Hungarian language

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Hungarian ( magyar nyelv ) is the official language of Hungary and one of the 24 official languages of the European Union. Outside Hungary it is also spoken by communities of Hungarians in the countries that today make up Slovakia, western Ukraine, central and western Romania (Transylvania and Partium), northern Serbia (Vojvodina), southern Poland, northern Croatia, and northern Slovenia due to the effects of the Treaty of Trianon which resulted in many ethnic Hungarians being displaced from their homes and communities in the former territories of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It is also spoken by Hungarian diaspora communities worldwide, especially in North America (particularly the United States). Like Finnish and Estonian, Hungarian belongs to the Uralic language family branch, its closest relatives being Mansi and Khanty. It is the most widely-spoken of the several European languages not part of the Indo-European family.

Video Hungarian language

Classification

Hungarian is a member of the Uralic language family. Linguistic connections between Hungarian and other Uralic languages were noticed in the 1670s, and the family itself (then called Finno-Ugric) was established in 1717, but the classification of Hungarian as a Uralic/Finno-Ugric rather than Turkic language continued to be a matter of impassioned political controversy throughout the 18th and into the 19th centuries. Hungarian has traditionally been assigned to an Ugric branch within Uralic/Finno-Ugric, along with the Mansi and Khanty languages of western Siberia (Khanty-Mansia region), but it is no longer clear that it is a valid group. When the Samoyed languages were determined to be part of the family, it was thought at first that Finnic and Ugric (Finno-Ugric) were closer to each other than to the Samoyed branch of the family, but that now is frequently questioned.

The name of Hungary could be a result of regular sound changes of Ungrian/Ugrian, and the fact that the Eastern Slavs referred to Hungarians as ?gry/?grove (sg. ?grin?) seemed to confirm that. 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 /a:/ corresponds to Khanty /o/ in certain positions, and Hungarian /h/ corresponds to Khanty /x/, while Hungarian final /z/ corresponds to Khanty final /t/. For example, Hungarian ház [ha:z] "house" vs. Khanty xot [xot] "house", and Hungarian száz [sa:z] "hundred" vs. Khanty sot [sot] "hundred". The distance between the Ugric and Finnic languages is greater, but the correspondences are also regular.

Early classification

During the latter half of the 19th century, a competing hypothesis proposed a Turkic affinity of Hungarian. Following an academic debate known as Az ugor-török háború ("the Ugric-Turkic battle"), the Finno-Ugric hypothesis was concluded the sounder of the two, foremost based on work by the German linguist Josef Budenz.

Maps Hungarian language

History

Prehistory

Scholarly consensus

The traditional view argues that the Hungarian language separated from its Ugric relatives in the first half of the 1st millennium b.c., in western Siberia, east of the southern Urals. The Hungarians gradually changed their lifestyle from settled hunters to nomadic pastoralists (cattle, sheep), probably as a result of early contacts with Iranian nomads (Scythians, Sarmatians). In Hungarian, Iranian loans date back to the time immediately following the breakup of Ugric and probably span well over a millennium. Among these include tehén 'cow' (cf. Avestan dhaénu), tíz 'ten' (cf. Avestan dasa), tej 'milk' (cf. Persian dáje 'wet nurse'), and nád 'reed' (from late Middle Iranian; cf. Middle Persian n?y).

Increasing archaeological evidence from present-day southern Bashkortostan found in the previous decades confirms the existence of Hungarian settlements between the Volga River and Ural Mountains. The Onogurs (and Bulgars) later had a great influence on the language, especially between the 5th-9th centuries. This layer of Turkic loans is large and varied (e.g. szó 'word', from Turkic, daru 'crane', from the related Permic languages), and includes words borrowed from Oghur Turkic, e.g. borjú 'calf' (cf. Chuvash p?ru, p?r?v vs. Turkish buza??), dél 'noon; south' (cf. Chuvash t?l vs. Turkish dial. dü?). Many words related to agriculture, to state administration or even to family relations have such backgrounds. Hungarian syntax and grammar were not influenced in a similarly dramatic way during these 300 years.

