy, ox-pecker) etc
  • vörös: may recall socialism (vörösök = socialists or communists), red army, red wine, red carpet (for elegant guests), (naturally) red hair, red beard, the colour of love itself, red lion (as a mythical animal), Red Cross, Red and Black by Stendhal, the Red Sea, the red colour of the spectrum, red-shift, Red Giant, blood-cells, blood-corpuscles, red death, tippler's nose, in the name of several animals and plants (eg red oak, larch, cranberry, rowan, robin redbreast, red fox), ferric and other minerals (and perhaps anything gained from the earth), red copper, red phosphorus, the colour of red-hot, onion, red cabbage, Scotch kale, "it's like a red rag to him", sky is red if a wind-storm is approaching and at dawn or dusk, red when blushing with anger or shame, red-eye effect when taking photos etc

It looks like the relationship with nature may be more important than emotional involvement (see the physical, astronomical, geological and biological objects used with vörös). – A couple of things, like inks, lights, roses, ribbons, tapes can be marked with either red colour. Vörös hair is natural but piros hair is definitely dyed. Adam78 20:15, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Interesting - so not necessarily an objective difference in color? If you asked people to show which colors on a color chart were piros and which were vörös, would they overlap or be distinct? That is, is it like the pink-red distinction in English? kwami 21:56, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

If it's about inks or pencils where both kinds of red are possible, people can show unambiguously which is piros (the "normal" or "default" red) and which is vörös (dark red). Probably anything that is produced in factories can be made in piros or vörös colours, be they everyday articles, clothes, vehicles or whatever. In these cases, one can say which one is which red. One the other hand, there are lots of things (like natural phenomena and living creatures) which only exist in one kind of red (whichever hue they have) and usually their names are assigned by the above regularities. – So in the first case there is an objective and unambiguous difference in colour, but in the second case there isn't, but it is more of a matter of linguistic traditions or collocations.

If one were to ask people to show which colours on a colour chart are piros and vörös, they would be distinct, because a colour chart is artificially made and so the hues of red can be identified (just like the pink—red distinction in English). However, if they were shown pictures of animals or plants or minerals, they would perhaps hesitate because they could resort to the actual colour differences of the objects, or to the most common linguistic expressions of the things seen in the pictures. If they happen to know that eg a fox that they see in the picture is commonly called vörös in Hungarian, they'd probably call it vörös, even if the actual hue of its fur is perhaps closer to what they'd otherwise call piros on a colour chart. Another example: if they're shown a picture of a poppy (which is usually referred to as piros) but it looks remarkably dark red in the picture, they'd perhaps hesitate and say "This poppy is so dark red that it practically looks vörös." Collocations, existing phrases affect how we perceive the world and if they don't differ too strikingly from the schemes we have in our minds, we'll usually apply the most common expressions to what we see. Adam78 22:27, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

In terms of the discussion, I would say that Adam's first sentence is key - on a colour chart the colours are different, just as pink and red are in English. But as a native English speaker with intermediate level Hungarian, I found some of the other examples very interesting. I would have expected "red hot", "red rag", "red eye effect", socialists, Red Cross and Le Rouge et le Noir all to be piros. Funny how our language affects our perception of the world! Thanks! Gailtb 23:18, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Interesting to me, too. The connection of vörös and socialists is beyond doubt in Hungarian, and it's quite easily justified by its intended meaning, the "blood of angry workers" (see Red flag). Yet the network that the Hungarian Socialists have recently launched is called Piros Pont [6] ("Red Point"). It may allude to the mark pupils can get in school for good homework; besides, socialists probably don't want to reinforce the connection with the old (pre-1989) Hungarian regime. – Vörösizzás ("red hot") is maybe that way because it's a phenomenon related to natural things like fire. "Red rag" (vörös posztó) may be connected to the fact that piros can be cheerful and vörös can more easily express emotions, including anger. "Red Cross" (Vöröskereszt) is understandable to me if I consider the health issues they deal with, including blood. Le Rouge may be "red" because piros would suggest a girl's or woman's attire while vörös can refer to priests (and their uniform), portrayed in the novel. In general, vörös is preferred for "serious" things and piros for "light" (or even children's) things. Finally, vörös szem ("red eye") is probably used because it's an existing phrase for the inflammation of the eye and that meaning was taken over for the photograph. Piros szem could be used for the much less typical condition of albinism. Adam78 00:57, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

