Talk:Uralic languages/Archive 1

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Archive

Could this page be archived? It is quite huge and most questions are already replied to. --Hippophaë 11:52, 29 Dec 2004 (UTC)

POV changes from "Antifinnougric" user

The anonymous editor calling himself Antifinnougric from IP 217.235.204.95, also the author of the Antifinnougric article (marked for deletion) has made changes to include his criticism in the following edits: [1]

Now anonymous or named? Can't you decide?

He has made or tried to make changes to pages to the Finno-Ugric languages page, to the German version of the same article [2], the Hungarian version of the article hu:Uráli nyelvcsalád and some other pages.


He claims that:

  • Hungarian has no grammatical cases at all.
  • Estonian has no vowel harmony.

The first is simply not true, please refer to Hungarian language, List of grammatical cases.

Thank you for calling my attention for that. Hungarian has no grammatical cases at all. This is true. Hungarian expresses relation with endings, and does not maintain cases. Foreign analysts use to create artificial cases for their understanding, Hungarian itself never. The same is true for Sumerian. Antifinnugor 19:08, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Others of his often used claims are of questionable scientific authority (e.g. AFAIK south Estonian used to have vowel harmony in some dialects [3]) and so far he failed to quote any scientific publications that would support his claims.

Please also refer to Talk:Finno-Ugric languages

we are speaking here about present languages, therefore it is absolutely true, that present time Estonian does not have wovel harmony. Anything other would be wrong information for the reader of the encyclopedy.

I'm no linguist but I'd like to see his changes reviewed by someone with a background in the subject.

Thanks, Nyenyec 17:57, 17 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Even if you are not a linguist, you state on your home page, you are Hungarian, and in this case you should have learned HUngarian grammar. You should not need a linguist for such a trivial thing. A shame for you. Antifinnugor 15:54, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)
As was repeatedly pointed out in the discussion on Talk:Finno-Ugric languages, the claims of 217.235.204.95 (now registered as User:Antifinnugor) are for a large part simply wrong, and in any case not backed up by any reliable sources.
this is simply hostility, Mr Nyenyec, you showed against me many times on many pages, and no argument of any kind. Antifinnugor 19:08, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

As such, they must be considered original research at present. I will pull them out of the article for now. — mark ✎ 16:52, 18 Nov 2004 (UTC)

We must provide true facts to the encyclopedia reader. The cases in Hungarian and the Estonian vowel harmony are simply wrong information. Antifinnugor 19:08, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Cases in Hungarian

To preserve the credibility of the information contained on the Uralic language page, as well as the entire Wikipedia encyclopedia, it should be suggested that individuals only enter information on subjects that they know something about.

More specifically, if one is going to edit information regarding the Hungarian language it would be advised that they not only speak it, but also have a clear understanding of the grammar, rules, and language in general.

The individual in question wrote, “Hungarian has no grammatical cases at all.” The complete lack of any knowledge regarding the Hungarian language is blatantly obvious in this comment. If Hungarian does not have cases (esetek), as this author writes, I would truly like to know how a person speaking Hungarian is able to describe locations or states of being.

The question of whether or not there exists such a thing as the Finno-Ugric language subfamily is quite irrelevant to this discussion. Nor are the similarities between the languages within the group. However, it is obviously clear that Hungarian does have all four of the characteristics (that were previously listed). Hungarian (1) is undoubtably an agglutinating language, (2) there is no question whatsoever that there is vowel harmony, (3) it obviously has no grammatical gender, and (4) grammatical cases are the only way that Hungarians are able to convey locations, states of being, etc. in their language.

The author concludes that since English does not have grammatical gender, the lack of grammatical gender in Uralic languages cannot be a characteristic of the family. There is absolutely no logic in that conclusion!****** That is just like saying “Blueberries lack the color orange. Therefore the lack of orange color in apples cannot be a characteristic common to all apples.” WHAT?! By the way, presence of or lack of grammatical gender does not imply relationship. Look at English and German. They are related, but English has no gender, and German has three genders.

There will always be opposing viewpoints on the origins of language, and how they are related to one another. This author is completely entitled to hold his or her own belief on the existence (or lack of) of the Finno-Ugric language group. The relationships between different languages can vary for many different reasons, which is part of the reason why languages are so difficult to classify.

However, making completely false comments about a language leads visitors of Wikipedia to learn inaccurate information, and then share this false information with others. From many sources they hear that Hungarian probably has the most cases of any language (absolutely true). Then they hear the COMPLETE opposite on Wikipedia that Hungarian has no grammatical cases (absolutely false).

The point is that Hungarian clearly has grammatical cases. Take the word“lake” for example. In Hungarian, the word “lake” is tó. The only way to describe the lake in relation to other things or vice-versa is to alter the noun. In English, prepositions are added. These are separate words that come before the noun to indicate the state of the noun. To describe something relating to the lake, you would add a few words before the word “lake”. However, in Hungarian the word changes.

  • English: (in [the] lake), Hungarian (tóban)
  • English: (into [the] lake), Hungarian (tóba)
  • English: (by [the] lake), Hungarian (tónál)
  • English: (about [the] lake), Hungarian (tóról)
  • English: (on [the] lake), Hungarian (tavon)

Also note that when the case changes the noun, vowel harmony is present (common throughout the language). (in the lake = tóban) while (in the garden = kertben)

Answer me this: What does the author call these, if they aren’t cases? Possibly, he might call them “agglutinated inflected postpositions.” Then again, that’s what a case is. Rather than adding SEPARATE words to describe the state of a noun like in English, cases change the noun in some way or another. Whether it is the addition of an agglutinated suffix like tóban, or a complete change in the spelling of the noun like tavon. If “in the lake” was written “tó ban”, it could be argued that, yes, Hungarian doesn’t have cases, but the mere fact that it is one word proves that Hungarian does use grammatical cases. Furthermore, this is shown without even a shred of doubt in the situations like tavon where the entire word changes.

An example of a more common case in other languages is the accusative case.“Ball” in English is “labda” in Hungarian. When an action is being done to the ball (I kicked the ball), the word “ball” stays the same again. However, in Hungarian it would become (megrugtam a labdát). The word labda actually changed to labdát. In Hungarian, “a” is considered a separate letter from “á” which furthers the point that the word undergoes a change.

An even better example of complete word alteration is the famous Hungarian wine “Bull’s Blood of Eger”. In English, even though the wine is definitely from somewhere, the city name Eger remains the the same. In Hungarian, “Bull’s Blood of Eger” is “Egri Bikavér”, even though Eger is the name of the city in Hungarian. When a Hungarian says the name of the city, they say “Eger”, but when they describe something that is from Eger, they would say “Egri …

I have just given indisputable proof of the existence of the grammatical case in the Hungarian language. I would like for the author of the aforementioned statement to somehow prove that Hungarian does not use cases.

Furthermore, I learned Hungarian as a native language, so the information I gave is not an assumption or a theory. It is fact.

I have found a website that explains the cases in Hungarian, Finnish, and English. http://users.cwnet.com/millenia/nouncase.htm It shows the entire declension of a noun in each language if the case exists in that language. Interestingly, for the examples in Finnish and Estonian, the declension of the noun usually results in the agglutination of a suffix to the word. I am not saying this is a case in all, or even most of the language, but all three languages (including Hungarian) haves declension (otherwise known as cases).