After the arrival of the Hungarians into the Carpathian Basin the language came into contact with different speech communities (mainly Slavic, Turkic, German). Turkic loans from this period come mainly from the Pechenegs and Cumanians who settled in Hungary during the 12th-13th centuries; e.g., koboz 'cobza' (cf. Turkish kopuz 'lute'), komondor 'mop dog' (< *kumandur < Cuman). Hungarian borrowed many words from especially the neighbouring Slavic languages (e.g., tégla 'brick', mák 'poppy', and karácsony 'Christmas'). In exchange, these languages also borrowed words from Hungarian, e.g. Serbo-Croatian a?ov from Hung ásó 'spade'. Approximately 1.6% of the Romanian lexicon is of Hungarian origin.

Alternative views

A number of scholars dispute the Scholarly consensus, such as Hungarian historian and archaeologist Gyula László who claimed that geological data from pollen analysis seems to contradict placing the ancient homeland of the Hungarians near the Urals.

On the basis of the growing genetic evidence, the accepted origin theory is contested by geneticists too. Neparaczki argues that the Hungarian conquerors of the late 9th century were, in fact, Hunnic tribes and if he accepts the traditional view which states that the Hungarian language got into the Carpathian Basin by the Magyars, then the Huns spoke Hungarian. The biggest problem of this theory is that the paleogenetic researches can not prove or disprove the origin of languages.

Dreisziger assumes that the Hungarian language might have been spoken by the late Avars and that Árpád's "Magyars" were a small-numbered Turkic-speaking elite who ruled over Finno-Ugric proto-Hungarian speaking population during the migrations.

Old Hungarian

The first written accounts of Hungarian, mostly personal and place names, are dated back to the 10th century. Hungarians also had their own writing system, the Old Hungarian script, but no significant texts remain from that time, as the usual medium of writing, wooden sticks, is perishable.

The Kingdom of Hungary was founded in 1000, by Stephen I of Hungary. The country was a western-styled Christian (Roman Catholic) state, and Latin held an important position, as was usual in the Middle Ages. The Latin script was adopted to write the Hungarian language and Latin influenced the language. The earliest remaining fragments of the language are found in the establishing charter of the abbey of Tihany from 1055, mixed into Latin text. The first extant text fully written in Hungarian is the Funeral Sermon and Prayer, written in the 1190s. The orthography of these early texts was considerably different from the one used today, but when hearing a reconstructed spoken version, contemporary Hungarians can still understand a large part of it, though both vocabulary and grammar has changed to some extent since then. More extensive Hungarian literature arose after 1300. The earliest known example of Hungarian religious poetry is the 14th-century Lamentations of Mary. The first Bible translation is the Hussite Bible from the 1430s.

The standard language lost its diphthongs, and several postpositions transformed into suffixes, such as reá "onto" (the phrase utu rea "onto the way" found in the 1055 text would later become útra). There were also changes in the system of vowel harmony. At one time, Hungarian used six verb tenses; today, only two are commonly used (present and past; future is formed with an auxiliary verb and is usually not counted as a separate tense).

Modern Hungarian

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 rule of part of Hungary between 1541 and 1699.

In the 18th century a group of writers, most notably Ferenc Kazinczy, began the process of language renewal (Hungarian: nyelvújítás). Some words were shortened (gy?zedelem > gy?zelem, '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 produced more than ten thousand words, most of which are used actively today.

The 19th and 20th centuries saw further standardization of the language, and differences between the mutually comprehensible dialects gradually lessened. In 1920, by signing the Treaty of Trianon, Hungary lost 71% of its territory, and along with these, 33% of the ethnic Hungarian population. Today, the language is official in Hungary, and regionally also in Romania, in Slovakia, in Serbia, in Austria and in Slovenia.

src: dailynewshungary.com

Geographic distribution

Source: National censuses, Ethnologue

Hungarian has about 13 million native speakers, of whom more than 9.8 million live in Hungary. According to the 2011 Hungarian census 9,896,333 people (99.6% of the total population) speak Hungarian, of whom 9,827,875 people (98.9%) speak it as a first language, while 68,458 people (0.7%) speak it as a second language. About 2.2 million speakers live in areas that were part of the Kingdom of Hungary before the Treaty of Trianon (1920). Of these, the largest group lives in Transylvania, the western half of present-day Romania, where there are approximately 1.25 million Hungarians. There are large Hungarian communities also in Slovakia, Serbia and Ukraine, and Hungarians can also be found in Austria, Croatia, and Slovenia, as well as about a million additional people scattered in other parts of the world. For example, there are more than one hundred thousand Hungarian speakers in the Hungarian American community and 1.5 million with Hungarian ancestry in the United States.

