Hungarian (
magyar nyelv ) is a
Uralic language (more specifically an
Ugric language) unrelated to most
other languages in
Europe.
It is mainly spoken in
Hungary
and by the Hungarian minorities in the seven
neighbouring countries. The Hungarian name for the language
is
magyar ( ), which is also occasionally used as
an English noun, such as
Mighty
Magyars.
There are about 14.5 million native speakers, of whom 9.5–10
million live in modern-day Hungary. A further two million speakers
live outside present-day Hungary, but in areas that were part of
the
Kingdom of Hungary before the
Treaty of Trianon (
1920).
Of these, the largest group lives in Romania
, where there
are approximately 1.4 million Hungarians (see Hungarian minority in
Romania). Hungarian-speaking people are also to be
found in Slovakia, Serbia, Ukraine, Croatia
, Austria
, and
Slovenia
, as well as
about a million people scattered in other parts of the world (see
Geographic
distribution). There are hundreds of thousands of
Hungarian speakers in the
Hungarian
American community in the United States.
History
Classification
Hungarian
is a Uralic language, more
specifically a Ugric language; the
most closely related languages are Mansi and Khanty of western Siberia
.
Connections between the Ugric and
Finnic languages were noticed in the 1670s
and established, along with the entire Uralic family in 1717,
although the classification of Hungarian continued to be a matter
of political controversy into the 18th and even 19th centuries.
Today the Uralic family is considered one of the best demonstrated
large language families, along with
Indo-European and
Austronesian. The name of Hungary
could be a corruption of
Ungrian/Ugrian, and the fact that
the Eastern Slavs referred to them as
Ǫgry/Ǫgrove (sg.
Ǫgrinŭ) seemed to confirm that. As to the source of this
ethnonym in the Slavic languages, current literature favors the
hypothesis that it comes from the name of the Turkic tribe
Onogur (which means "ten arrows" or "ten tribes")
.
There are numerous regular sound correspondences between Hungarian
and the other Ugric languages. For example, Hungarian corresponds
to
Khanty in certain positions, and
Hungarian corresponds to Khanty , while Hungarian final corresponds
to Khanty final . For example, Hungarian
ház ( ) "house"
vs. Khanty
xot ( ) "house", and Hungarian
száz (
) "hundred" vs. Khanty
sot ( ) "hundred".
The distance between the Ugric and
Finnic languages is greater, but the
correspondences are also regular.
- See also:
Regular sound correspondences between Hungarian and other Uralic
languages
Antiquity and the early Middle Ages
As Uralic linguists claim , Hungarian separated from its closest
relatives approximately 3000 years ago, so the history of the
language begins around 1000 BC. The
Hungarians gradually changed their way of living
from settled hunters to nomadic cattle-raising, probably as a
result of early contacts with Iranian nomads. Their most important
animals included sheep and cattle. There are no written resources
on the era, thus only a little is known about it. However, research
has revealed some extremely early loanwords, such as
szó
('word'; from the
Turkic languages)
and
daru ('crane', from the related
Permic languages.)
The
Turkic languages later,
especially between the 5th and the 9th centuries, had a great
influence on the language. Most words related to
agriculture, to
state administration or even to family
relations have such backgrounds. Interestingly, Hungarian syntax
and grammar was not influenced in a similarly dramatic way during
this 300 years.
The Hungarians migrated to the
Carpathian Basin around 896 and came into
contact with
Slavic peoples – as well
as with speakers of Romance languages –, borrowing many words from
them (for example
tégla – "brick",
mák – "poppy",
or
karácsony – "Christmas"). In exchange, the neighbouring
Slavic languages also contain some words of Hungarian origin (such
as
Croatian čizma
(csizma) – "boot", or
Serbian
ašov (ásó) – "spade").
The first written accounts of Hungarian, mostly personal and place
names, are dated back to the 10th century. Hungarians also had
their own writing system, the
Old
Hungarian script, but no significant texts remained from the
time due to, as researchers say,
Stephen I of Hungary, who gave an order
to burn the written sticks.
Since the foundation of the Kingdom of Hungary
The
Kingdom of Hungary was
founded in
1000, by
Stephen I of Hungary (Hungarian:
I. (Szent) István király). The country was a
western-styled
Christian (
Roman Catholic) state, and
Latin held an important position, as was
usual in the
Middle Ages. Additionally,
the
Latin alphabet was adopted to
write the Hungarian language.
Therefore, Hungarian was also heavily influenced by Latin. The
first extant text of the language is the
Funeral Sermon and Prayer, written
once in the 1190s. The earliest example of Hungarian religious
poetry is the
Old
Hungarian 'Lamentations of Mary', a poem about the afflictions
of
Mary when she saw the death
of her son. More extensive
literature in the Hungarian language
arose after 1300. The first Bible translation is the
Hussite Bible from the 1430s.
The language lost its
diphthongs, and
several postpositions transformed into suffixes, such as
reá 'onto' 1055:
utu 'rea
'onto the
way'; later: út'ra).
Vowel harmony was also developed. At one time,
Hungarian used six
verb tenses; today, only two (the future not being counted
as one, as it is formed with an auxiliary verb).
The first
printed Hungarian book was published in
Kraków
in 1533, by
Benedek Komjáti. The
work's title is
Az Szent Pál levelei magyar nyelven (In
original spelling:
Az zenth Paal leueley magyar nyeluen),
i.e.
The letters of Saint Paul in the Hungarian language.
In the 17th century, the language was already very similar to its
present-day form, although two of the past tenses were still used.
German,
Italian and
French loans also appeared in the language
by these years. Further Turkish words were borrowed during the
Ottoman occupation of much of
Hungary between 1541 and 1699.
In the 18th century, the language was incapable of clearly
expressing scientific concepts, and several writers found the
vocabulary a bit scant for literary purposes. Thus, a group of
writers, most notably
Ferenc
Kazinczy, began to compensate for these imperfections. Some
words were shortened (
győzedelem >
győzelem,
'triumph' or 'victory'); a number of
dialectal words spread nationally (e. g.
cselleng 'dawdle'); extinct words were reintroduced
(
dísz 'décor'); a wide range of expressions were coined
using the various derivative suffixes; and some other, less
frequently used methods of expanding the language were utilized.