Here I am again. I made a quick analysis of the reactions of Vermelho-Encarnado to each of the four criteria that Berlin and Kay used. I got the following results:
  • Both of them are single morphemes.
  • Both of them are often used. However, I am not sure if encarnado is used in Brazil with the meaning of "red". In Portugal both words are widely used and understood as "red". Encarnado may also mean "incarnated", and in a way it does seem to have a relation with flesh.
  • They can be applied to a wide range of objects. Any red object is prone to be qualified as vermelho or encarnado by a Portuguese speaker.
  • They don't seem to belong to separate color categories. I recall asking my mother when I was a child what was the difference between vermelho and encarnado. She said those are just different ways to say the same thing. And in fact, throughout my life, I have never found any real difference between the meaning of those words.
In order to provide some evidence for this, I browsed the web for pages that would contain both of the words. For my surprise, I discovered that the official website of the Presidency of the Portuguese Republic has this page with the history of our national flag, on which they refer to the red in the flag sometimes as vermelho, sometimes as encarnado.
http://www.presidenciarepublica.pt/pt/republica/simbolos/simbolica.html

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 213.13.231.247 (talk • contribs) 23:08, 20 February 2006.

How surprising that Berlin and Kay do not consider the metaphorical/symbolic aspect of red. From the lists given here, it really looks as though 'piros' is (mostly) used for things that are actually red, while 'vörös' is for things or concepts that are only called red, or are symbolically red. The Red Cross and Red Sea, for example, are not really red, since the Red Cross refers to the organization, not the symbol itself. I'd be interested to see how Hungarians refer to the organization versus the actual red cross used to symbolize it. So maybe vörös is a kind of archetypal red, used for metaphorical situations and for red so dark that it is symbolic of red. The word 'scarlet' could be compared only in this second sense- that we use it when we consider something to be really, truly and archetypally red. Think of the difference in impact between 'the red letter' and 'the scarlet letter'. It would make sense that a word for blood would be the source of an archetypal word for red. (None of this terminology is accepted linguistic jargon as far as I know, by the way. It simply seems like the best way to discuss it.) I wonder if the Portuguese situation began the same way, seeing that one word originated as describing (probably bloody) flesh. Maybe they were originally different in sense, but over time the words came to be interchangeable. Linguistica (talk) 15:27, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] SJB

I don't understand. Why don't you guys just correct the SJB bit instead of constantly reverting? Is it true that it is easier to just revert instead of moving external links to external links section or clean up the wikistyle or correctly quote the website? --Stacey Doljack Borsody 22:11, 28 February 2006 (UTC)

Actually, the SJB quote is commonly, but falsely attributed to him. It has been debunked here: [7] (Hungarian).
The word are not his, but come from a 1940 Hungarian book by Tivadar Ács: Akik elvándoroltak.
This is not wikiquote anyways. -- nyenyec ☎ 20:58, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
I actually think the whole section should be deleted, including Marc Martin. It isn't part of the language template and kind of implies a lack of confidence in the language among its speakers. The facts should stand by themselves without the need for a foreigner's opinion. If Marc Martin is important he should be on his own page, with a link in "see also", rather than the detail being here, IMHO. Gailtb 07:49, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
Agreed. -- nyenyec ☎ 05:06, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] What does it mean in English?