Final note: I hold nothing against the author as a person and I do not imply any aggression towards him by writing this. However, I hope in the future that he takes the time to learn about something before altering its Wikipedia page, and that he does not assume that “point of view” = fact.

Sincerely, a Hungarian speaker

Hungarian grammar never speaks about cases in Hungarian. Cases are used by foreign linguists for they own understanding, like. e.g. Collinder. Cases are not part of Hungarian Grammar. Read any Hungarian grammar book, it will enlighten you. Antifinnugor 20:48, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Are you saying "this terminology is wrong" or "what you are describing doesn't actually exist?". Whether a language has cases is independent of the terminology some people choose to use to describe that language. You don't cite these grammars, of course, and I expect the next time I consult a Hungarian grammar it will describe Hungarian's rich case system, no doubt using the word "esetek" the way you describe legal cases in Hungary too. Your argument seems to be "the truth of whether Hungarian has cases depends on who is making that claim", which is false. Mk270 10:40, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I am saying both."this terminology is wrong" or "what you are describing doesn't actually exist". Hungarian never used and does not use this terminology. We understand, what cases mean, but we do not use them. Collinder created for his own joy cases for Hungarian, you can look at them, but they would not help you at all, if you want to learn Hungarian, the opposite- they would make your life unnecessarily hard, and give you nothing for that disadvantage. Antifinnugor 20:38, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Antifinnugor may not agree that Hungarian has cases, but the English Wikipedia states otherwise. I quickly found other Hungarian sources (if you don't believe "foreign analysts") in Hungarian:

THis cleraly shows at the end, that cases are only for alien linguists. Antifinnugor 06:58, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

    • This references the grammar book: HungaroLingua Gyakorlati magyar nyelvtan; Új magyar nyelvtan (Which I didn't check, but it should have a description of cases, too).

Surely not. Antifinnugor 20:38, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

  • Also, cases in Hungarian are mentioned in the Pallas Encyclopedia written at the end of the 19th century. (look for keyword "Eset").

As I told you, we must understand, what cases are, if we learn foreign languages. That's why Pallas takes the time and place, and explains them for the Hungarian reader. 20:38, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Quoting from the cited Pallas article Eset:
A magyarban s a rokon nyelvekben nincs külön vocativus, de van e helyett sok más, szorosabb értelmü eset
which translates roughly to: "Hungarian and related languages have no vocativus, but instead of that they have numerous other, more strictly used cases" – this sentence clearly states, that Hungarian has cases. It follows that your claim that the article describes cases only to let Hungarians understand this notion in foreign languages is clearly wrong. Please stop saying that Hungarian has no cases. You may call them as you like (endings, agglutination, whatever), but that doesn't change the fact of their existence in Hungarian. --Dhanak 21:04, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Maybe you use the term in a different way, but cases (esetek) are present in Hungarian and the literature (not only foreign analysts) describes them as such. Nyenyec 21:27, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

yes, the word is present in Hungarian, since we must understand foreign languages, nobody denies that. The point is, that Hungarian grammar does not use cases at all. Antifinnugor 20:38, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)
The links I mentioned above seem to contradict this. There is an ongoing discussion about this in Hungarian language, maybe this could be clarified there first. Again, I'm not a linguist but I do speak Hungarian and the Hungarian sources I mentioned talk about cases in the Hungarian language. Nyenyec 22:58, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)
No, they do not contradict. Hungarian grammar speaks about endings, "indoeuropean" grammar speaks about cases. Cases are not part of the Hungarian grammar. Antifinnugor 09:39, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Copied from above:

this is simply hostility, Mr Nyenyec, you showed against me many times on many pages, and no argument of any kind. Antifinnugor 19:08, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I try not to be hostile and I don't revert or change your edits in the English or German WP as I promised before. But you have a very unique view of the world about linguistics, and sometimes claim things which in my opinion are simply not correct,

if in your opinion any of them is not correct, please argue, and explain , why Antifinnugor 09:39, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

or at least contradict other articles in the Wikipedia or other works on the subject.

As you know, the Earth is a tray, and the Sun is moving around. :-) Antifinnugor 09:39, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

In these cases I'd like to see that someone with the proper background verifies or corrects your statements.

Peace, Nyenyec 21:27, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

If you speak Hungarian, why don't you take and read the simplest Hungarian grammar book for Hungarians? Antifinnugor 09:39, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)


List of cases in Hungarian

Quick translation from the Hungarian page: hu:Esetek a magyar nyelvben. It references the books Gyakorlati magyar nyelvtan (Practical Hungarian Grammar) and Új magyar nyelvtan (New Hungarian Grammar). I can't check the books personally, since I'm not in Hungary right now, although it would save a lot of time.

  1. nominativus: tó lake
  2. accusativus: tavat lake (accusative)
  3. dativus: tónak to (the) lake
  4. instrumentalis-comitativus: tóval with (the) lake
  5. causalis-finalis: tóért for (the) lake
  6. translativus(-factivus): tóvá into (a) lake (as in "change into a lake")
  7. inessivus: tóban in (the) lake
  8. superessivus: tavon on (the) lake
  9. adessivus: tónál at (the) lake
  10. illativus: tóba into (the) lake
  11. sublativus: tóra onto (the) lake
  12. allativus: tóhoz to (the) lake
  13. elativus: tóból from within the lake
  14. delativus: tóról from on top of the lake
  15. ablativus: tótól away from the lake
  16. terminativus: tóig up to the lake (As in "we go up to the point where the lake is but no further")
  17. essivus-formalis: tóként (as a lake) (As in "we treat it as a lake")
  18. essivus-modalis: tóul (like a lake) (As in "it behaves like a lake")

Further cases:

  1. genitivus: tónak (a …je) – same as dativus
  2. distributivus: tavanként for each lake
  3. distributivus-temporalis: naponta every day (nap = day)
  4. formalis: emberképpen as a man (ember = man)
  5. sociativus: ruhástul with clothes on (ruha = cloth)
  6. locativus: Pécsett in Pécs (Pécs is a city)
  7. temporalis: órakor at ... o'clock (óra = hour)
  8. (modalis-essivus: világosan, hárman, sokan) – clearly (világos = clear), three (as in "three of us came", three = három), many (as in "many of us came", sok = many)
  9. (multiplicativus: ötször) – five times (öt = five)

Hope this helps. Nyenyec 21:44, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

reverting

Someone from the

Vanderbilt University 
Address:    ITS
Address:    143 Hill Center
Address:    PD Box 34
City:       Nashville

Very likely Mr. David Hanak. Simply reverted the page without arguing. Please don't behave like that. The information in the features needs refinement to be correct. Thanks, Antifinnugor 22:48, 19 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I do not deny that I reverted the article, nor did I wish to conceal my identity. My reasons were manyfold. First, the removed content contained very much debated claims (such as Hungarian has no cases – so far only Antifinnugor has this claim), and its style and formulation did not match the requirements of Wikipedia. Two, it was him/her who repeatedly put these claims back in the article, although the debate here had been far from finished and he had not (yet) succeeded in convincing the editors that this content should be there. I will, however, refrain from repeating it, because I wouldn't like to start an(other) edit war. --David Hanak

The whole section Antifinnougor added ranges from false ("There is no common basic vocabulary in these languages") to utterly irrelevant ("Palatalization is also present in English or Russian"). It has no place here. - Mustafaa 21:48, 20 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Mustafaa: since there is NO COMMON VOCABULARY, this must be said.