This movement was called the '
language
reform' (Hungarian:
nyelvújítás), and produced more
than ten thousand words, many of which are used actively today. The
reforms led to the installment of Hungarian as the official
language over Latin in the multiethnic country in 1844.
The 19th and 20th centuries saw further standardization of the
language, and differences between the mutually already
comprehensible dialects gradually lessened. In 1920, by signing the
Treaty of Trianon, Hungary lost
71% of its territories, and along with these, 33% of the ethnic
Hungarian population.
Today, the language is official in Hungary
, and
regionally also in in
Romania, in Slovakia, and
in Serbia.
Geographic distribution

Regions in Europe where the Hungarian
language is spoken.
Based on recent censuses and on the CIA World Factbook
2006
Hungarian is spoken in the following countries as a
mother tongue:
Country |
Speakers |
Hungary |
10,177,223 ( 2001 census) |
Romania
(mainly Transylvania) |
1,443,970 ( census
2002) |
Slovakia |
520,528 ( census 2001) |
Serbia
(mainly Vojvodina ) |
293,299 ( census
2002) |
Ukraine
(mainly Zakarpattia) |
149,400 ( census 2001) |
United States |
117,973 ( census 2000) |
Canada |
75,555 ( census 2001) |
Israel |
70,000 |
Austria
(mainly Burgenland ) |
22,000 |
Croatia |
16,500 |
Slovenia
(mainly Prekmurje) |
9,240 |
Total |
12-13 million (in Carpathian Basin) |
- Source: National censuses, Ethnologue
About a
million more Hungarian speakers live in Argentina
, Australia, Belgium
, Brazil
, the
Czech
Republic
, Finland
, France
, Germany
, The
Netherlands
, Italy
, Switzerland
, the United Kingdom
, the United States
, Venezuela
and in other parts of the world.
Official status

Areas of Romania (Transylvania) where
Hungarian has co-official status (in the localities of those areas,
at least 20% of the population speaks Hungarian).

Official usage of Hungarian language
in Vojvodina, Serbia
Hungarian is the
official language
of Hungary, and thus an official language of the
European Union.
Hungarian is also one
of the official languages of Vojvodina
and an official language of three municipalities in
Slovenia
: Hodoš
, Dobrovnik
and Lendava
, along with Slovene. Hungarian is
officially recognized as a minority or regional language in Austria
, Croatia
, Romania
, Bukovina, Zakarpattia in
Ukraine
, and Slovakia
. In Romania
it is an
official language at local level in all communes, towns and
municipalities with an ethnic Hungarian population of over
20%.
Dialects
The
dialects of Hungarian identified by
Ethnologue are: Alföld, West Danube,
Danube-Tisza, King's Pass Hungarian, Northeast Hungarian, Northwest
Hungarian, Székely and West Hungarian. These dialects are, for the
most part,
mutually
intelligible.
The Hungarian Csángó dialect, which is not listed by
Ethnologue, is spoken mostly in Bacău
County, Romania
. The
Csángó minority group has been largely isolated from other
Hungarians, and they therefore preserved a
dialect closely resembling
medieval
Hungarian.
Phonology
Hungarian has 14 vowel phonemes and 25 consonant phonemes. The
vowel phonemes can be grouped as pairs of long and short vowels,
e.g.
o and
ó. Most of these pairs have a similar
pronunciation, only varying in their duration; the pairs
/<á> and /<é> differ both in closedness and length,
however.</é></á>
Consonant length is also
distinctive in Hungarian. Most of the consonant phonemes can occur
as
geminates.
The sound
voiced palatal
plosive , written , sounds similar to 'd' in
British English 'duty' (in fact, more
similar to 'd' in
French 'dieu', or
to the Macedonian phoneme 'ѓ' as in 'ѓакон'). It occurs in the name
of the country, "Magyarország" (Hungary), pronounced .
Primary stress is
always on the first
syllable of a word, as with its cousin
Finnish and neighboring languages,
Slovak (Standard dialect) and
Czech. There is sometimes secondary stress on
other syllables, especially in compounds, e.g.
viszontlátásra ("goodbye") pronounced . Elongated vowels
in non-initial syllables can also seem to be stressed to the ear of
an English speaker, since length and stress correlate in
English.
Front-back
vowel harmony is an
important feature of Hungarian phonology. See the
Hungarian phonology
article for more details.
Single
/r/s are tapped, like the
Spanish
pero; double /r/s are trilled, like the Spanish
perro.
Grammar and syntax
Hungarian is an
agglutinative
language – it uses a number of different
affixes, including
suffixes,
prefixes and a
circumfix to define the meaning or the grammatical
function. Instead of
prepositions,
which are common in English, Hungarian uses only
postpositions.
There are two types of
article in
Hungarian:
- definite: a before words beginning with consonants and
az before vowels (in a phonological sense, behaving just
like the indefinite article ’a’ in
English)
- indefinite: egy, literally ‘one’.
Nouns have as many as eighteen cases. Of these,
some are grammatical, e.g. the unmarked
nominative (for example,
az alma ‘the
apple’), and the
accusative marked with
the suffix –t (
az almát). The latter is used when the noun
in question is used as the object of a verb. Hungarian does not
have a
genitive case (the
dative case is used instead), and numerous
English prepositions are equivalent not to an affix, but to a
postposition, as in
az alma
mellett ‘next to the apple’. Plurals are formed using the
suffix –k (
az almák ‘the apples’).
Adjectives precede nouns, e. g.
a
piros alma ‘the red apple’. They have three degrees, including
base (
piros ‘red’), comparative (
pirosabb
‘redder’), and superlative (
legpirosabb ‘reddest’). If the
noun takes the plural or a case, the adjective, used attributively,
does not agree with it:
a piros almák ‘the red apples’.
However, when the adjective is used in a predicative sense, it must
agree with the noun:
az almák piros'ak
‘the
apples are red’. Adjectives also take
cases when they are used without nouns: Melyik almát
kéred? - A
piros'at.
'Which apple would you
like? - The red
one.'