The following sentence appears in the text: While common prior to the 20th century, given names are usually not translated into English. What does this mean? Can we say it in English?Hgilbert 14:14, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

I think the intent was something like "Prior to the 20th century, given names were often translated into the local language (be it English or German or whatever). Modernly, this is no longer the case (for example, the pianist uses András Schiff, not Andrew Schiff)." -Martha 72.81.97.124 03:08, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sound correspondences

I think this section could be improved by removing the irrelevant IPA, which just a distraction here. The Hungarian and Finnish words could simply be written according to the regular orthography, which is basically phonemic anyway. Also the examples need improving; e.g. Hungarian forr does not mean "snow flurry", and the alleged Finnish word purki does not even exist. If no one objects to deleting the phonetic transcriptions, I'll do this edit in the near future. --AAikio 18:13, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] nominative plural marker

Did the nominative plural marker -k come from Proto-Uralic *-t? Frosty ('sup?) 03:35, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

No, not at least according to the common view; there are no parallels for a sound change *-t > -k in Hungarian. The generally given explanation is that the -k comes from a Proto-Uralic "collective" suffix *-kkA: cf. Finnish -i-kko in derivatives such as koivikko "birch thicket" < koivu "birch". Personally I find this possible but not fully convincing; and in general, there's quite a lot of morphological material in Hungarian that has not been satisfactorily explained from a Uralic point of view. --AAikio 07:23, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Prepositions

I've heard that Magyar doesn't have prepositions, is this true?Cameron Nedland 13:56, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

yes, it is...85.248.66.2 10:35, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

So how do they say preopositional phrases?Cameron Nedland 14:02, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

In Hungarian, there is no such thing as a prepositional phrase. If you mean "how do you say those things in Hungarian that require a prepositional phrase in English", the answer is that you either use a postposition ("after 10 o'clock" → "10 óra után"), or you use a suffix ("in the house" → "a házban"). If you're interested, the Hungarian grammar article has lots of further information. KissL 15:42, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks.Cameron Nedland 20:22, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Deleted paragraph

I deleted again the following paragraph under "Lexicon", which was reintroduced by the previous editor:

  • "These several hundred [Uralic/Finno-Ugric] word roots, however, account for about 80-90% of the words in an average present-day text, due to their wide-ranging compounds, derivations and formations, several dozens of words from a single root."

This claim is not plausible; it simply cannot be true that 80-90% of the words in an average Hungarian text are based on word-roots of Uralic or Finno-Ugric origin. At the very least, this should be backed up with a reference; but even if such a reference can be found, I strongly suspect that the figure is based on some kind of error. --AAikio 16:33, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

What proportion do you think it is, then? What ought to be got across is that the most commonly used words and morphemes are the ones least likely to be replaced by borrowings.

This is certainly the case in English. The majority of the English wordstock is of non-English origin, but only 2% of the really commonly used words are.