If you think, there is one, please enumerate the common words in the whole group. Palatalization is in the typology, please read it again, thanks --af

Typology problems

My problems with Antifinnugor's latest additions (Antifinnugor's addititons in italics, my comments right below):

  • a lack of grammatical gender
    • Like English
      • It is irrelevant whether English has or doesn't have grammatical gender. It is still a common feature of this language group.
  • no separate possessive pronouns
    • Hungarian has separate possessive pronouns (enyém, tied, ...)
      • The word enyém means mine, tiéd is yours. IIUC, however, posessive pronouns are my, your, etc., which truly don't exist in Hungarian, we use the regular pronoun and agglutinate the object of posession instead. (I don't know about the other languages in the group, would someone enlighten me?)

Therefore I suggest these additions to be removed.

--Dhanak 22:37, 22 Nov 2004 (UTC)

We say in Hungarian: Az en kabatom, not simply kabatom, therefore en is a separate possesive pronom in this case. It has double role.

Antifinnugor 20:50, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

However, „en” is not a separate posessive pronoun, since it is the regular pronoun used also for other purposes. Maybe the problem is that the word „separate” is ambiguous here, whether it means a pronoun standing by itself, separated from other words, or a dedicated pronoun for expressing posession. In the former sense, Hungarian does have separate posessive pronouns, in the latter sense, it does not. --Dhanak 21:22, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

We also say az en kabatom, if we emphasize, that it is OUR coat. Antifinnugor 06:58, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Besides that this is also common in all agglutinating languages: no separate possesive pronom, since the noun itselv shows the possesion. No need for that. Antifinnugor 06:58, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

An addition: you say az én kabátom only when you want to emphasize that the coat (kabát) belongs to me, as opposed to someone else. On the other hand, when the purpose of the sentence is to state something about the coat itself, we only say a kabátom piszkos (my coat is dirty), without any separate pronouns. --Dhanak 21:56, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

that's correct. Antifinnugor 06:58, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Antifinnugor's deletions

Honestly, I find it simply outrageous that Antifinnugor, while s/he calls it unacceptable when someone removes one or two debated sentences and rephrases others added by him/her, deletes an entire section of the page without discussing it here and coming to an agreement with other editors first. He also added an external link to Dr. Marácz's article a second time, so now it appears twice on the page. I cannot accept this kind of behavior, and the only reasons I'm not reverting this modification immediately are that (1) I want to avoid edit wars at all cost, and no doubt s/he would put the changes back soon enough, (2) I'm desperately trying to avoid accusations of deletionism. --Dhanak 21:34, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

You, who simply deleted anonymously, from ther Vanderbilt University my page without argumentation, have, of course the right to cry like that. Antifinnugor 06:58, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)
See below the reason. Antifinnugor 06:46, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The reasons of my previous (and so far only) revert are readable above, in the section titled reverting, but for the sake of clarity, I repeat them here, unmodified. (At that time, I was still unregistered.) --Dhanak 16:21, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I do not deny that I reverted the article, nor did I wish to conceal my identity. My reasons were manyfold. First, the removed content contained very much debated claims (such as Hungarian has no cases – so far only Antifinnugor has this claim), and its style and formulation did not match the requirements of Wikipedia. Two, it was him/her who repeatedly put these claims back in the article, although the debate here had been far from finished and he had not (yet) succeeded in convincing the editors that this content should be there. I will, however, refrain from repeating it, because I wouldn't like to start an(other) edit war. --David Hanak

Let me also point out, that the current version of the article contains debate-like sentences, which obviously should not be there. Again, I do not remove them lest Antifinnugor accuse me of deleting parts of „his page” (which of course he has no right whatsoever to claim ownership of). --Dhanak 16:21, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

typology

  • extensive use of independent suffixes, a.k.a. agglutination

OK, Also there in all agglutinating languages

  • a large set of grammatical cases (13 - 14 cases on average)

Not true for Hungarian

  • unique Uralic case system, which the case system of all modern Uralic languages are derived from

o nominative singular has no case suffix (a feature also found in languages such as German) o three-way distinction in the local case system

NOT True for Hungarian

Modern makes no sense. Modern means not keeping traditions? All features not present in Hungarian

  • vowel harmony (recently lost in standard Estonian, but exists in dialects. Also exists in Turkish)
  • a lack of grammatical gender (a feature found in many languages around the world, including English)
  • negative verb, which exists in all Uralic languages, e.g. Nganasan, Enets, Nenets, Kamassian, Komi, Meadow Mari, North Sami (and other Samic languages), Finnish, Estonian, Karelian, etc. (Some innovative languages have lost personal suffixes, e.g. Hungarian.)

Not in Hungarian Word innovative wrong

  • palatalization (a widespread feature worldwide, notably common in the neighboring Slavic languages)

Irrelevant

  • basic vocabulary, including body parts (e.g. eye, heart, head, foot, mouth), family members (e.g. father, mother-in-law), animals (e.g. viper, partridge, fish), nature objects (e.g. tree, stone, nest, water), basic verbs (e.g. live, fall, run, suck, go, die, swim, know), basic pronouns (e.g. who, what, we, you, I), numerals (e.g. two, five)

Very few common words, also these not common in all languages

  • possessive suffixes

In all agglutinating languages

  • no separate possessive pronouns

In all agglutinating languages

  • dual, which exists e.g. in Samoyedic, Ob Ugrian and Samic languages, although not in Hungarian.
  • plural markers -j (i) and -t have the same origin (e.g. in Finnish, Estonian, Erzya, Samic languages, Samoyedic languages). Hungarian, however, has -i and -k. In the old orthographies, the plural marker -k was also used in the Samic languages.

Different suffixes, no common feature

  • no verb "have"

Not true for Hungarian

Therefore this list is full of not common features and confusing. The only really common feature is still agglutination, that is common in all agglutinating languages, like Turlish, Persian, Armenuan, Sumerian, Basque, Etruscian, etc... Antifinnugor 06:46, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Typology debate

I think the root of the problem is that Antifinnugor tries to attack the theory about the uralic languages so desperately that he gets even more radical than the linguists he quotes (and also makes a lot of mistakes in the attempt).

Even Marácz does not deny these common characteristics.

Neither do I. I doubt,(and lot of others), that this artificial, mini group exists. Ther are agglutinating languages, and these little group has nothing special, Do you understand now? Antifinnugor 09:18, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

What he claims is that, although they exist, they don't serve as evidence for the grouping of Hungarian with Finnish and Estonian.

I claim, that only agglutination is the common feature. Besides of that Hungarian has so different dictionary to Finnish, that they are in fact very far, however they are relatives, but not in this artificial context. Do you understand?. Antifinnugor

Here's what I suggest. Leave the list of common characteristics as it is accepted by the majority of linguists. The views and criticism of Marácz and Marcantonio could be listed separately as an alternative/minority viewpoint, either here or on a separate page.