Verbs developed a complex
conjugation system during the
centuries. Every Hungarian verb has two conjugations (definite and
indefinite), two tenses (past and present-future), and three moods
(indicative, conditional and imperative), two numbers (singular or
plural), and three persons (first, second and third). Out of these
features, the two different conjugations are the most
characteristic: the "definite" conjugation is used for a
transitive verb with a definite object. The
"indefinite" conjugation is used for an
intransitive verb or for a transitive verb
with an indefinite object. These rules, however, do not apply
everywhere. The following examples demonstrate this system:
John lát. ‘John can see.’
(indefinite: he has the ability of vision)
|
John lát egy almát. ‘John sees an apple.’
(indefinite: it does not matter which apple)
|
John látja az almát. ‘John sees the apple.’
(definite: John sees the specific apple that was talked about
earlier)
|
- :See also: Definite
and indefinite conjugations.
Present tense is unmarked, while past
is formed using the suffix –t or sometimes –tt:
lát
'sees';
látott 'saw', past.Futurity is often expressed
with the present tense, or using the auxiliary verb
fog
‘will’. The first most commonly applies when the sentence also
defines the time of the future event, for example
John pénteken
moziba megy – literally ‘John on Friday into cinema goes’,
i.e. ‘On Friday, John will go to the cinema.’ In the other case,
the verb’s infinitive (formed using –ni) and the ‘
fog’
auxiliary verb is used:
John moziba fog menni – ‘John will
go to the cinema.’ This is sometimes counted as a tense, especially
by non-specialist publications.
Indicative mood is used in all
tenses; the
conditional only in the
present and the past, finally the
imperative just in the present. Indicative is
always unmarked. Verbs also have
verbal
prefixes. Most of them define movement direction
(
lemegy – goes down,
felmegy – goes up), but some
of them give an
aspect to the verb, such as
the prefix meg-, which defines a finite action.
Hungarian
word order is often mentioned
as free, the truth is that Hungarian word order is more
semantical than
syntactical. For example because of marking the
object using
–t, it is not
necessary to place the
subject before the
verb, and the object after it, as in English. This feature makes
Hungarian able to focus on particular sections of the sentence –
generally, the word before the verb contains the most important
information:
John lát egy almát. ‘John sees an
apple.’
(when it is important to stress that it's John, not someone else,
who sees an apple; or when no special stress is
required)
|
John egy almát lát. (or even Egy almát lát
John) ‘John sees an apple.’
(when it is important that it's an apple John sees, and not
something else.
The same emphasis could be translated as 'What John sees is an
apple.')
|
Politeness
Hungarian has a four-tiered system for expressing levels of
politeness.
- Ön (önözés): Use of this form in speech shows respect towards
the person addressed, but it is also the common way of speaking in
official texts and business communications. Here "you", the second
person, is grammatically addressed in the third person.
- Maga (magázás, magázódás): Use of this form serves to show that
the speaker wishes to distance himself/herself from the person
he/she addresses. A boss could also address a subordinate as
"maga". Aside from the different pronoun it
is grammatically the same as "önözés".
- Néni/bácsi (tetszikezés): Children are supposed to address
adults they are not close friends with using "tetszik" ("you like")
as a sort of an auxiliary verb with all other verbs. "Hogy vagy?"
("How are you?") here becomes "Hogy tetszik lenni?" ("How do you
like to be?"). The elderly are generally addressed this way, even
by adults. When using this way of speaking, one will not use normal
greetings, but can only say "(kezét) csókolom" ("I kiss (your
hand)"). This way of speaking is perceived as somewhat awkward and
often creates impossible grammatical structures, but is still
widely in use. Another problem created by this form is that when
children grow up into their 20s or 30s, they are not sure of how to
address family friends that are their parents' age, but whom they
have known since they were young. "Tetszik" would make these people
feel too old, but "tegeződés" seems too familiar. The best way to
avoid this dilemma is to use the "tegeződés" in grammatical
structures, but show the respect in the title: "John bácsi, hogy
vagy?".
- Te (tegezés, tegeződés or pertu, per tu
from latin): Used generally, i.e. with persons
with whom none of the above forms of politeness are required.
Interestingly, the highest rank, the king was
traditionally addressed "per tu" by all, peasants and noblemen
alike, though with Hungary not having any crowned king since 1918,
this practice survives only in folk tales and children's stories.
Use of "tegezés" in the media and advertisements has become more
frequent since the early 1990s. It is informal and is normally used
in families, among friends, colleagues, among young people, adults
speaking to children; can be compared to addressing somebody by
their first name in English. Perhaps prompted by the widespread use
of English (a language without T-V
distinction) on the Internet, "tegezés" is also becoming the
standard way to address people over the Internet, regardless of
politeness.
The four-tiered system had already been somewhat eroded between
1947 and 1989, when Communist rule mandated that all people call
each other "elvtárs" (
comrade), and the
current expansion of "tegeződés" may also threaten its long-term
survival.
Lexicon
Example with ad
Hungarian |
English |
Derived terms |
ad |
gives |
adás |
transmission |
adó |
tax or transmitter or transmitting |
adóhivatal |
tax/revenue office |
adózik |
pays tax |
adózó |
taxpayer |
adós |
debtor |
adósság |
debt |
adalék |
additive (ingredient) |
adag |
dose, portion |
With verbal prefixes |
megad |
repays (debt); call (poker) |
eladó |
for sale, salesperson |
hozzáad |
augments, adds to |
As part of compounds |
rádióadó |
radio station/radio transmitter |
adomány / from the Latin
dominum=dominyum
word integration/ |
donation |
adoma |
anecdote |
Giving an exact estimate for the total word count is difficult,
since it is hard to define what to call "a word" in
agglutinating languages, due to the existence
of affixed words and compound words. To have a meaningful
definition of compound words, we have to exclude such compounds
whose meaning is the mere sum of its elements. The largest
dictionaries from Hungarian to another language contain 120,000
words and phrases (but this may include redundant phrases as well,
because of translation issues). The new desk lexicon of the
Hungarian language contains 75,000 words and the Comprehensive
Dictionary of Hungarian Language (to be published in 18 volumes in
the next twenty years) will contain 110,000 words. The default
Hungarian lexicon is usually estimated to comprise 60,000 to
100,000 words. (Independently of specific languages, speakers
actively use at most 10,000 to 20,000 words, with an average
intellectual using 25-30 thousand words.) However, all the
Hungarian lexemes collected from technical texts, dialects etc.
would all together add up to 1,000,000 words.