Mk270 17:16, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't really know what the proportion is, but it can hardly be 80-90% - this figure is not plausible. If someone can provide a reference backing this claim, then it's worth checking, but otherwise I think it can be just dismissed.
As to your claim that 98% percent of "really commonly used" English words are of English origin, this is not clear to me. What do you mean by "really commonly used" - and what does it mean that an English word is of English origin? English words are English words per definition, but the origin of a word is a different thing: if you said that so-and-so many English words are, say, of (Proto-)Germanic origin, this would have a clear meaning, but I am not sure how 'English words of English origin' should be understood.
I don't object to the general idea that frequently used words are less often borrowed, and this information could certainly be included in the article in another way. I merely deleted the paragraph because it included an implausible statistic claim that wasn't backed up by any references. --AAikio 21:12, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
I think you're being somewhat obtuse. What I was referring to was the observation that 98 of the 100 most used words in English are from Old English (that is, before, say, 1000AD), and not from Norman French, Latin, or Greek, which account for the majority of borrowings into English.
So, let's back this up. Here's the URL of a plausible list of the hundred most used words in English: http://www.duboislc.org/EducationWatch/First100Words.html
Now, how many of them are not from Old English? I count "number", "people", "oil", and "part".
So, 96%, not 98%. Whoopy do. It's not like "oil" should be on the list anyway!
According to that website, these 100 make up 50% of all written English, so the baseline for unborrowed words would be 48%, even if every English word outside the top hundred most frequent had been borrowed from another tongue. As it turns out, the Wikipedia article on the English language says that Anglo-Saxon (which I guess means that subset of Old English not deriving from Old Norse - source of a few extremely common words such as "them") accounts for 83% of the 1000 words most commonly used. Though we're not given a figure for what proportion of words used fall in the 1000 most frequent, you'd expect it to be rather large, and we know it is over 50%. You'll see in that article that French and Latin between them account for the majority of lexical items in English.
The more commonly used a word is, the less likely it is to be replaced by a borrowing, right? Hungarian is unlikely to be special in not functioning like this.
Your position warrants sticking a "citation/reference needed" tag on that paragraph, not deleting it.
Mk270 22:15, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
I've just had a little look. In Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, there are roughly 121456 words. The top 1000 words account for 105784 words. That 1000 includes lexical items uncommon in English, like "Darcy" and "Netherfield", too. A cool 87% are accounted for by the top 1000 words.
If you know Hungarian well enough (I take you to be someone familiar at least with the various Finno-Ugric languages in and around Finland), we could take some Hungarian texts from Project Gutenberg and see what proportion of the most commonly used words are not borrowings?
Mk270 22:38, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
User AA is a celebrated expert on Finno-Ugrian/Uralic etymologies, and he is only representing the mainstream view that, while it's a FU language, Hungarian contains few remnants of a proto-language whose reconstructed lexicon doesn't add up to all that much anyway. CRCulver 22:42, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
I'm perfectly aware AA's a linguist, and that reconstructing a proto-language for Uralic is probably impossible, and well aware, being a linguist myself, of the mainstream view of the status of Hungarian, which view I have defended in this talk page on previous occasions. What I wasn't aware of was the extent of his knowledge of Hungarian. Having had a look at his website, I'd be shocked if he didn't know a lot about it.
What I'd like to know is the proportion of Hungarian words used are Uralic in origin. This is a different question from what proportion of the word stock is of Uralic origin, as words vary widely in the frequency of their use.
Mk270 23:28, 2 September 2006 (UTC)
> Mk270: Your original statement about the English lexicon was so unclearly worded that I don't think it's due to my obtuseness that I couldn't see what you're referring to; I can't be a mind reader. Originally you didn't mention Old English origin, but only "non-English" origin; neither did you mention that you're talking about the 100 most common words, but only referred to "really commonly used" words. But ok, I don't have any problems with the figures you now presented, so let's leave it at that.
As for the passage discussed, my opinion is that it must remain deleted and not tagged with the "citation/reference needed" tag, because the claim is too implausible to begin with. If we have a plausible-looking claim lacking a reference, then it's sensible to tag it, but there's hardly a point in tagging claims that almost certainly are not true.
Let me explain it this way. I don't really know Hungarian so that I could read it without a dictionary, let alone speak it (one of my many weak points); but what I do intimately know about Hungarian is its inherited Uralic word-stock (Uralic sound correspondences and lexical reconstruction is one of the topics I do research on). So, if the roots of 80-90% of Hungarian words in an average text were of Uralic/Finno-Ugric origin, then I should be able to recognize the roots of those words without checking from the dictionary. But of course, I can get nowhere near 80-90% by looking at a Hungarian text (what a relief it would be if I could learn Hungarian that easily...).
Then this may be off-topic, but I was curious about your statement that "reconstructing a proto-language for Uralic is probably impossible". Hasn't Proto-Uralic already been reconstructed? --AAikio 06:03, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
Well, once again, I shall do that rare thing in online debate, and admit my ignorance (of Uralic linguistics). Sorry. Mk270 10:04, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm afraid that the fact that you can't recognize the words is a rather weak argument. If you speak English, you won't be able to read Sanskrit, even though these two languages are related. If two languages have separated four, five or six thousand years ago, no one will be able to read one of them with the knowledge of the other, even if the linguistic connection can be clearly proven between them. – If you use such reasoning, you won't seem trustworthy as a professional linguist... Adam78 23:21, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