Antifinnugor, please, if you claim something like Hungarian not having any cases,

This is in every Hungarian grammar book. You speak Hungarian, dont you? Why not read one finally? Antifinnugor 09:18, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Hungarian using a possessive pronoun,

Every other agglutinating language uses possessing suffixes, Turkish, etc. Understood? Antifinnugor 09:18, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)
Not true - Basque (which Antifinnugor uses as an example of an agglutinating language elsewhere, doesn't; nor do Japanese, Korean or Swahili (or any other Bantu language, I think, though I'd have to check that).Hedgehog 12:21, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I can't speak of Basque or the Bantu languages but Japanese has the possessive suffix の (no), and Korean has the possessive suffix 의 (eui). These languages are not always classified as agglutinative anyway. Unlike Basque, Hungarian, and Finnish, they are rarely introduced as such to language learners. — Hippietrail 12:55, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)
の is a particle or postposition not a suffix and though it does indicate possession, it does not do so in the manner of the possessive suffixes referred to above - you need to state the possessor explicitly with の, even if it is a pronoun. I think the same applies to Korean, though I can't say for certain without checking. It is not particularly relevant whether the Bantu languages, Japanese and Korean are often introduced as agglutinative languages to learners (how often are people learning a language told it's isolated/agglutinative/inflecting/polysynthetic, anyway?); they are reasonably common illustrations of agglutinative languages in basic linguistic textbooks, and even if they weren't, they indubitably are agglutinative; I don't think anyone with a reasonable knowledge of any of them and of the meaning of the classification would argue with that.Hedgehog 13:50, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I think we could benefit from you showing how a postposition/particle differs from a suffix in this case. You need to demonstrate that alternative analyses do not apply. I have seen の called a suffix almost as commonly as it's called a particle or postposition. Especially in light of one of our "Hungarian separatist" contributors trying to prove that Hungarian doesn't have cases based on some analysis whereby he deemed the case endings to be some kind of suffixes or particles or whatever.
Then again, east asian languages seem to have a different basis for pronouns than most languages. They behave much more like nouns. This fact could be dominant in Japanese not behaving the same way as regards possessive pronouns.
I believe it is very relevant how learners are shown a language's classification. It shows how the layman - the non-linguist views the language's characteristics. I have yet to see a textbook on Basque, Turkish, Mongolian, Finnish, Swahili, or Hungarian that does not introduce the language as being agglutinating. This is because it is a primary trait of these languages and one which speakers of western European languages are less likely to be familiar. Although I read in linguistics contexts regularly that Japanese and Korean are also agglutinative, I have never seen a textbook make this claim. Indeed I have never seen any illustration or example of how these languages agglutinate, as I have seen for most of the other languages I've mentioned.
The relevance lies in how closely to a "model" agglutinative language each is. That non-linguistic yet technical books do not describe the languages as agglutinative shows that they are less like ones that similar books do describe this way. The fact that they are less similar helps us determine how much weight to apply when comparisons are made. — Hippietrail 14:26, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

etc, please, please, please cite your sources. Please be specific, name your references and even better, quote them here. This would save time for everyone, including you. I checked the article by Marácz and he claims no such things.

I think it's also useful to read the Verifiablity page:

Sources should be unimpeachable relative to the claims made; outlandish claims beg strong sources.

Thanks, Nyenyec 18:03, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Possessive pronouns

I noticed above an argument about whether Hungarian has possessive pronouns. To quote:

User:Antifinnugor says "Hungarian has separate possessive pronouns (enyém, tied, ...)"
Dhanak responds "The word enyém means mine, tiéd is yours. [If I recall correctly], however, posessive pronouns are my, your, etc., which truly don't exist in Hungarian, we use the regular pronoun and agglutinate the object of posession instead. (I don't know about the other languages in the group, would someone enlighten me?)

Well, according to the article on possessive pronouns, mine and yours are independent possessive pronouns, while my and your are determinative possessive pronouns.

Question: in the Typology section of the article, is it correct to say that Uralic languages have no possessive pronouns of either type? Or do you mean simply that Uralic languages don't have independent possessive pronouns?

Dbenbenn 22:23, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC) (who doesn't know anything about linguistics, and is just passing through)

Dbenbenn, thanks for the clarification. Naturally I withdraw my objection. --Dhanak 23:16, 26 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I removed the word "separate" in front of the term "possessive pronoun". In the Uralic languages, possession is expressed with the genitive of the personal pronouns. This means there are no separate possessive pronouns like in German (nom. mein, acc. meinen, dat. meinem, gen. meines) or Russian (nom. мой, gen. моего, acc. мой/моего, dat. моему, instr. моим, prep. моём). If there are possessive pronouns in Hungarian, please tell me which they are and how they are declined. --Hippophaë 11:32, 27 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Maybe I misunderstand something, since I'm not a linguist. But in Hungarian the (for the lack of a better word) possessive pronoun enyém (mine) is declined. Thus nom. enyém, acc. enyémet, dat. enyémnek, gen. enyémé, etc. However, enyém, tiéd (yours), etc. are independent possessive pronouns, unlike mein in german. Hungarian lacks determinative possessive pronouns, as discussed above, we say az én kutyám (the I dog-my) or simply a kutyám (the dog-my). Hippophaë, what do you think? --Dhanak 20:37, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

In Hungarian there are only independent possessive pronouns like "mine, yours" etc., and in the book A Practical Hungarian Grammar (ISBN 9634720374) they are simply called possessive pronouns (p. 90). They are used in the predicate, just like in English. To express possession Hungarian basically uses possessive suffixes (p. 71-72): ház house, házam my house; Pista háza Steve's house. Note that they always occur at the end of the possessed noun (not at the possessor, like in most other languages). These three phrases can all be declined, just like "with/to/from etc. my/Steve's house". There are no determinative possessive pronouns like "my, your" etc. in Hungarian. The possessor can, however, be emphasized in two ways: (1) if it's a personal pronoun like "I, you" etc., with the normal personal pronouns, (2) if it's any noun like "Steve, table" etc., with adding the dative suffix to it. So "my house" can be translated either as házam, or as az én házam (én is "I", in the nominative, az is "the"). "Steve's house" can be either Pista háza with Pista in the nominative again, or Pistának a háza with Pista in the dative case (a is "the" again). The suffixes marked in bold are in themselves enough to mark the relationship of possession. – Ask me if there is anything else unclear. --Adam78 22:29, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Hippo, please stop your terror

Hippo, please do not delete: - Mr. Maracz link - Finnish-Hungarian ground word list - The text of the critic. It is short, but true.

What you do is blind terror. Are you really that primitive, and without arguing, you just eliminate others work;

ín is not vein in Hungarian.ín is leader/sinew/tendon in English, but not vein. Please stop including erroneous words. Or correct the English word and the others also. Your list is simply wrong.

Please argue, your deleting terrorism is senseless. Obvoiusly you will continue this forever- let's see, who has more patience, the terrorist hippo, or the rest of the world.

The finish Hungarian word list is not specific finish words with this or that origin, but fundamental words, that are contained in every language. Please do not delete them, they illustrate both languages elementar, original words.

Antifinnugor 11:19, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Has Godwin's Law ever been updated to refer to terrorism yet? If not, it should be. - Mustafaa 20:07, 28 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Antifinnugor, I appreciate your cooperation, but please do not write on subjects which you are not familiar with.