Hungarian words are built around so-called word-bushes. (See an
example on the right.) Thus, words with similar meaning often arise
from the same root.
The basic vocabulary shares a couple of hundred word roots with
other
Uralic languages like
Finnish,
Estonian,
Mansi and
Khanty. Examples of such include the verb
él 'live' (Finnish
elä), the numbers
kettő 'two',
három 'three',
négy 'four'
(cf.
Mansi китыг
kitig,
хурум
khurum, нила
nila,
Finnish kaksi, kolme, neljä,
Estonian kaks, kolm,
neli, ), as well as
víz 'water',
kéz 'hand',
vér 'blood',
fej 'head' (cf. Finnish and Estonian
vesi, käsi, veri, Finnish
pää, Estonian
pea or 'pää
).
Except for a few Latin and Greek loan-words, these differences are
unnoticed even by native speakers; the words have been entirely
adopted into the Hungarian lexicon. There are an increasing number
of English loan-words, especially in technical fields.
Another source differs in that loanwords in Hungarian are held to
constitute about 45% of bases in the language. Although the lexical
percentage of native words in Hungarian is 55%, their use accounts
for 88.4% of all words used (the percentage of loanwords used being
just 11.6%). Therefore the history of Hungarian has come,
especially since the 19th century, to favor neologisms from
original bases, whilst still having developed as many terms from
neighboring languages in the lexicon.
Word formation
Words can be compound (as in
German)
and derived (with
suffixes).
Compounds
Compounds have been present in the language since the
Proto-Uralic era. Numerous ancient compounds
transformed to base words during the centuries. Today, compounds
play an important role in vocabulary.
A good example is the word
arc:
- : orr (nose) + száj (mouth) → orca
(face) (colloquial until the end of the 19th century and still in
use in some dialects) → arc (face)
Compounds are made up of two base words: the first is the prefix,
the latter is the suffix. A compound can be
subordinative:
the prefix is in logical connection with the suffix. If the prefix
is the subject of the suffix, the compound is generally classified
as a
subjective one. There are
objective,
determinative, and
adjunctive compounds as well. Some examples are
given below:
- Subjective:
- : menny (heaven) + dörög (thunder) →
mennydörög (thundering)
- : nap (Sun) + sütötte (baked) →
napsütötte (sunlit)
- Objective:
- : fa (tree, wood) + vágó (cutter) →
favágó (lumberjack, literally "woodcutter")
- Determinative:
- : új (new) + já (modification of -vá,
-vé a suffix meaning "making it to something") +
építés (construction) → újjáépítés
(reconstruction, literally "making something to be new by
construction")
- Adjunctive:
- : sárga (yellow) + réz (copper) →
sárgaréz (brass)
According to current orthographic rules, a subordinative compound
word has to be written as a single word, without spaces; however,
if the length of a compound of three or more words (not counting
one-syllable verbal prefixes) is seven or more
syllables long (not counting case suffixes), a
hyphen must be inserted at the appropriate boundary to ease the
determination of word boundaries for the reader.
Other compound words are
coordinatives: there is no
concrete relation between the prefix and the suffix. Subcategories
include word duplications (to emphasise the meaning;
olykor-olykor'really occasionally'), twin words (where a
base word and a distorted form of it makes up a compound:
gizgaz, where the suffix 'gaz' means 'weed' and the prefix
giz is the distorted form; the compound itself means
'inconsiderable weed'), and such compounds which have meanings, but
neither their prefixes, nor their suffixes make sense (for example,
hercehurca 'long-lasting, frusteredly done deed').
A compound also can be made up by multiple (i.e., more than two)
base words: in this case, at least one word element, or even both
the prefix and the suffix is a compound. Some examples:
- elme [mind; standalone base] + (gyógy
[medical] + intézet [institute]) →
elmegyógyintézet (asylum)
- (hadi [militarian] + fogoly [prisoner]) +
(munka [work] + tábor [camp]) →
hadifogoly-munkatábor (work camp of prisoners of war)
Noteworthy lexical items
Points of the compass
Hungarian words for the points of the compass are directly derived
from times of
day.
- North = észak (from "éj(szaka)", 'night'), as the Sun never
shines from the North
- South = dél ('noon'), as the Sun shines from the South at
noon
- East = kelet ('rise'), as the Sun rises in the East
- West = nyugat ('set'), as the Sun sets in the West
Hungary
is in the Northern
Hemisphere
, so its vocabulary corresponds to the Sun's appearances there. – The above can be
observed with the Latin word
meridies, which means 'noon'
and 'South' alike.
Two words for "red"
There are two basic words for "red" in Hungarian: "piros" and
"vörös" (variant: "veres"; compare with Estonian 'verev' or Finnish
'veres'). (They are basic in the sense that one is not a sub-type
of the other, as the English "scarlet" is of "red".) The word
"vörös" is related to "vér", meaning "blood". When they refer to an
actual difference in colour (as on a colour chart), "vörös" usually
refers to the deeper hue of red. While many languages have multiple
names for this colour, Hungarian is
special in recognizing two shades of red as separate and distinct
"folk colours."
However, the two words are also used independently of the above in
collocations. "Piros" is learned by
children first, as it is generally used to describe inanimate,
artificial things, or things seen as cheerful or neutral, while
"vörös" typically refers to animate or natural things (biological,
geological, physical and astronomical objects), as well as serious
or emotionally charged subjects.
When the rules outlined above are in contradiction, typical
collocations usually prevail. In some cases where a typical
collocation doesn't exist, the use of either of the two words may
be equally adequate.
Examples:
- Expressions where "red" typically translates to "piros": a red
road sign, red traffic lights, the red line of Budapest Metro, red (now called express) bus
lines in Budapest, a holiday shown in red in the calendar, ruddy
complexion, the red nose of a clown, some red flowers (those of a
neutral nature, e.g. tulips), red peppers and paprika, red card
suits (hearts and diamonds), red stripes on a flag, etc.