It's not a matter of a naive Englishman with no linguistic training looking at a random Sanskrit passage. Rather, user AA knows the regular sound changes between PU and Hungarian, therefore he should be able to find common words. The fact that FUists can't find many common words, but rather find so many words of clear Slavonic or Turkic origin, testifies to the lexical renovation of Hungarian. CRCulver 23:35, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
> Adam78: As user CRCulver already pointed above, you did not understand my argument at all. I am a professional comparative linguist and do research on etymology, sound correspondences and historical phonology of the Uralic languages (including Hungarian), so I happen to know just about every Uralic etymology proposed in Uralic etymological dictionaries, and the Hungarian words involved. The point is that when I look at a Hungarian text, the proportion of words based on those Hungarian word-roots with an established or even a proposed Uralic etymology is certainly not as high as 80-90%. --AAikio 05:13, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

Can a reference for the claim be found? If not, keep deleted. --Stacey Doljack Borsody 00:10, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Number of speakers

While there may be quite some speakers of Hungarian within those 500,000 people who did not answer to the mother tongue question in the census, I doubt that all of them, or even nearly all, speak Hungarian. (This is just for the record; the formulation "9.5 - 10 million speakers" reflects this more or less properly.) However, the additional 1 to 2 million non-native speakers seem pretty dubious: apart from people who live in the largely Hungarian areas of the neighbouring countries, the number of people learning Hungarian is next to negligible, but most certainly not in the millions. To me, even an estimation of 500,000 non-native speakers would be "worth doublechecking". Has anyone got a good source for this point? KissL (don't forget to vote!) 08:42, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Source: Hungarian people, and the relevant population censuses, wich are in this article, but noone took the job to check them. --195.56.214.152 20:02, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

How exactly do those population censuses show 1 to 2 millions of non-native Hungarian speakers? Also, maybe it's time you read WP:NPA. Afterwards you are welcome to explain what I deleted "again". KissL (don't forget to vote!) 13:12, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

I checked now, and both Hungarian people and the population censuses cited speak about ethnic Hungarians, or sometimes people whose mother tongue is Hungarian. None of them has "speakers of the Hungarian language". I haven't found any source detailing this, but I still hold that there cannot be even nearly as many as a million non-native speakers of Hungarian. Until there is a source, I'll keep removing this. KissL (don't forget to vote!) 11:02, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] HELP! This article has become a mess... :-(

Obviously, it's been recently edited by people who have no idea about how an encyclopaedia article should look like. Could anyone please help clean it up? It just looks miserable now... Adam78 01:05, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 2 words for Red

just for the record, turkish also has 2 words for red: "kırmızı" and "al". Both words can be used to define any red object. Also another word "kızıl" means red but it is not widely used..

[edit] Classification

Are there any scholars that believe Hungarian is a language isolate and that it's words of Finno-Ugric and Turkish origin were borrowed, such as how English borrowed several words from Latin and Greek? Hungarian is classified alongside the Khanty and Mansi languages in the Ugric family. Yet after looking at words that all of the Finno-Ugric languages share I don't see how Hungarian is any closer related to Khanty and Mansi than Finnish. Also, Hungarians, anthropologically are similar to Central Asians, while Finns are similar to Germanic peoples.