Official status

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: Hodo?, Dobrovnik and Lendava, along with Slovene. Hungarian is officially recognized as a minority or regional language in Austria, Croatia, Romania, Zakarpattia in Ukraine, and Slovakia. In Romania it is a recognized minority language used at local level in 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 mentioned but not listed separately by Ethnologue, is spoken primarily in Bac?u County in eastern Romania. The Csángó Hungarian group has been largely isolated from other Hungarian people, and they therefore preserved features that closely resemble earlier forms of Hungarian.

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Phonetics and phonology

Hungarian has 14 vowel phonemes and 25 consonant phonemes. The vowel phonemes can be grouped as pairs of short and long vowels, e.g. o and ó. Most of these pairs have a similar pronunciation, only varying significantly in their duration. However, the pairs a/á and e/é differ both in closedness and length.

Consonant length is also distinctive in Hungarian. Most of the consonant phonemes can occur as geminates.

The sound voiced palatal plosive /?/, written ?gy?, sounds similar to 'd' in British English 'duty' (in fact, more similar to the Macedonian phoneme '?' as in '?????'). It occurs in the name of the country, "Magyarország" (Hungary), pronounced /'m???rorsa:?/.

Single /r/s are tapped (e.g. akkora 'of that size'), double /r/s are trilled (e.g. akkorra 'by that time'), similar to Spanish.

Prosody

Primary stress is always on the first syllable of a word, as in the related Finnish languages and in the neighbouring languages Slovak and Czech. There is secondary stress on other syllables in compounds, e.g. viszontlátásra ("goodbye") pronounced /'visont?la:ta:?r?/. Elongated vowels in non-initial syllables may seem to be stressed to the ear of an English speaker, since length and stress correlate in English.

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Grammar

Hungarian is an agglutinative language. It uses various affixes, mainly suffixes, but also some prefixes and a circumfix to change a word's meaning and grammatical function.

Vowel harmony

Hungarian uses vowel harmony when attaching suffixes to words. This means that most suffixes have two or three different forms and the choice between them depends on the vowels of the head word. There are some minor and unpredictable exceptions to this rule.

Nouns

Nouns have a large number of cases (up to 18, depending on definition), but in general, they are formed regularly with suffixes. The nominative case is unmarked (az alma 'the apple'), and for example, the accusative is marked with the suffix -t (az almát '[I eat] the apple'). Half of the 18 cases express a combination of the source-location-target and surface-inside-proximity ternary distinctions (three times three cases), e.g. there is a separate case ending -ból/-b?l meaning a combination of source and insideness, i.e. 'from inside of'.

Possession is expressed using a possessive suffix on the possessed object and not on the possessor (Peter's apple becomes Péter almája, literally 'Peter apple-his'). Noun plurals are formed using the suffix -k (az almák 'the apples')--however, following a numeral, the singular is used (e.g. két alma 'two apples', literally 'two apple'; not *két almák).

Unlike English, Hungarian has no prepositions; instead, it uses case suffixes and postpositions.

There are two types of articles in Hungarian, definite and indefinite, roughly corresponding to the English equivalents.

Adjectives

Adjectives precede nouns (a piros alma 'the red apple'). They have three degrees: positive (piros 'red'), comparative (pirosabb 'redder'), and superlative ( a legpirosabb 'the reddest'). If the noun takes the plural or a case, the adjective, used attributively, does not agree with it: a piros almák 'the red apples'. However, when the adjective is used in a predicative sense, it must agree with the noun: az almák pirosak 'the apples are red'. Adjectives in themselves can behave as nouns (e.g. take case suffixes): Melyik almát kéred? - A pirosat. 'Which apple would you like? - The red one.'

Verbs

Verbs are conjugated according to two tenses (past and present), to three moods (indicative, conditional and imperative-subjunctive), to two numbers (singular or plural), to three persons (first, second and third) and to whether the object (if any) is definite. This latter feature is the most characteristic: the definite conjugation is used with a transitive verb whose (direct) object is definite (Péter eszi az almát. "Peter eats the apple.") and the indefinite conjugation either for a verb with an indefinite direct object (Péter eszik egy almát. "Peter eats an apple.") or for a verb without an object. (Péter eszik. "Peter eats.") Since conjugation expresses the person and number, personal pronouns are usually omitted, unless they are emphasized.