Hippo, you think, you are god, and you can decide, who is familiar with what subject and who is not?

If you have questions or want to discuss the topic, use the talk page instead of adding comments and questions in the article.

Hippo, yes, please do that.

You should also notice that the reader of an encyclopaedia is not interested in the personal opinions of the authors. --Hippophaë 20:42, 29 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Hippo The user is especially not interested in your god-like cockyness, but is interested in real facts. Your wrong typology and even worse erroneous word lists just propagate your lack of knowledge of the subject. Sorry to say that, but someone must tell you the truth.
Hippo, please stop your terror and primitive rowdyness. 20:44, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)

-i for plural in Hungarian

First I corrected the page where it said Hungarian, however has -i and -k to denote plural, by removing the -i. Then (thanks to Nyenyec for pointing it out) I realized that -i is indeed used for plural, more specifically as the plural form of the possessive declination. I.e., kutyája = his dog, kutyái = his dogs, even though it is at the end of the word only in third person, i.e., kutyám = my dog, kutyáim = my dogs, etc. Sorry for the confusion. --Dhanak 22:32, 1 Dec 2004 (UTC)


Hippo, do you shame Finnish language?

Hippo, whenever I put the list of some simple ground words onto the page, you delete. Do sou shame the Finnish language, your mother tongue? By parroting about my "incompetence" and other personal insults again me you only reveal your simple mindedness and ill behaviour. Antifinnugor 15:56, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I deleted a couple of words from your list, just because they were not correct or were futile as ground words (didn't check the page history to see whether this is the thing you moan about). Deleted words: sairaanhoituja [sic, sairaanhoitaja] = nurse; metsikkö as it's derived from the ground word metsä; puhekykky [sic, puhekyky] = ability to speak, not language no matter how one looks at it; meri = sea, from lake; ajotie as it's derived from the groud word tie. --Twaijn 10:55, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Thanks for the hint. Why did not you simply correct them? Antifinnugor 09:25, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)
As they were not correct 1:1 translations? Shouldn't you add the Hungarian word for e.g. nurse (sister), driving lane (ajotie) etc then too, if you plan to keep them in the list for Finnish? I suggest you remove the unnecessary words, which I had originally deleted from the list (I'm not bothering to do it myself again, since you probably will revert the change just because they're in some book of yours). They are of not the primitives (ground words) you seek. --Twaijn 11:54, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)
And furthermore, I think you should leave the Finnish words altogether untouched after fixes by native speakers. There is not much sense in just putting words from a dictionary (not English-Finnish, I hope) you're not absolutely sure of their meaning. --Twaijn 12:02, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Here some of the ground words in Finnish and Hungarian.

English Finnish Hungarian English Finnish Hungarian
father isä apa, atya mother äiti anya
brother veli fivér sister sisar,sairaanhoitaja nõvér
leg jalka, jalan láb fire tuli tûz
earth maa, multa föld forest metsikkö, metsä erdõ
lake järvi, meri tó sea meri tenger
way tie, ajotie út path kuja, polku ösvény
god jumala isten luck onni szerencse
border raja határ grass ruoho tenger
family perhe család child lapsi gyerek
tooth hammas fog nose nenä orr
language puhekyky, kieli nyelv milk maito tej

This is a random selection, not justified by any argument. If you want the reader to compare real words from a widely used wordlist, you can always copy the Swadesh list section of the Finno-Ugric article. - Mustafaa 01:32, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

These are absolutely not random words, but are from a language book, simple ground words, family, parts of the body, their environment. You may present ground words also, and we may add them to the collection. Antifinnugor 08:54, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

This list makes no sense here and it contains several errors:

This list is absolutely necessary here to illustrate the (un)similarity of Finnish and Hungarian using ground words. Never heard about linguistic and grammar/dictionary comparison?
  • õ and û do not belong to the correct Hungarian orthography
They are very often used in this form. Finnish does not have 14 Hungarian characters (one of the big unsimilarities), among others no ő and ű, other notation õ and û. Probaly that's why you dont know them.
  • isa, puhekykky, sairaanhoituja, and nemä are not Finnish words at all
Thanks, now I corrected them
  • the list contains Germanic and Baltic loan words, e.g. hammas, äiti, meri etc.; one should use original Finnish words instead
They are in my dictionary. You are free to correct the list to correct, present day Finnish. However, only nominative forms, please, do not cheat with non-nominative forms, like in case of kaksi, etc...
  • some words are already in the other list on the same page, there is no need to repeat them
Well, they are ground words. You are free to exclude them, but please do not delete the whole list.
  • Finnish and Hungarian are not the only Finno-Ugric languages; the table should also include Estonian, North Sami, Erzya, Meadow Mari, and Komi at least.
You are free to add them, if you know any. The list just illustrates the "similarity" of Finnish and Hungarian first. This is more than enough. I never told, the others have similar words, I know, they don't have, which disproves your dogma even stronger. Please feel free, add the similar ones, if any. Antifinnugor 09:14, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Never mind that while you keep pulling Finnish and Estonian as an example, they are regarded as our farthest relatives… It’s easy to “prove” difference if you make examples of far relatives. You noted on the PNA page that Khanti and Manysi are “far relatives” or something — you do realise that according to the Uralic categorisation they are the closest ones, don’t you? -- Ralesk 21:34, 26 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Hippo, never heard of language comparison?

  • Wikipedia is not a dictionary, use Wiktionary instead
You may use wiktionary for any purpose, you like. In this case we are doing linguistic comparison, and word comparison is a tool for that, besides grammar comparison. You never heard about this? Antifinnugor 09:25, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC) 09:08, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

--Hippophaë 21:27, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

About "have" in Hungarian

AFU repeatedly claims that Hungarian has a word for "have". For those not speaking Hungarian, I'd like to clarify things a bit. To some extent, he is right. Hungarian does have a word bír, as in nem bír jelentőséggel (bears no significance) but its use in this sense (bír "primarily" means can, is able to) is very-very limited. A Hungarian native speaker would never say something like *Pista kutyával bír to say Steve has a dog. In fact, right now I can't think of any other meaningful use of bír than the previous example. One can also say rendelkezik (to have control over, to possess) as in nagy vagyonnal rendelkezik for has control over a great wealth, but it is a formal expression, saying Pista kutyával rendelkezik sounds pretty awkward (just like its English equivalent: Steve possesses a dog). I'm sure (would someone confirm?) that Hungarian is not alone in this, and Finnish, too, has similar words to express possession in such rare cases.

To sum up, Hungarian has no real equivalent of "have", which could be used nearly as often and with as much ease as in English.