- Expressions where "red" typically translates
to "vörös": Red Army, red wine, red carpet (for receiving important
guests), red hair or beard, red lion (the mythical animal), the
Red
Cross
, the novel The
Red and the Black, the Red Sea
, redshift, red giant, red blood
cells, red
oak, some red flowers (those with passionate connotations, e.g.
roses), red fox, names of ferric and other red minerals, red
copper, rust, red phosphorus, the colour of blushing with anger or
shame, the red nose of an alcoholic (in contrast with that of a
clown, see above) etc.
Kinship terms
Hungarian has separate words for brothers and sisters depending on
relative age:
|
younger |
elder |
unspecified
relative age |
brother |
öcs |
báty |
fivér or
fiútestvér
|
sister |
húg |
nővér |
nővér or
lánytestvér
|
unspecified
gender |
kistestvér |
(nagytestvér) |
testvér |
(There used to be a separate word for "elder sister",
néne, but it has become obsolete [except to mean "aunt" in
some dialects] and has been replaced by the generic word for
"sister".)
In addition, there are separate prefixes for up to the seventh
ancestors and sixth descendants (although there are ambiguities and
dialectical differences affecting the prefixes for the fourth (and
above) ancestors):Apa (father) -> Nagyapa (grandfather) ->
Dédapa (great-grandfather) -> Dédnagyapa
(great-great-grandfather) Ükapa
(great-great-great-grandfather)Üknagyapa
(great-great-great-great-grandfather) -> Szépapa
(great-great-great-great-great-grandfather)
parent |
grandparent |
great-
grandparent
|
great-great-
grandparent
|
great-great-great-
grandparent
|
szülő |
nagyszülő |
dédszülő |
ükszülő |
szépszülő
(OR ük-ükszülő)
|
child |
grandchild |
great-
grandchild
|
great-great-
grandchild
|
great-great-great-
grandchild
|
gyer(m)ek |
unoka |
dédunoka |
ükunoka |
szépunoka
(OR ük-ükunoka)
|
Ősszülő or
ószülő, as well as
óunoka
might be used for the great-great-great-great-grandparent or child,
respectively.
On the other hand, Hungarian has no specific lexical items for
"son" and "daughter", but the words for "boy" and "girl" are
applied with possessive suffixes. Nevertheless, the terms are
differentiated with different declension or lexemes:
|
boy/girl |
(his/her)
son/daughter
|
(his/her)
lover, partner
|
male |
fiú |
fia |
fiúja/barátja |
female |
lány |
lánya |
barátnője |
Fia is only used in this, irregular possessive form; it
has no nominative on its own. However, the word
fiú can
also take the regular suffix, in which case the resulting word
(fiúja) will refer to a lover or partner (boyfriend),
rather than a male offspring.
The word
fiú (boy) is also often noted as an extreme
example of the ability of the language to add suffixes to a word,
by forming
fiaiéi, adding vowel-form suffixes only, where
the result is quite a frequently used word:
fiú |
boy |
fia |
his/her son |
fiai |
his/her sons |
fiáé |
his/her son's (singular object) |
fiáéi |
his/her son's (plural object) |
fiaié |
his/her sons' (singular object) |
fiaiéi |
his/her sons' (plural object) |
Extremely long words
- megszentségteleníthetetlenségeskedéseitekért
- Partition to root and suffixes with explanations:
meg- |
verb prefix; in this case, it means "completed" |
szent |
holy (the word root) |
-ség |
like English "-ness", as in "holiness" |
-t(e)len |
variant of "-tlen", noun suffix expressing the lack of
something; like English "-less", as in "useless" |
-ít |
constitutes a transitive verb from an adjective |
-het |
expresses possibility; somewhat similar to the English
auxiliaries "may" or "can" |
-(e)tlen |
another variant of "-tlen" |
-ség |
(see above) |
‑es |
constitutes an adjective from a noun; like English "-y" as in
"witty" |
-ked |
attached to an adjective (e.g. "strong"), produces the verb "to
pretend to be (strong)" |
-és |
constitutes a noun from a verb; there are various ways this is
done in English, e.g. "-ance" in "acceptance" |
-eitek |
plural possessive suffix, second person plural (e.g. "apple"
-> "your apples", where "your" refers to multiple people) |
-ért |
approximately translates to "because of", or in this case
simply "for" |
- Translation: "for your [plural] repeated
pretending to be undesecratable"
The above word is often considered to be the longest word in
Hungarian, although there are longer words like:
-
legeslegmegszentségteleníttethetetlenebbjeitekként
-
leg|es|leg|meg|szent|ség|telen|ít|tet|het|etlen|ebb|je|i|tek|ként
- "like those of you that are the very least possible to get
desecrated"
These words are not used in practice, but when spoken they are
easily understood by natives. They were invented to show, in a
somewhat facetious way, the ability of the language to form long
words. They are not compound words – they are formed by adding a
series of one and two-syllable suffixes (and a few prefixes) to a
simple root ("szent", saint).There is virtually no limit for the
length of words, but when too many suffixes are added, the meaning
of the word becomes less clear, and the word becomes hard to
understand, and will work like a riddle even for native
speakers.
See also:
Hungarian
tongue-twisters.
Writing system
The Hungarian language was originally written in
Old Hungarian script, a script
reminiscent of runic writing systems. When
Stephen I of Hungary established the
Kingdom of Hungary in the year
1000, the old system was gradually discarded in favour of the Latin
alphabet. Although now not used at all in everyday life, the old
script is still known and practiced by some enthusiasts.
Modern Hungarian is written using an expanded
Latin alphabet, and has a
phonemic orthography, i.e. pronunciation can
generally be predicted from the written language. In addition to
the standard letters of the Latin alphabet, Hungarian uses several
modified Latin characters to represent the additional vowel sounds
of the language. These include letters with acute accents
(á,é,í,ó,ú) to represent long vowels, and umlauts
(
ö and
ü) and their long counterparts
ő and ű to represent
front vowels. Sometimes (usually as a result of a technical glitch
on a computer)
ô or
õ is used for
ő and
û for
ű. This is often due to the limitations of
the
Latin-1 / ISO-8859-1 code page.