The Present tense is unmarked, while the past is formed using the suffix -t or -tt: hall 'hears'; hallott 'heard', past. Future may be expressed either with the present tense (usually with a word defining the time of the event, such as holnap 'tomorrow'), or using the auxiliary verb fog (similar to the English 'will') together with the verb's infinitive.

The indicative mood and the conditional mood are used both in the present and the past tenses. Conditional past is expressed using the conjugated past form and the auxiliary word volna (hallott volna 'would have heard'). The imperative mood is used only with the present tense.

Verbs have verbal prefixes, also known as coverbs. Most of them define direction of movement (as lemegy "goes down", felmegy "goes up"). Some verbal prefixes give an aspect to the verb, such as the prefix meg-, which generally marks telicity.

Word order

The neutral word order is subject-verb-object (SVO). However, Hungarian is a topic-prominent language, which means that word order depends not only on syntax, but also on the topic-comment structure of the sentence (e.g. what aspect is assumed to be known and what is emphasized).

A Hungarian sentence generally has the following order: topic, comment (or focus), verb, other parts.

Putting something into the topic means that the proposition is only stated for that particular thing or aspect, and implies that the proposition is not true for some others. For example, in the sentence "Az almát János látja." ('John sees the apple', more exactly, 'It is John who sees the apple.', literally "The apple John sees."), the apple is in the topic, implying that other objects may not be seen by him, but by other people (the pear may be seen by Peter). The topic part may be empty.

Putting something in the focus means that it is the new information for the listener that they may not have known or where their knowledge must be corrected. For example, in the sentence "Én vagyok az apád." ('I am your father', more exactly, 'It is I who am your father.') from the movie The Empire Strikes Back, the pronoun I (én) is in the focus, implying that this is new information, and the listener thought that another person was his father.

Note that sometimes this is described as Hungarian having free word order, even though different word orders are generally not interchangeable and the neutral order is not always correct to use. Besides word order, intonation is also different with different topic-comment structures. The topic usually has a rising intonation and the focus has a falling intonation. In the following examples the topic is marked with italics, and the focus (comment) with boldface.

• János látja az almát. - 'John sees the apple.' Neutral sentence.
• János látja az almát. - 'John does see the apple.' - But Peter may not. (Putting John to the topic indicates that the proposition may not be true if we replace the topic, in this case John, by something else)
• János látja az almát. - 'It is John who sees the apple.' - The listener may have thought it was Peter.
• János az almát látja. - 'What John sees is the apple.' - It is specifically the apple that John sees and not the pear. By contrast Peter may see the pear.
• Az almát látja János. - 'The apple is indeed seen by John.' or more exactly 'Considering the apple, it is seeing what happens to it by John - But the pear may not be seen by him (but for example smelled).
• Az almát János látja. - 'It is by John that the apple is seen.' - It is not by Peter. But the pear may be seen by Peter.

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Politeness

Hungarian has a four-tiered system for expressing levels of politeness. From highest to lowest:

• 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 speakers wish to distance themselves from the person they address. A boss could also address a subordinate as maga. Aside from the different pronoun it is grammatically the same as "önözés".
• Néni/bácsi (tetszikezés): This is a somewhat affectionate way of expressing politeness and is grammatically the same as "önözés" or "magázódás", but adds a certain verb in auxiliary role "tetszik" ("like") to support the main verb of the sentence. For example, children are supposed to address adults who are not parent, close friends or close relatives by using "tetszik" ("you like"): "Hogy vagy?" ("How are you?") here becomes "Hogy tetszik lenni?" ("How do you like to be?"). The elderly, especially women, are generally addressed this way, even by adults.
• Te (tegezés, tegez?dés or pertu, per tu from Latin): Used generally, i.e. with persons with whom none of the above forms of politeness is required, and, in religious contexts, to address God. Interestingly, the highest rank, the king, was traditionally addressed "per tu" by all, peasants and noblemen alike, though with Hungary not having had 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, and adults speaking to children; it 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 in most contemporary dialects) on the Internet, "tegezés" is also becoming the standard way to address people over the Internet, regardless of politeness.

The four-tiered system has somewhat been eroded due to the recent expansion of "tegez?dés".

Some anomalies emerged with the arrival of multinational companies who have addressed their customers in the te (least polite) form right from the beginning of their presence in Hungary. A typical example is the Swedish furniture shop IKEA, whose web site and other publications address the customers in te form. When a news site asked IKEA--using the te form--why they address their customers this way, IKEA's PR Manager explained in his answer--using the ön form--that their way of communication reflects IKEA's open-mindedness and the Swedish culture. However IKEA in France use the most polite (vous) form. Another example is the communication of Telenor (a mobile network operator) towards its customers. Telenor chose to communicate towards business customers in the polite ön form while all other customers are addressed in the less polite te form.