Maybe some, but the theory that it belongs to the Finno-Ugric family is the most popular.
The reason for it being most popular is because the linguistic data supports it the most. --Stacey Doljack Borsody 23:46, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
I haven't heard of any scholars that think Hungarian is a language isolate. You might want to check out Mansi language. Also, last I checked, anthropology doesn't have much to do with language. --Stacey Doljack Borsody 23:46, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
Hungarians, anthropologically are similar to Central Asians, - they are not. Especially today, but approximately 1200 years ago, they were anthropologically divided to two groups: 'europid' and 'mongolo-europid', thus certanly not similar to Central Asians (Reference: Szvák - A magyar középkor története {History of the Hungarian Middle Ages}, 2005, Budapest). The linguistic isolation is also false. The Hungarian vocabulary does not contain as many loans as the English one, most words are derivations. You can see the words derived from the verb 'ad', which is of Finno-Ugric origin as an example in the article. This list is not comprehensive: there are more than 200 derivations (!). This number is almost as high as the number of Finno-Ugric word roots. So? --Cserlajos (talk) (contribs) 18:53, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
Still, Hungarian and Finnish similarities are nothing like the similarities between Spanish and Italian or German and Dutch. Look at these 2 sentences "The end of false religion is near".
Väärän uskonnon loppu on lähellä!
Közel a hamis vallás vége!
Not only are the words completely unsimilar but the word order is different too. I've also looked into this Mansi language and it's hardly any more similar than Finnish is. I hear so much about this evidence linking the languages. Where is it?
Your comments are utterly confused. Languages are not classified according to their similarity, and comparing such a random sentence across langauges cannot demonstrate anything. If languages are only distantly related they will most probably not look similar at all. Hungarian is not closely related to Finnish or even to Mansi, and because the relationship is a distant one the languages do not look similar. Likewise, English is distantly related to Russian, but you couldn't see any similarity by comparing such a sentence with its Russian equivalent. Please read Comparative linguistics, Comparative method and Language family for more information on how languages are classified. Also, please sign your comments with four tildes. --AAikio 09:45, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Books for learning Hungarian

What do you think about adding a section with a list of books for learning Hungarian? Foros2000 14:43, 9 March 2007 (UTC)
I created a Bibliography section following the model on the Finnish language#Bibliography page. Foros2000 15:12, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Accusative "-t"

Where does the accusative suffix "-t" come?--88.112.229.248 16:34, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

The accusative case was unmarked until the 9th century. It is thought that the suffix comes from the locative "-t" (Horger: MNy. IX. 348). [The locative case has Finno-Ugric origins.] --Cserlajos (talk) (contribs) 13:11, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Weird

Why is s pronounced /ʃ/ and sz is pronounced /s/. I doubt I'm the first ask this question, it seems somewhat counter-intuitive. When I first saw this in a Hungarian phrasebook I thought maybe there was a misprint in the pronunciation guide. (Keep in mind that I'm only 18 and don't have a Ph.d in Linguistics so please answer in words I can understand. All the esoteric drivel drives me crazy.) Adamv88 04:25, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

You are indeed the first to ask this question, though probably not the first to find the point interesting. The answer is that orthography is not a matter of intuition (children learning to write have initially no gut feelings how to pronounce each letter) but merely a matter of convention. In this particular case, the Hungarian convention has evolved to something different from the English one (as well as most European ones), the reason being (if I remember right) that "SZ" is the match for the "ß" in the orthography of our longtime neighbours the Germans. KissL 09:47, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
By intuition I didn't mean someone being born knowing that. Counter-intuitive was the best word I could find to describe that feeling of seeing a sound that is so often in so many languages(using the Latin alphabet) represented by a certain letter and seeing it being transcribed any other way. I never pondered the semantics of it. (As I said I am by no means an expert in linguistics nor the Hungarian language. Not that I don't have any understanding of linguistics.)Adamv88 21:22, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

This is what I found in Magyar nyelvtörténet (Hungarian Linguistic History, Osiris, Bp. 2003), p. 284–285, about the orthography of the Old Hungarian period of the language (896–1526):

Az sz–z hangpár mindkét tagját leggyakrabban a közös z betű jelöli. (Ez, mint említettük, ófelnémet eredetű sajátosság.)
A két elem közül az sz jelölése bizonyos változatosságot mutat. Leggyakoribb jele a z (...).
Az s–zs pár közös jele az s betű. (E jelölésmód ismét az ófelnémetből ered.) Maga a betű legtöbbször ʃ, azaz „hosszú s” formájában jelenik meg, ez azonban ismét csak paleográfiai változatot jelent, tehát ugyanazt a betűt képviseli.
Az s betű foglalódik le (az európai nyelvek között ma ritka kivételként) az s hang jelölésére (a hazai latinban ugyanis a latin s betűt s hanggal ejtették, olvasták).