These letters are not part of the Hungarian language, and are
considered misprints. Hungarian can be properly represented with
the
Latin-2 / ISO-8859-2 code page,
but this
code page is not always
available. (Hungarian is the only language using both
ő
and
ű.)
Unicode includes them, and
so they can be used on the Internet.
Additionally, the letter pairs
<ny>,
<ty>, and
<gy> represent the palatal consonants , ,
and (a little like the "d+y" sounds in British "
duke" or
American "woul
d you") - a bit like saying "d" with your
tongue pointing to your upper palate.
Hungarian uses <s> for and
<sz> for /s/, which is the reverse of
Polish usage. The letter
is and
<cs>
is .
These digraphs are considered single
letters in the alphabet. The letter
is also a "single letter digraph", but
is pronounced like /j/ (English <y>), and appears mostly in
old words.
The
letters <dz> and
<dzs> are exotic remnants and are hard
to find even in longer texts.
Some examples still in common use are
madzag ("string"), edzeni ("to train
(athletically)") and dzsungel ("jungle").
Sometimes additional information is required for partitioning words
with digraphs: házszám ("street number") =
ház ("house") +
szám ("number"), not an unintelligible
házs +
zám.
Hungarian distinguishes between long and short vowels, with long
vowels written with acutes. It also distinguishes between long and
short consonants, with long consonants being doubled. For example,
lenni ("to be"),
hozzászólás ("comment"). The
digraphs, when doubled, become trigraphs: +=, e.g.
művésszel ("with an artist"). But when the digraph occurs
at the end of a line, all of the letters are written out. For
example ("with a bus"):
- ... busz-
- szal...
When the first lexeme of a compound ends in a digraph and the
second lexeme starts with the same digraph, both digraphs are
written out:
lány +
nyak =
lánynyak
("girl's neck").
Usually a trigraph is a double digraph, but there are a few
exceptions:
tizennyolc ("eighteen") is a concatenation of
tizen +
nyolc. There are doubling
minimal pairs:
tol ("push") vs.
toll ("feather" or "pen").
While to English speakers they may seem unusual at first, once the
new orthography and pronunciation are learned, written Hungarian is
almost completely phonemic.
Order of words
Basic rule is that the order is from general to specific. This is a
typical
analytical approach and is used
generally in Hungarian.
Name order
The Hungarian language uses the so-called eastern
name order, in which the
family name (general, deriving from the family)
comes first and the
given name (specific,
relates to the person) comes last. A second given name is also
often present, which follows the first given name. This is
comparable to the Anglo-Saxon custom of middle names.
Hungarian names in foreign languages
For clarity, in foreign languages Hungarian names are usually
represented in the western name order.
Sometimes, however,
especially in the neighboring countries of Hungary
– where
there is a significant Hungarian population (see Treaty of Trianon for causes) – the
Hungarian name order is retained as it causes less confusion
there.
For an example of foreign use, the birth name of the Hungarian-born
physicist, the "father of the
hydrogen
bomb" was
Teller Ede, but he became
known internationally as
Edward Teller. Prior to the
mid-20th century, given names were usually translated along with
the name order; this is no longer as common. For example, the
pianist uses
András
Schiff when abroad, not
Andrew Schiff (in
Hungarian
Schiff András). A second given name, if present,
becomes a middle name, but is usually written out in full, and not
truncated to an initial.
Foreign names in Hungarian
In modern usage, foreign names retain their order when used in
Hungarian. Therefore:
- Amikor Kiss János Los Angelesben volt, látta John
Travoltát.
- The Hungarian name Kiss János is in the Hungarian name
order (János means John), but the foreign name
John Travolta remains in the western name order.
Before the 20th century, not only was it common to reverse the
order of foreign personalities, they were also "Hungarianized":
Goethe János Farkas (originally
Johann Wolfgang Goethe). This usage
sounds odd today, when only a few well-known personalities are
referred to using their Hungarianized names, including
Verne
Gyula (
Jules Verne),
Marx
Károly (
Karl Marx),
Kolumbusz
Kristóf (
Christopher
Columbus, note that it is also translated in English).
Some native speakers disapprove of this usage; the names of certain
religious personalities (including popes), however, are always
Hungarianized by practically all speakers, such as
Luther
Márton (
Martin Luther),
Husz
János (
Jan Hus),
Kálvin János
(
John Calvin); just like the names of
monarchs, for example the king of Spain,
Juan Carlos I is referred to as
I. János Károly or the queen of the UK,
Elizabeth II is referred to as
II.
Erzsébet.
Date and time
The Hungarian convention on date and time is:
The order is
big endian (going from
generic to specific): 1. year, 2. month, 3. day, 4. hour, 5.
minute.
Addresses
Although address formatting is increasingly being influenced by
Indo-European conventions, traditional
Hungarian style is:
1052 Budapest,Deák tér 1.
So the order is 1. postcode, 2., city (most general) 3., street
(more specific) 4., house number (most specific)
Vocabulary examples
Note: The stress is always placed on the first syllable of each
word. The remaining syllables all receive an equal, lesser
stress. All syllables are pronounced clearly and evenly,
even at the end of a sentence, unlike in English.
- Hungarian (person, language): magyar
- Hello!:
- Formal, when addressing a stranger: "Good day!": Jó napot
(kívánok)!
- Informal, when addressing someone you know very well:
Szia! (it sounds almost exactly like American
colloquialism "See ya!" with a shorter "ee".)
- Good-bye!: Viszontlátásra! (formal) (see above),
Viszlát! (semi-informal), Szia! (informal: same
stylistic remark as for "Hello!" )
- Excuse me: Elnézést!
- Please:
- Kérem (szépen) (This literally means "I'm asking
(it/you) nicely", as in German Danke schön, "I
thank (you) nicely". See next for a more common form of
the polite request.)
- Legyen szíves! (literally: "Be (so) kind!")
- I would like ____, please: Szeretnék ____ (this
example illustrates the use of the conditional tense, as a common form of a
polite request)
- Sorry!: Bocsánat!
- Thank you: Köszönöm
- that/this: az , ez
- How much?: Mennyi?