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Lexicon

Giving an accurate 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.

Parts of the Lexicon can be organized using word-bushes. (See an example on the right.) The words in these bushes share a common root, are related through inflection, derivation and compounding, and are usually broadly related in meaning.

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 elää), the numbers kett? 'two', három 'three', négy 'four' (cf. Mansi ????? kitig, ????? khurum, ???? 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).

Words for elementary kinship and nature are more Ugric, less r-Turkic and less Slavic. Agricultural words are about 50% r-Turkic and 50% Slavic; pastoral terms are more r-Turkic, less Ugric and less Slavic. Finally, Christian and state terminology is more Slavic and less r-Turkic. The Slavic is most probably proto-Slovakian and/or -Slovenian. This is easily understood in the Uralic paradigm, proto-Magyars were first similar to Ob-Ugors who were mainly hunters, fishers & gatherers, but with some horses, too. Then they accultured to Bulgarian r-Turks, so the older layer of agriculture words (wine, beer, wheat, barley &c.) are purely r-Turkic, and also lots of termini of statemanship & religion were, too.

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 compounds or derived. Most derivation is with suffixes, but there is a small set of derivational prefixes as well.

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 (rumble) -> mennydörög (thundering)

Nap (Sun) + sütötte (lit by) -> 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 'complex, obsolete procedures').

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 the position of the Sun during the day in the Northern hemisphere.

• 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

Two words for "red"

There are two basic words for "red" in Hungarian: "piros" and "vörös" (variant: "veres"; compare with Estonian "verev" or Finnish "punainen"). (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" (Finnish and Estonian "veri"). When they refer to an actual difference in colour (as on a colour chart), "vörös" usually refers to the deeper (darker and/or more red and less orange) hue of red. In English similar differences exist between "scarlet" and "red". While many languages have multiple names for this colour, often Hungarian scholars assume this is unique 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 does not 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 (but the red flag and its variants translate to "vörös"), etc.
• Expressions where "red" typically translates to "vörös": Red Sea, Red Square, Red Army, Red Baron, Erik the Red, 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, 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), the red posterior of a baboon, red meat, regular onion (not the red onion, which is "lila"), litmus paper (in acid), cities, countries, or other political entities associated with leftist movements (e.g. Red Vienna, Red Russia), etc.

Kinship terms

The Hungarian words for brothers and sisters are differentiated based upon relative age. There is also a general word for sibling, testvér, from test = body and vér = blood--i.e. originating from the same body and blood.

(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 several ancestors and descendants:

The words for "boy" and "girl" are applied with possessive suffixes. Nevertheless, the terms are differentiated with different declension or lexemes:

Fia is only used in this, irregular possessive form; it has no nominative on its own (see inalienable possession). 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:

Extremely long words

• megszentségteleníthetetlenségeskedéseitekért

Partition to root and suffixes with explanations:

Translation: "for your [plural] repeated pretending to be indesecrable"

The above word is often considered to be the longest word in Hungarian, although there are longer words like:

• legeslegmegszentségteleníttethetetlenebbjeitekként

leges-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"

Words of such length 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 (see agglutinative language). 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 or holy). 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.

Hungarian words in English

The English word best known as being of Hungarian origin is probably paprika, from Serbo-Croatian papar "pepper" and the Hungarian diminutive -ka. The most common however is coach, from kocsi, originally kocsi szekér "car from/in the style of Kocs". Others are:

• shako, from csákó, from csákósüveg "peaked cap"
• sabre, from szablya
• heyduck, from hajdúk, plural of hajdú "brigand"
• tolpatch, from talpas "foot-soldier", apparently derived from talp "sole".

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Writing system

The Hungarian language was originally written in right-to-left Old Hungarian runes, superficially similar in appearance to the better-known futhark runes but unrelated. 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 and left-to-right order. 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 ? and ? to represent front vowels. Sometimes (usually as a result of a technical glitch on a computer) ?ô? or ?õ? is used for ???, and ?û? for ???. 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 ??? and ???.) Unicode includes them, and so they can be used on the Internet.