In English:

Both members of the sz–z couple of sounds were most often marked by the shared letter z. (This, as we already mentioned, is a property of Old High German origin.)
Out of the two elements, there is some variance in the marking of sz. It is most frequently marked with z (...).
The shared symbol of the s–zs couple is the letter s. (This way of marking comes from Old High German, again.) The letter itself most often appears in the form of ʃ, i.e. „long s”, but it is again nothing but a paleographic variant, so it represents the same letter.
Letter s is reserved (as a rare exception today among European languages) to mark the s sound (because the Latin letter s was pronounced and read with an s sound in the Latin used in Hungary at the time).

Adam78 11:56, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Oldest written Hungarian language?

I saw a documentary on TV recently on which was mentioned an ancient manuscript which I think they described as being the oldest existing example of written Hungarian. It sounded to me like the "Prey" manuscript, but I've searched and can't find any reference to such a thing anywhere, so I must have mispelled/misheard. Apparently the manuscript itself is from c.1190 if memory serves... Any ideas what it could be? Cheers. Miremare 02:25, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Maybe it was this Old_Hungarian_'Lamentations_of_Mary' --Stacey Doljack Borsody 04:02, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

I guess it was the Codex Pray, which includes the first continuous Hungarian linguistic record, Funeral Sermon and Prayer. Adam78 10:13, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Ah, Codex Pray, That's the one! Thanks guys. Miremare 16:39, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The Antiquity and the early Middle Ages

"Thus, they also got in contact with Slavic peoples, and loaned' several words from them, for example tégla, mák, or karácsony." Did Hungarian loan the words to Slavic, or borrow them from Slavic? Given the gist of the article, I would assume the latter, but I am not positive. Can someone please clarify? --SigPig |SEND - OVER 00:15, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Well, borrow is definitely better in this case. --Cserlajos (talk) (contribs) 08:32, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] External links

The external links really need some serious pruning. I scratched the surface but I don't have any time soon to fix this by myself. Anyone willing to help should read up on WP:LINKS and get cracking :) László 16:44, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Example sentence in 'Grammar and Syntax' section

I believe the correct way to emphasize that John sees the apple is this: "John lát egy almát".

In Hungarian: Szerintem a szórend a példa kedvéért erőltetett, én "John lát egy almát" sorrendben írnám. A "lát X egy almát" mondat inkább kérdésben, vagy pl. elbeszélésnél használható ("Utazik a vonaton 3 ember, ..."), egyik esetben sem a "lát" hangsúlyozása a cél. /133.1.48.50 08:12, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Geographic distribution

The links to the Romanian and Slovakian censuses are broken. --Redaktor (talk) 19:05, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Politeness added

I am a native hungarian speaker from Budapest. I was suprised to find the hungarian politeness level system hasn't received any coverage here so far, therefore I just added a section about it (but the text formatting needs a bit of extra work).

This is an important topic, you can sound rude or out of place if you speak without observing these rules, although I must admit the hierarchical addressing system is losing foothold in the last 20 years or so. 91.83.19.112 (talk) 21:54, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Wow! Some jerk already deleted my additions from this article, it took about 2 minutes or so. How the hell do you expect to develop wikipedia with an attitude like that. Funniest thing was he claimed the additions were "non-constructive"? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.83.19.112 (talk) 21:59, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

I am a native speaker too and I'm stunned you're mentioning önözés and magázás as two different forms while ignoring tetszikezés, which is used by literally everyone but keeps being forgotten when Hungarian is described scientifically. I'll add it, its existence is definitely more important than the slight difference between ön and maga for which we use the same grammatical structure anyway.(Mrs Tremond (talk) 00:47, 9 May 2008 (UTC))

Önözés is always polite, but "magázás" is often used to express rudeness. A boss could use it to scold an employee, etc.
Yes, tetszik(ezés) exists, but it is something only a child or teenager would use to address an elderly lady or an aunt. 91.83.18.77 (talk) 18:51, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

It's great that this section has been added, but as a first-time reader of the article I found it very confusing and I'm not sure I learnt very much by reading it other than some politeness system exists.