--Dhanak 16:51, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)

AF, even Marácz admits that the lack of "have" is common in Finnish and Hungarian:
Both languages express possession with the use of copulative verb instead of the “habeo” structure. [...] The lack of genitive and a possessive structure in Finnish is mutual in the Magyar and in Finnish languages...
Check your facts, Quote sources.
Nyenyec 17:05, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Hungarian, like other agglutinating languages does not need to use the word "have", because it uses possesive endings, (that is again superflously cited in the typology) but it does have the word, as Dhanak correctly cites (bír, rendelkezik). That must be pointed out. The allegiation on the fu/uralic pages, it does not have such a word, is simply incorrect. Antifinnugor 09:21, 4 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Bír and rendelkezik do not mean what is understood by the verb "have". All Uralic languages have verbs with the meaning "own" or "possess", but they are not synonyms to "have" nor are they used instead of it. Examples:

Hungarian: bír
Finnish: omistaa; omata
Estonian: omastada; omada
North Sami: oamastit; atnit

--Hippophaë 15:49, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Hippo, you are wrong again. Bír and rendelkezik is the exact analogous word for have, own, possess. What meaning of 'have' are you talking about here (if any at all?) ? Antifinnugor 17:39, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Just for clarification, the "lack" of a verb "to have", or rather the (either preferential or obligatory) use of an alternative syntactic structure — even if technically a verb meaning "to possess" may also exist — is quite common in the world's languages, although someone acquainted only with western European languages may not suspect as much. Two examples are Russian and Japanese. In Russian, "I have a dog" is "U menâ sobaka" (У меня собака), literally "by me dog"; in Japanese, "I have a dog" is "Watashi-wa inu-ga arimasu", literally "me-TOPIC dog-SUBJECT exist-PRESENT". By the way, the lack of a verb "to have" has absolutely nothing to do with agglutinativity. And, by and large, agglutinativity is just a syntactic technique that adds discrete suffixes to morphemes, as opposed to non-discrete multi-functional suffixes (as in inflectional languages), or to separate morphological words (as in isolating languages). As such, agglutinativity does not entail or predict any other syntactic facts about a language, and most certainly it does not, alone, predict a genetic relationship either (Linguistics 101). Pasquale 19:16, 7 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Slavic languages and Japanese, whose structures are often quite similar to Hungarian do not have "have" verb, as "I have a dog". Hungarian, has, in opposite to Finnish, which does not have this verb, "van egy kutyám" but seldom uses it. Antifinnugor 08:54, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)
The statement that Slavic languages do not have a "have" verb is wrong. Russian "imet'" means 'to have', although it is seldomly used. --DbT80.126.39.11 09:58, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)
There is a group of turanian or Sumerian/Hungarian agglutinating languages, like Persian, the Turkish family, Hungarian, Estonian, Finnish, Lappish, the Uralian ones that share similar characteristic. I list those on the Critic_of_Finno_Ugric_and_Uralic_language_Groups. Please read that page. I am generally not talking about suffix/prefix usage, but about the Sumerian/Hungarian type languages, that all share several features, I list there. Antifinnugor 08:54, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Even a loony who confuses linguistics with garbage should know that Persian is an Indo-European language. Pasquale 21:29, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I added Dhanak's and Pasquale's comments on the "have" issue to the article. I wrote

Note that all Uralic languages have verbs with the meaning "own" or "possess", but these words are not used in the same way as English "have". Instead, the concept of "have" is indicated with alternative syntatic structures.

The "alternative syntatic structures" bit is weasley, and should be made more precise, by someone who knows. Also, examples in the article might be nice. --Dbenbenn 22:23, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Examples

Examples on how the verb "have" is expressed in Uralic languages. The example sentence means

  • I have a dog.

Finnish

  • Minulla on koira. At/by/on me (there) is a dog.

Minä 'I' + adessive, olla 'to be' (present 3rd person), koira 'dog' (nominative).

Estonian

  • Mul on koer. At/on/by me (there) is a dog.

Ma 'I' + adessive, olla 'to be' (present 3rd person), koer 'dog' (nominative).

North Sami

  • Mus lea beana. In me (there) is a dog.

Mun 'I' + locative, leat 'to be' (present 3rd person), beana 'dog' (nominative).

--Hippophaë 01:40, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I have a dog= Van egy kutyám =van= I have, a= egy, kutyám= my dog.
Therefore your whole reasoning is invalid for Hungarian. Hungarian does have have=van, but uses it much more seldom, than non-agglutinating languages. Finnish is like Russian and slawic languages in this case (also in the case of the missing articles), it does NOT have such a verb. Please correct the main page, without removing the link to the critic page. Thank you. Antifinnugor 12:28, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)
The statement that Slavic languages do not have a "have" verb is wrong. Russian imet' means 'to have', although it is seldomly used. --DbT 09:58, 13 Dec 2004 (UTC)
In Hungarian "van" means "(there) is". "Van egy kutya a tónál." = "There is a dog by the lake." Nyenyec 15:55, 14 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Hippo, do not revert

Hippo, if possible, please do not demonstrate your primitivness and wildness, and unability to think by reverting again. Especially leave the reference in to the critic of these groups. Then we can avoiding your primitive reverting orgias in the future. Thanks. Antifinnugor 08:46, 12 Dec 2004 (UTC)

I'm not sure what a "primitive reverting orgia" is, but it sounds like fun.

The other word for that is senseless vandalismus. Is it really so much fun? Antifinnugor 20:10, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Tables

Both the finnougric and the uralic page contain wrong word tables.

  English    Finnish   Hungarian
  vein       suoni     ér
  tendon     jennä     ín
  father     isä       apa
  ancestor   esi-isä   õs

This is how it looks correctly. If the words in the table do not match the English ones, people are badly informed, and this is therefore a bad table. Also the English words after the Hungarian ones suggest, these are Hungarian words, which is absolutely confusing. If a vikipedia editor believes, that suoni and ín are somehow relatid, should try to prove that. Father and õs's relation is somewhat more believable by looking at the words, this can be also mentioned. Thank for fixing that. Antifinnugor 20:10, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Antifinnugor, please familiarize yourself with the term cognate. The tables are not dictionaries but lists of cognates. --Hippophaë 03:14, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)
hipo, I know what is cognate. The tables are Incorrect. It has nothing to do with cognate or not cognate. Even you should be able to understand this. Thanks, Antifinnugor 10:07, 17 Dec 2004 (UTC)

explanation needed

What do the two features mean below? Please with examples.

  1. three-way distinction in the local case system; especially evident e.g. in Hungarian, Finnish and Estonian which have several sets of local cases
  2. dual, which exists e.g. in Samoyedic, Ob Ugrian and Samic languages

Antifinnugor 08:07, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

You're apparently not a linguist, and I don't see why you waste so much time persisting in dictating the content in this article.--Wiglaf 11:26, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)
A comment which AFU attempted to remove. - Mustafaa 22:36, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)
I put it onto his discussion page, because it is simply an expression of arrogance. It does not belong to an article discussion. Antifinnugor 09:15, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Wiglaf, I understand your response, but I think Antifinnugor's questions are legitimate. The article is supposed to be accessible to a general audience. I don't understand what "three-way distinction in the local case system" means either, and the article would be improved if it were explained. Furthermore, the link to dual wasn't terribly helpful; I've disambiguated it to dual (grammatical number). Dbenbenn 22:44, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Also: In Finnish there is a dual form besides singular and plural. Antifinnugor 09:15, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Please, tell me more. I have never heard of the dual in the Finnish language.
Yes, they are absolutely legitimate. I guess, I should have taken a long break before I wrote that. I actually began writing a response to answer his questions but realized that I did not remember any specific examples from Finno-Ugric languages, which was what he asked for.--Wiglaf 22:49, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Then next time write nothing, but do not try to hide your lack of knowledge behind arrogance. It makes such a bad impression of you. Antifinnugor 09:15, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)