Additionally, the letter pairs ?ny?, ?ty?, and ?gy? represent the palatal consonants /?/, /c/, and /?/ (a little like the "d+y" sounds in British "duke" or American "would you") - a bit like saying "d" with the tongue pointing to the palate.

Hungarian uses ?s? for /?/ and ?sz? for /s/, which is the reverse of Polish usage. The letter ?zs? is /?/ and ?cs? is /t??/. These digraphs are considered single letters in the alphabet. The letter ?ly? is also a "single letter digraph", but is pronounced like /j/ (English ?y?), and appears mostly in old words. The letters ?dz? and ?dzs? /d??/ 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: ?sz? + ?sz? = ?ssz?, e.g. m?vésszel ("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: jegy + gy?r? = jegygy?r? ("engagement/wedding ring", jegy means "sign", "mark". The term jegyben lenni/járni means "to be engaged"; gy?r? means "ring").

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 (except for etymological spellings and "ly, j" representing /j/).

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Word order

The word order is basically 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 surname (general, deriving from the family) comes first and the given name comes last. If a second given name is used, this follows the first given name.

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 neighbouring countries of Hungary - where there is a significant Hungarian population - 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 immigrated to the USA in the 1930s and thus became known 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). If a second given name is present, it becomes a middle name and is usually written out in full, rather than 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. (means: When Kiss János was in Los Angeles he saw John Travolta.)

The Hungarian name Kiss János is in the Hungarian name order (János is equivalent to 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 "Hungarianised": Goethe János Farkas (originally Johann Wolfgang Goethe). This usage sounds odd today, when only a few well-known personalities are referred to using their Hungarianised 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 historical religious personalities (including popes), however, are always Hungarianised 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.

Japanese names, which are usually written in western order in the rest of Europe, retain their original order in Hungarian, e. g. Kuroszava Akira instead of Akira Kurosawa.

Date and time

The Hungarian convention for date and time is to go from the generic to the specific: 1. year, 2. month, 3. day, 4. hour, 5. minute, (6. second)

The year and day are always written in Arabic numerals, followed by a full stop. The month can be written by its full name or can be abbreviated, or even denoted by Roman or Arabic numerals. Except for the first case (month written by its full name), the month is followed by a full stop. Usually, when the month is written in letters, there is no leading zero before the day. On the other hand, when the month is written in Arabic numerals, a leading zero is common, but not obligatory. Except at the beginning of a sentence, the name of the month always begins with a lower-case letter.

Hours, minutes, and seconds are separated by a colon (H:m:s). Fractions of a second are separated by a full stop from the rest of the time. Hungary generally uses the 24-hour clock format, but in verbal (and written) communication 12-hour clock format can also be used. See below for usage examples.

Date and time may be separated by a comma or simply written one after the other.

• 2008. február 9. 16:23:42 or 2008. február 9., 16:23:42
• 2008. febr. 9.
• 2008. 02. 09. or 2008. 2. 9. (rarely)
• 2008. II. 9.

Date separated by hyphen is also spreading, especially on datestamps. Here - just like the version separated by full stops - leading zeros are in use.

• 2008-02-09

When only hours and minutes are written in a sentence (so not only "displaying" time), these parts can be separated by a full stop (e.g. "Találkozzunk 10.35-kor." - "Let's meet at 10.35."), or it is also regular to write hours in normal size, and minutes put in superscript (and not necessarily) underlined (e.g. "A találkozó 10³⁵-kor kezd?dik." or "A találkozó 10³⁵-kor kezd?dik." - "The meeting begins at 10.35.").

Also, in verbal and written communication it is common to use "délel?tt" (literally "before noon") and "délután" (lit. "after noon") abbreviated as "de." and "du." respectively. Délel?tt and délután is said or written before the time, e.g. "Délután 4 óra van." - "It's 4 p.m.". However e.g. "délel?tt 5 óra" (should mean "5 a.m.") or "délután 10 óra" (should mean "10 p.m.") are never used, because at these times the sun is not up, instead "hajnal" ("dawn"), "reggel" ("morning"), "este" ("evening") and "éjjel" ("night") is used, however there are no exact rules for the use of these, as everybody uses them according to their habits (e.g. somebody may have woken up at 5 a.m. so he/she says "Reggel 6-kor ettem." - "I had food at *morning 6.", and somebody woke up at 11 a.m. so he/she says "Hajnali 6-kor még aludtam." - "I was still sleeping at *dawn 6."). Roughly, these expressions mean these times:

• * "Dél" and "éjfél" mean these exact times, so using time after them is incorrect. So there is no "Éjfél 0-kor még buliztunk" ("We were still partying at *midnight 0.") or "Dél 12-kor süt a nap." ("The sun shines at *noon 12."). Instead "Éjfélkor még buliztunk." and "Délben süt a nap." is correct. (More confusingly, one can say "Déli 12-kor süt a nap.", meaning "The sun shines at 12 of noon.", i.e. "The sun shines at 12, which is the 12 of daytime.") "Délen süt a nap" on the other hand means "The sun shines in the south", as Dél means both noon and south.