I think it needs some revision and maybe reformatting to include a table. Things that could be included:

  • Are all of these pronouns or are some of them nouns or compounds? A little explanation or literal translation might be helpful
  • An explanation of the different forms. E.g. are néni and bácsi just equivalent words or do they have other features?
  • a column showing the person/number of the verb used

☸ Moilleadóir ☎ 15:56, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Come on guys. I respect your enthusiasm, but this thing is out of place completely. We're writing an encyclopaedia article here, not a textbook. At present, "polite forms" are expanded in much more detail (2230 chars vs 1168) than phonology, which is the very base a language is built upon. Also setting this part at the same level (main headings) as "Grammar and syntax" or "Word order" is placing too much emphasis on a very VERY particular aspect of Hungarian language. This is by far not important enough to give it so much coverage. Perhaps a "pecualiarities" or "Noteworthy aspects" of Hungarian grammar section could be created (as it already exists under the "Lexicon" heading), and some words added on polite forms, along with a number of much much more interesting phenomena, such as the fact that infinitives can be conjugated (menni - mennem, menned, etc.). Moreover, what is written in the article now is too much. It should be much shorter and more concise. See what the above guy has written: "I'm not sure I learnt very much by reading it". (As a parallel, Italian also uses the disctinction between maga (Lei) and ön (Voi), and even related verb conjugation is different - but there's nothing on the whole stuff in the Italian language article.) (Zigomer trubahin (talk) 16:31, 30 May 2008 (UTC))

[edit] End the sumerian madness!

The article should get rid of all ideas about sumerian, etruscan or siriusian (*) origin of the hungarian language. The hungarian language is of uralic origin, related to the finnish, hanti, mansi and other small ethnic languages found inside Siberia. For a hungarian it is a somewhat maddening experience to listen to a conversation between finnish people. It sounds like hungarian definitely, but you cannot understand anything of it.

The sole reason many hungarians still want to cultivate sumeric, etruscan, hunnish and carthagian research is the search for national grandeuse. In the 19th century the hungarian elite declared they want absolutely no relation to the literally "halzsíros" (fish-fat eating) finnish barbarians, so the finno-ugric language link should be suppressed in academic research. That was possibly the most stupid thing to do, I mean look at the finns today. They have Nokia, they have world-class infotech, they build the largest luxury ocean liner cruise ships at Finnyards, they are starting to rival Sweden.

On the other hand, look at Hungary, what do we have now? Worst economic and fiscal data in the whole EU and a world-famous liar PM, who diligently pushes the country further down the slope. Yet, large many hungarians are still busy trying to find language and genetical links to ancient overseas empires, instead of looking up to the finns and trying to follow them to success. I think this phenomenon is induced by the ubiquitous "Curse of the Turan", which causes the hungarian nation to fail eternally, no matter what we do.

Anyhow, Wikipedia should not become a ship of fools and spread acid ideas made up by lunatics! Finno-ugric origin is the only accepted academic theory and is backed up by hard facts.

(*) There is a running gag in Hungary that says sumerian proponents are actually advocating siriusian origin for the hungarians. 91.83.18.77 (talk) 19:25, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

May I add that many japanese and korean people seriously think hungarians are related to them, either genetically or in language and culture. Similarities include the kinship term system, politeness constructs in the language and the use of pentatonic notation in folk music, etc. There are actually some grassroot organizations in Japan and South Korea who promote this link.
Suprisingly almost nobody seems to be interested in this aspect in Hungary, neither academia nor lunatics, even though we could probably use a little help from the asian tigers, regardless of what the scientific link is, if any ... 8-) Worldly thinking has never been a strongness of hungarian people. 91.83.18.77 (talk) 19:34, 9 May 2008 (UTC)