The second point is oddly worded, but I assume it refers to a three-way demonstrative system, like Japanese kore - sore - are, or Scots here - there - yon. - Mustafaa 22:58, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

This has nothing to do with case system. see below. Antifinnugor 10:22, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Aha, I thought he referred to the different locative cases that you find in Finnish.--Wiglaf 23:00, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Now you mention it, though, there's a three-way distinction there too in Finnish: -lla / -lta / -lle, -ssa / -sta / -:n. - Mustafaa 23:04, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Could you please give English examples for that? I have no idea what -lla, etc means. Have you any? Antifinnugor 09:15, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)

"Kore" means "this." "Sore" means "that." English has only "this" and "that." Japanese has three separate indicators. "Are" means "that over there."

kore       something near the speaker
sore    something near the person spoken to
are     something not near either person

How is this in Finnish? Antifinnugor 09:15, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)

The original text says: three-way distinction in the local case system; What does the above have in common with case system? Antifinnugor 10:22, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)


Perhaps someone could write about this comparing different languages.--Wiglaf 23 :07, 24 Dec 2004 (UTC)

See Finnish grammar#Cases. I'll see if I can find references on the phenomenon in other Uralic languages. - Mustafaa 14:26, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Three-way distinction in the local case system

"Three-way distinction in the local case system" means a case system which includes a set of three local cases, one of which indicates a location in a place, another of which indicates a motion to a place and the third of which indicates a motion from a place. For example, the interior local cases (inessive, elative, illative) form this kind of system in Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian, Erzya, etc.

Language Inessive Elative Illative
Finnish talossa talosta taloon
Estonian majas majast majasse
Hungarian házban házból házba
English in the house from the house to the house

In Finnish and Estonian, there are also exterior local cases (adessive, ablative, allative) and general local cases (essive, partitive, translative). In Hungarian, there are exterior local cases and also surface local cases (superessive, delative, sublative). --Hippophaë 01:14, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Thank you! Let's see if we can fit this in the article, eh? - Mustafaa 11:24, 28 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Finnish scientists

The Finnish scientists K. Wiik, A. Künnap, K. Julku, Meinander also criticize the Finno-Ugric/Uralic dogma. Antifinnugor 09:01, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)

There is a huge collection of links I found here mentioning Wiik, Künnap and others.

Nyenyec 14:17, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[[4]] For example this one. Antifinnugor 17:21, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Whatever bizarre theories they may hold, however, they do believe in Finno-Ugric: [5]. Sorry, AFU. - Mustafaa 14:25, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Not in the sense, as you do. He clearly sees the connection to the basque language, what you "forget" to mention. Antifinnugor 17:13, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)
Uh, no. He specifically emphasises that there are "three different major families of languages in Europe: the Indo-Europeans, the Finno-Ugrians and the Basques." - Mustafaa 18:32, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)
If so, why are these references missing from your fu/u pages? Antifinnugor 20:17, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)

About the "critics"

Since the criticism of the finno-ugric groups does not contain:

  • The historical background of these groups (Joseph Budenz & Co)
  • The typology of the Turanic languages
  • The differences between the uralic languages
  • Basic word list of the Uralic group
  • Sample texts of these languages
  • reference to Dr Marácz-s article about the unteniability of these groups

and

  • The cognate list contains erronous words

It cannot be considered as a useful information for those, who want to understand, why these groups are unteniable.

Also this article criticizes both the finno-ugric and the uralic groups, which are in fact the same, therefore a redirection to the finno-ugric page is completely incorrect. The typology is one of the woundest point of the finno-ugric/uralic groups.

And also the so called critics text of the finno-ugric page is more critics of the critic, it is not sufficient as a real critic, and no good user information. If we merge the articles, and this text, exactly as it is here, can go into the uralic text, without reverting orgias and zynical deletions, then it is ok from me. If it works for 6 months satisfactory, then I agree with that. Otherwise, it makes no sense. Antifinnugor 16:57, 25 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Critique of the Finno-Ugric and Uralic Language Groups

For the following reasons, some linguists criticize the classification of the Finno-Ugric languages and the Uralic family:

  • The primary grammatical similiarity of these languages is agglutination. But agglutination also occurs in non-Finno-Ugric and non-Uralic languages, like Turkish, Basque, Etruscan, Persian, Armenian, and Sumerian.
  • The words of the Uralic and Finno-Ugric languages are very different. This includes the Basic Words, like family words (mother, father, brother, sister), words for body parts, like eyes, leg, hand, foot, neck, etc., words for living environment like house, grass, way, path, and the like, household tools like fork, bottle, and vessel, and foods like bread, fat, corn, and meat.
  • These language categories came into existence at the end of the 19th century and were created by foreigners (no Finns, Estonians, Hungarians or others whose languages are categorized to be in this group). In Hungary the linguist who promoted this group was Joseph Budenz, who learned Hungarian when he was 23 years old, and was never able to speak it on the level of a native speaker. The categories came into existence for political reasons and not for linguistic ones.
  • The speakers of the here grouped languages are anthropologically very different (Finnish and Estonian European, Nordic, Lappic Mixed, North European and Asian, Hungarian European mixed, others Mongolian), this indicates, that these people have never lived together (except Finnish, Estonian and the Mongolian people), and the grammatic similarities are consequences of the Sumerian cultural emission.

Grammar

Typology for Turanian agglutinating languages

Here are the features af all Turanian agglutinating languages listed, including Turkish, Persian, Basque, etc. Here we call Turanian agglutinating languages those languages that reside along the emission line of the Sumerian culture, e.g. Persian, Turkish, Armenian, Basque, Etruscian Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian, etc...

  • extensive use of independent suffixes, also known as (agglutination)
  • no noun classes, that is no grammatical gender of words
  • many grammatical cases (Turkish, Finnish) or no grammatical cases at all (Hungarian). For Hungarian foreign linguists (e.g. B. Collinder) created "cases", but these are unused in Hungarian grammar, since counterproductive for understanding and learning.
  • vowel harmony – may not exist in all, like Estonian or Persian
  • They use possessive suffixes to indicate ownership, therefore no possessive pronouns, and generally no usage of pronomes, but of suffixes. (ház, házam /=house, my house/)
  • the verb "have" either not existing or seldom used, as in Hungarian
  • Accent is typically on a fixed word position, once in a word. In Hungarian and Finnish always the first syllable of a word, in Turkish, Armenian and Persian the last syllable is accented, with a few exceptions.
  • Turanian languages prefer vocals followed by consonants and vice versa. At the beginn of a word they typically do not use double consonants.