Addresses

Although address formatting is increasingly being influenced by standard European conventions, the traditional Hungarian style is:

Budapest, Deák Ferenc tér 1. 1052

So the order is: 1) settlement (most general), 2) street/square/etc. (more specific), 3) house number (most specific) 4)(HU-)postcode. The house number may be followed by the storey and door numbers. The HU- part before the postcode is only for incoming postal traffic from foreign countries. Addresses on envelopes and postal parcels should be formatted and placed on the right side as follows:

Name of the recipient
Settlement
Street address (up to door number if necessary)
(HU-)postcode

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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.

Numbers

Source: Wiktionary

Time

Source: Wiktionary

Source:Wiktionary

Conversation

• Hungarian (person, language): magyar [m???r]
• Hello!:
  • Formal, when addressing a stranger: "Good day!": Jó napot (kívánok)! [jo:n?pot ki:va:nok].
  • Informal, when addressing a close acquaintance: Szia! [si?]
• Good-bye!: Viszontlátásra! [visontla:ta:?r?] (formal) (see above), Viszlát! [visla:t] (semi-informal), Szia! (informal: same stylistic remark as for "Hello!" )
• Excuse me: Elnézést! [?lne:ze:?t]
• Please:
  • Kérem (szépen) [ke:r?m se:p?n] (This literally means "I'm asking (it/you) nicely", as in German Bitte schön. See next for a more common form of the polite request.)
  • Legyen szíves! [l???n siv??] (literally: "Be (so) kind!")
• I would like ____, please: Szeretnék ____ [s?r?tne:k] (this example illustrates the use of the conditional tense, as a common form of a polite request; it literally means "I would like".)
• Sorry!: Bocsánat! [bot?a:n?t]
• Thank you: Köszönöm [køsønøm]
• that/this: az [?z], ez [?z]
• How much?: Mennyi? [m??:i]
• How much does it cost?: Mennyibe kerül? [m??:ib? k?ryl]
• Yes: Igen [i??n]
• No: Nem [n?m]
• I do not understand: Nem értem [n?m e:rt?m]
• I do not know: Nem tudom [n?m tudom]
• Where's the toilet?:
  • Hol (van) a vécé? [hol v?n ? ve:tse:] (vécé/ve:tse: is the Hungarian pronunciation of the English abbreviation of "Water Closet")
  • Hol (van) a mosdó? [hol v?n ? mo?do:] - more polite (and word-for-word) version
• generic toast: Egészségünkre! [??e:?:e:?y?kr?] (literally: "To our health!")
• juice: gyümölcslé [?ymølt?le:]
• water: víz [vi:z]
• wine: bor [bor]
• beer: sör [?ør]
• tea: tea [t??]
• milk: tej [t?j]
• Do you speak English?: Beszél(sz) angolul? [b?se:l / b?se:ls ???olul] 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 [s?r?tl?k]
• Help!: Segítség! [???i:t?e:?]
• It is needed: kell
• I need to go: Mennem kell

Controversy over origins

Today the scientific consensus among linguists is that Hungarian is part of the Uralic family of languages. 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 cohabitation. 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.

There have been attempts, dismissed by mainstream linguists as pseudoscientific comparisons, to show that Hungarian is related to other languages including Hebrew, Hunnic, Sumerian, Egyptian, Etruscan, Basque, Persian, Pelasgian, Greek, Chinese, Sanskrit, English, Tibetan, Magar, Quechua, Armenian, Japanese and at least 40 other languages.