- How much does it cost?: Mennyibe kerül?
- Yes: Igen
- No: Nem
- I don't understand: Nem értem
- I don't know: Nem tudom
- Where's the toilet?:
- Hol van a vécé? (vécé/veːtseː is the Hungarian
pronouncation of the English abbreviation of "Water Closet")
- Hol van a mosdó? – more polite (and word-for-word)
version
- generic toast: Egészségünkre! (literally: "To our
health!")
- juice: gyümölcslé
- water: víz
- wine: bor
- beer: sör
- tea: tea
- milk: tej
- Do you speak English?: Tud(sz) angolul? Note that the
fact of asking is only shown by the proper intonation:
continually rising until the penultimate syllable, then falling for
the last one.
- I love you: Szeretlek
- Help!: Segítség!
- It is needed: kell
- I need to go: Mennem kell
Controversy over origins
Mainstream linguistics holds that Hungarian is part of the
Uralic family of languages, related ultimately to
languages such as
Finnish and
Estonian, although it would be
particularly close to
Khanty and
Mansi languages located near the Ural Mountains.
- For many years (from 1869), it was a matter of dispute whether
Hungarian was a Finno-Ugric/Uralic language, or was more closely
related to the Turkic languages, a
controversy known as the "Ugric-Turkish war", or whether indeed
both the Uralic and the Turkic families formed part of a
superfamily of "Ural-Altaic
languages". Hungarians did absorb some Turkic influences during
several centuries of co-habitation. For example, it appears that
the Hungarians learned animal breeding techniques from the Turkic
Chuvash, as a high proportion of words
specific to agriculture and livestock are of Chuvash origin. There
was also a strong Chuvash influence in burial customs. Furthermore,
all Ugric languages, not just Hungarian, have Turkic loanwords
related to horse riding. Nonetheless, the science of linguistics
shows that the basic wordstock and morphological patterns of the
Hungarian language are solidly based on a Uralic heritage.
- A theory also well-known (still in dispute) is that the
Hungarian language is a descendant of the Sumerian. Some linguists and historians
(like Ida Bobula, Ferenc Badiny Jós, dr Tibor Baráth and others)
had been working hard for decades and had published many detailed
works (e.g. [1784], [1785]), and, purportedly, also there are some
significant archaeological findings in this matter (like the
Tartaria tablets). However
mainstream linguists reject the Sumerian theory as
pseudoscience.
- Hungarian has often been claimed to be related to Hunnish, since Hungarian legends and
histories show close ties between the two peoples; also, the name
Hunor is preserved in legends and (along with a few
Hunnic-origin names, such as Attila) is still used as a
given name in Hungary. Many people share the belief that the
Székelys, a Hungarian ethnic group
living in Romania, are descended from the Huns.
However, the link with Hunnish has no linguistic foundation since
most scientists consider the Hunnic language as being part of the
Turkic language family.
There have been attempts, dismissed by mainstream linguists, to
show that Hungarian is related to other languages including
Hebrew,
Egyptian,
Etruscan,
Basque,
Persian,
Pelasgian,
Greek,
Chinese,
Sanskrit,
English,
Tibetan,
Magar,
Quechua,
Armenian and at least 42 other Asian,
European and even
American languages. See
Pseudoscientific language
comparison.
Comparison of some Finno-Ugric words
Hungarian |
Estonian |
Mordvinic (Erzya dialect) |
Komi-Permyak |
English
meaning |
# by the
Swadesh-list |
Finnish |
én (if not written,
is indicated by the -*m suffix) |
mina |
мон mon |
ме me |
I, myself, me |
1 |
minä |
te |
sina |
тон ton |
тэ te |
you/thou |
2 |
sinä |
mi |
meie, me |
минь miń |
ми mi |
we |
4 |
me |
ti |
teie, te |
тынь tyń |
ти ti |
you (plural) |
5 |
te |
ez/itt |
see |
те te |
тайö tajö |
this/here |
7 |
tämä/täällä |
az/ott |
too |
што što |
сійö sijö |
that/there |
8 |
tuo/tuolla |
ki? |
kes? |
кие? kije? |
коді? kodi? |
who? |
11 |
kuka? |
mi? |
mis? |
мезе? meze? |
мый? myj? |
what? |
12 |
mikä? |
egy |
üks |
вейке vejke |
öти öti |
one |
22 |
yksi |
kettő |
kaks |
кавто kavto |
кык kyk |
two |
23 |
kaksi |
három |
kolm |
колмо kolmo |
куим kuim |
three |
24 |
kolme |
négy |
neli |
ниле nile |
нёль ńol |
four |
25 |
neljä |
öt |
viis |
вете vete |
вит vit |
five |
26 |
viisi |
nej |
naine |
ни ni |
гöтыр götyr |
wife |
40 |
vaimo |
anya |
ema |
(тиринь) ава (tiriń) ava |
мам mam |
mother |
42 |
äiti |
fa |
puu |
чувто čuvto |
пу pu |
tree, wood |
51 |
puu |
vér |
veri |
верь veŕ |
вир vir |
blood |
64 |
veri |
haj |
juuksed |
черь čeŕ |
юрси jursi |
hair |
71 |
hius, hiukset |
fej |
pea |
пиле pile |
пель pel |
head |
73 |
pää |
szem |
silm |
сельме seĺme |
син sin |
eye |
74 |
silmä |
orr |
nina |
судо sudo |
ныр nyr |
nose |
75 |
nenä |
száj |
suu |
курго kurgo |
вом vom |
mouth |
76 |
suu |
fog |
hammas |
пей pej |
пинь piń |
tooth |
77 |
hammas |
láb |
jalg |
пильге piĺge |
кок kok |
foot |
80 |
jalka |
kéz |
käsi |
кедь ked́ |
ки ki |
hand |
83 |
käsi |
szív/szűny |
süda |
седей sedej |
сьöлöм śölöm |
heart |
90 |
sydän |
inni |
jooma |
симемс simems |
юны juny |
to drink |
92 |
juoda |
tudni |
teadma |
содамс sodams |
тöдны tödny |
to know |
103 |
tietää |
élni |
elama |
эрямс eŕams |
овны ovny |
to live |
108 |
elää |
víz |
vesi |
ведь ved́ |
ва va |
water |
150 |
vesi |
kő |
kivi |
кев kev |
из iz |
stone |
156 |
kivi |
ég/menny |
taevas |
менель meneĺ |
енэж jenezh |
sky/heaven |
162 |
taivas |
szél |
tuul |
варма varma |
тöв töv |
wind |
163 |
tuuli |
tűz |
tuli |
тол tol |
би bi |
fire |
167 |
tuli |
éj |
öö |
ве ve |
вой voj |
night |
177 |
yö |
|
See also
Bibliography
Courses
- Colloquial Hungarian - The complete course for
beginners. Rounds, Carol H.; Sólyom, Erika (2002). London; New
York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-242584.