Grammatical differences among languages of the Finno-Ugric and Uralic Group

  • Articles
    • Finnish and Estonian have no articles, Hungarian has both determinate (the=a,az) and indeterminate (a = egy) articles.
  • Verbs
    • Finnish uses negative verbs, Hungarian does not.
    • Finnish does not have a have verb in the sense of have in "I have a dog", Hungarian has such a verb (nekem van = I have)
    • Hungarian uses two verb conjugations, /vár- várok, várom, ... /= wait, wait for something/) that are also unknown in Finnish/Estonian.
    • Hungarian verbs can easily express, doing something repeatedly or only once for a short time. (csavar-csavargat-csavarint /= sqeeze, squeeze repeatedly, squeeze once, shortly/). Finnish misses this concept.
    • Hungarian uses verb modification prefixes, (ír, megír /=writes, writes and finishes it/) that are unknown in Finnish or Estonian.
  • Nouns
    • Finnish uses the plural even if the sentence clearly indicates that plurality, Hungarian uses the plural inflection only if plurality were otherwise unclear. Example: five boys = öt fiú (five boy) in Hungarian. This is expressed exactly in the same way in Turkish. Japanese goes one step ahead in this concept, and does not build plural at all, uses double words instead, e.g. I see hills = I see hill-hill.
    • Plural markers are very different. Hungarian uses 'k', Finnish -i, -t.
    • Hungarian has and uses 6 levels of endings (ház, házak, házaké, házakéi, házakéié, házakéiétól /=house, houses, belongs to houses, belong to houses, belong to objects, that belong to houses, from objects, that belong to objects, that belong to houses/), Finnish/Estonian have maximal 5 levels.
  • Phonems
    • Finnish lacks the Hungarian phonems a, (pronounced as a sound between a and o), e, í, ó, ú, õ,û, gy, ty, ny, z, zs, c (noted by B. Collinder)
    • Finnish contains 17 diphtongs, while Hungarian contains none.
  • Finnish features, unknown in Hungarian

Other features

Words

The vocabularies of the Finno-Ugric or Uralic languages are very different. The differences suggest that the people who spoke these languages' ancestors (if any) never lived together, and also suggest, that the grammatic similarities are consequences of the Sumerian cultural emission.

Selected cognates

The following are some cognates from across the Uralic family, which may serve to give an idea of how big are the differences in these languages.

English Finnish Estonian North Sami Mari Komi Khanty Hungarian Nenets
heart sydän, sydäm- süda, südam- čotta, čoddaga šüm- śələm səm szív sēw
lap syli süli salla, sala šəl syl jöl öl -
vein suoni soon suotna, suona šön sən jan (ér) tēn
go mennä, men- minna, min- mannat mija- mun- mən- menni, megy min-
fish kala kala guolli, guoli kol - kul hal xal'ä
hand käsi käsi giehta, gieđa kö ki köt kéz -
eye silmä silm čalbmi, čalmmi šinča śin sem szem sew
leg jalka jalg juolgi, juolggi jol láb laamp(a)
father isä isa áhčči, áhči apa niiśe
fire tuli tuli dolla tul ti̮l tűz tuu
tooth pii püj piń pöŋk, peŋk fog

Bold illustrates words being quite different in form from the other in a line. The word "father", Finnish isä, could be a cognate of the Hungarian word ős (ancestor), but the correct Hungarian word for father is apa. The other problematic word pair is suoni-ér /=vein/. Duo to the completely different word form they are clearly no cognates, therefore is the word (ér) is put into parenthesis.

This table also illustrates, that especially the so called ugric group has very big differences to Hungarian, even though the theory says, they are linguistically nearer to Hungarian, than others in the whole Finno-Ugric/Uralic category.

Finnish, Mordvin, Komi and Hungarian Basic Words

Here some of the Basic Words in Finnish, Mordvin, Komi and Hungarian. The English words are bold for better orientation. The concept of basic words is explained in detail on the Talk:Critique_of_Finno-Ugric_and_Uralic_language_groups#Basic_Words page

English Finnish Mordvin Komi Hungarian English Finnish Mordvin Komi Hungarian
father isä tetja baty apa, atya mother äiti ava mam anya
cloud pilvi pely kümör felhő sky taivas menely enezs ég
leg jalka, jalan pilyge kok láb fire tuli tol bi tûz
earth maa, multa moda musjar föld forest metsikkö, metsä virü vör erdõ
lake järvi, meri erüke tü tó sea meri inevegy szaridz tenger
man mies cora, alja ajlov férfi husband mies mirde verösz férj
wife vaimo ni götür feleség lie valhe kengelemsz kuilnü hazugság
person henkilö lomany mort személy grass ruoho tikse turun fű
knee polvi kumazsa püdzösz térd child lapsi ejkaks celjagy gyerek
tooth hammas pej piny fog nose nenä szudo nür orr
tongue kieli kely küv nyelv day päivä csi lun nap

The Mordvin (Erzya) and Komi words are from the Swadesh list. They are there with cyrillic letters, in this table you can see their latin form following the Hungarian phonetic rules.

See also Numbers, Word collection, Another word collection.

Swadesh lists of some languages discussed here

207-word Swadesh lists for certain discussed languages can be compared and contrasted at the Rosetta Project website: Finnish, Estonian, Hungarian, Erzya (Mordvin), Komi-permyak

Numbers

Here are the numbers from 1 to 10 in Finnish, Estonian, North Sami, Erzya, Mansi, and Hungarian:

Number Finnish Estonian North Sami Erzya Mansi Hungarian
1 yksi üks okta vejke akva egy
2 kaksi kaks guokte kavto kityg kettő
3 kolme kolm golbma kolmo hurum három
4 neljä neli njeallje nile nila négy
5 viisi viis vihtta vete at öt
6 kuusi kuus guhtta koto hot hat
7 seitsemän seitse čieža sisem sat hét
8 kahdeksan kaheksa gávcci kavkso ńololov nyolc
9 yhdeksän üheksa ovcci vejkse ontolov kilenc
10 kymmenen kümme logi kemeń lov tíz

Bold are the words, that are very unsimilar to the rest of the line.

Text illustrating some languages

Finnish: Kaikki ihmiset syntyvät vapaina ja tasavertaisina arvoltaan ja oikeuksiltaan. Heille on annettu järki ja omatunto, ja heidän on toimittava toisiaan kohtaan veljeyden hengessä.

Estonian: Kõik inimesed sünnivad vabadena ja võrdsetena oma väärikuselt ja õigustelt. Neile on antud mõistus ja südametunnistus ja nende suhtumist üksteisesse peab kandma vendluse vaim.

Sami: Buot olbmot leat riegádan friddjan ja olmmošárvvu ja olmmošvuoigatvuoðaid dáfus dássásažžab, Sudhuude kea addib huervnu ha ianedivdym ha vyigjat gakget neabbydut gyunnuudeaset gyivdy vuekhakaš vuoinnain.

Hungarian: Minden emberi lény szabadon születik és egyenlõ méltósága és joga van. Az emberek, ésszel és lelkiismerettel bírván, egymással szemben testvéri szellemben kell hogy viseltessenek.

English: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Finnish and Estonian are clearly very similar, their speakers understand each other in great parts. The others are quite far in appeareance and vocabulary from the above ones.

Summary

The criticizers of the Finno-Ugric and Uralic language groups say, that the languages of these "groups" are clearly related by agglutination and the features, that are common among the Turanian (Sumerian) agglutinating languages. What the criticizers maintain is, however, that these artificial mini groups have very few words common, and no common grammar except of the Sumerian type of agglutination, which is also characteristic for Turkish, Basque, Persian, Etruscan, Armenian and other languages, and therefore it is unlogical and counterproductive to classify them into this artificial, in reality by nothing justified mini groups.

See also

References