See also

• Hungarian grammar
• Hungarian verbs
• Hungarian noun phrase
• Hungarian phonology
• History of the Hungarian language
• Hungarian dialects
• Hungarian Cultural Institute
• List of English words of Hungarian origin
• The BABEL Speech Corpus
• Magyar szótár (Dictionary of the Hungarian Language)

Bibliography

Courses

• MagyarOK - Text book and exercise book for beginners. Szita, Szilvia; Pelcz, Katalin (2013). Pécs; Pécsi Tudományegyetem. MagyarOK website ISBN 978-963-7178-68-9.
• Colloquial Hungarian - The complete course for beginners. Rounds, Carol H.; Sólyom, Erika (2002). London; New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-24258-4.

This book gives an introduction to the Hungarian language in 15 chapters. The dialogues are available on 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.

• Hungarolingua 1 - Magyar nyelvkönyv. Hoffmann, István; et al. (1996). Debreceni Nyári Egyetem. ISBN 963-472-083-8
• Hungarolingua 2 - Magyar nyelvkönyv. Hlavacska, Edit; et al. (2001). Debreceni Nyári Egyetem. ISBN 963-03-6698-3
• Hungarolingua 3 - Magyar nyelvkönyv. Hlavacska, Edit; et al. (1999). Debreceni Nyári Egyetem. ISBN 963-472-083-8

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 and therefore unsuitable for self study. There is an accompanying 'dictionary' with translations of the Hungarian vocabulary into English, German, and French for the words used in the first two books.

• "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

• Gyakorló magyar nyelvtan / A Practical Hungarian grammar (2009, 2010). Szita Szilvia, Görbe Tamás. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó. 978 963 05 8703 7.
• A practical Hungarian grammar (3rd, rev. ed.). Keresztes, László (1999). Debrecen: Debreceni Nyári Egyetem. ISBN 963-472-300-4.
• Simplified Grammar of the Hungarian Language (1882). Ignatius Singer. London: Trübner & Co.
• 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 (2nd ed.). Rounds, Carol (2009). London; New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-77737-2.
• 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 978-963-9641-04-4
• Verb Conjugation Tables - HUNGARIAN. Budapest: Pons. Klett. ISBN 978-963-9641-03-7

Others

• Abondolo, Daniel Mario: Hungarian Inflectional Morphology. Akadémiai publishing. Budapest, 1988. ISBN 9630546302
• Balázs, Géza: The Story of Hungarian. A Guide to the Language. Translated by Thomas J. DeKornfeld. Corvina publishing. Budapest, 1997. ISBN 9631343626
• Stephanides, Éva H. (ed.): Contrasting English with Hungarian. Akadémiai publishing. Budapest, 1986. ISBN 9630539500

Notes

References

External links

• Free downloadable Hungarian teaching and learning material
• Introduction to Hungarian
• Hungarian Profile
• List of formative suffixes in Hungarian
• The relationship between the Finnish and the Hungarian languages
• Hungarian Language Review at How-to-learn-any-language.com
• "The Hungarian Language: A Short Descriptive Grammar" by Beáta Megyesi (PDF document)
• The old site of the Indiana University Institute of Hungarian Studies (various resources)
• Hungarian Language Learning References on the Hungarian Language Page (short reviews of useful books)
• One of the oldest Hungarian texts - A Halotti Beszéd (The Funeral Oration)
• WikiLang - Hungarian Page (Hungarian grammar / lessons, in English)
• Hungarian Swadesh list of basic vocabulary words (from Wiktionary's Swadesh-list appendix)
• Basic Hungarian language course (book + audio files) USA Foreign Service Institute (FSI)
• Free Hungarian lessons

Encyclopaedia Humana Hungarica

• Introduction to the History of the Language; The Pre-Hungarian Period; The Early Hungarian Period; The Old Hungarian Period
• The Linguistic Records of the Early Old Hungarian Period; The Linguistic System of the Age
• The Old Hungarian Period; The System of the Language of the Old Hungarian Period
• The Late Old Hungarian Period; The System of the Language
• The First Half of the Middle Hungarian Period; Turkish Loan Words

Dictionaries

• Hungarian <-> English created by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences - Computer and Automation Research Institute MTA SZTAKI (also includes dictionaries for the following languages to and from Hungarian : German, French, Italian, Dutch, and Polish)
• bab.la - Online Hungarian-English dictionary and language learning portal
• English-Hungarian-Finnish - three-language freely editable online dictionary
• Collection of Hungarian Technical Dictionaries
• Hungarian bilingual dictionaries
• Hungarian-English dictionary
• English-Hungarian dictionary
• Hungarian Verb Conjugation

Source of the article : Wikipedia