- This book gives an introduction to the Hungarian language in 15
chapters. The dialogues are available on cassette or CDs.
- Teach Yourself Hungarian - A complete course for
beginners. Pontifex, Zsuzsa (1993). London: Hodder &
Stoughton. Chicago: NTC/Contemporary Publishing. ISBN
0-340-56286-2.
- This is a complete course in spoken and written Hungarian. The
course consists of 21 chapters with dialogues, culture notes,
grammar and exercises. The dialogues are available on
cassette.
- These course books were developed by the University of Debrecen
Summer School program for teaching Hungarian to foreigners. The
books are written completely in Hungarian. There is an accompanying
'dictionary' for each book with translations of the Hungarian
vocabulary in English, German, and French.
- "NTC's Hungarian and English Dictionary" by Magay and Kiss.
ISBN 0-8442-4968-8 (You may be able to find a newer edition also.
This one is 1996.)
Grammars
- A practical Hungarian grammar (3rd, rev. ed.).
Keresztes, László (1999). Debrecen: Debreceni Nyári Egyetem. ISBN
963-472-300-4.
- Practical Hungarian grammar: [a compact guide to the basics
of Hungarian grammar]. Törkenczy, Miklós (2002). Budapest:
Corvina. ISBN 963-13-5131-9.
- Hungarian verbs and essentials of grammar: a practical
guide to the mastery of Hungarian (2nd ed.). Törkenczy, Miklós
(1999). Budapest: Corvina; Lincolnwood, [Ill.]: Passport Books.
ISBN 963-13-4778-8.
- Hungarian: an essential grammar. Rounds, Carol (2001).
London; New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-22612-0.
- Hungarian: Descriptive grammar. Kenesei, István,
Robert M. Vago, and Anna Fenyvesi (1998). London; New York:
Routledge. ISBN 0-415-02139-1.
- Hungarian Language Learning References (including the
short reviews of three of the above books)
- Noun Declension Tables - HUNGARIAN. Budapest: Pons. Klett. ISBN 9789639641044
- Verb Conjugation Tables - HUNGARIAN. Budapest:
Pons. Klett.
ISBN 9789639641037
References
- Lebedynsky, Iaroslav. Les Nomades: Les peuples nomades de
la steppe des origines aux invasions mongoles. Paris: Errance,
2003: p. 191
- Sugar, P.F..A History of Hungary. Bloomington, IN:
Indiana University Press, 1996: p. 9
- Maxwell, A.Magyarization, Language Planning and Whorf: The
word Uhor as a Case Study in Linguistic RelativismMultilingua
23: 319, 2004.
- Marcantonio, Angela. The Uralic Language Family: Facts,
Myths and Statistics. Blackwell Publishing, 2002: p. 19
- A nyelv és a nyelvek ("Language and languages"),
edited by István Kenesei. Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, 2004, ISBN
963-05-7959-6, p. 77)
- The first two volumes of the 20-volume series were
introduced on 13 November, 2006, at the Hungarian Academy of
Sciences (in Hungarian)
- "Hungarian is not difficult" (interview with
Ádám Nádasdy)
- A nyelv és a nyelvek ("Language and languages"),
edited by István Kenesei. Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, 2004, ISBN
963-05-7959-6, p. 86)
- A nyelv és a nyelvek ("Language and languages"),
edited by István Kenesei. Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, 2004, ISBN
963-05-7959-6, pp. 76 and 86)
- The Structure and Development of the Finnish Language,
The Uralic and Altaic Series: 1960-1993 V.1-150, By Denis Sinor,
John R. Krueger, Lauri Hakulinen, Gustav Bayerle, Translated by
John R. Krueger, Compiled by Gustav Bayerle, Contributor Denis
Sinor, Published by Routledge, 1997 ISBN 0700703802, 9780700703807,
383 pages. p. 307
- It's written in chapter Testrészek
- Berlin, B and Kay, P (1969). "Basic Color Terms." Berkeley and
Los Angeles: University of California Press
- Zsirai Miklós: Őstörténeti
csodabogarak. Budapest, 1943.
-
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Swadesh_lists_for_Finno-Ugric_languages
External links
- Hungarian - A Strange Cake on the Menu -
article by Nádasdy
Ádám
- Ethnologue report for Hungarian
- Introduction to Hungarian
- Hungarian Profile
- "The Hungarian Language: A Short Descriptive
Grammar" by Beáta Megyesi (PDF document)
- A very good list of formative suffixes in
Hungarian
- The old site of the Indiana University Institute of
Hungarian Studies (various resources)
- The relationship between the Finnish and the Hungarian
languages
- Hungarian Language Learning References on the
Hungarian Language Page (short reviews of useful books)
- Hungarian Language Review at
How-to-learn-any-language.com
- One of the oldest Hungarian texts - A Halotti
Beszéd (The Funeral Oration)
- Live
stream of Hungarian news radio station InfoRádió - example of
Hungarian speech
- Hungarian Reference (a grammatical guide)
- A short English-Hungarian-Japanese
phraselist(renewal) incl.sound file
- free-dictionary-translation - English <->
Hungarian, African, Chinese, Dutch, French, Gealic, German, Greek,
Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latin, Portuguese, Polish,
Russian, Swedish, Spanish, Czech, Turkish,
Vietnamese</->
- Wikihu (a wiki on Hungarian grammar, in french)
Encyclopaedia Humana Hungarica
Dictionaries
Online translators
Online language courses