Contents
Hungarian language
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hungarianmagyar
Pronunciation: [ˈmɒɟɒr̪]
Spoken in: Hungary and areas of Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Israel, Ukraine, Croatia, Austria, and Slovenia
Total speakers: 15 million
Ranking: 57
Language family: Uralic
Finno-Ugric
Ugric
Hungarian
Writing system: Latin alphabet (Hungarian variant)
Official status
Official language in: Hungary, European Union, Slovenia (regional language), Serbia (regional language), Austria (regional language), Various localities in Romania, Some official rights in Ukraine, Croatia and Slovakia
Regulated by: Research Institute for Linguistics of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
Language codes
ISO 639-1: hu
ISO 639-2: hun
ISO 639-3: hun
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.
Hungarian language
Alphabet, including ő ű and
cs dz dzs gy ly ny sz ty zs
Phonetics and phonology
Vowel harmony
Grammar
(Noun phrases · Verbs)
T-V distinction
Regulatory body
Hungarian names
Language history
(Sound correspondences)
Tongue-twisters
Hungarian pronunciation of English
Old Hungarian script
English words from Hungarian
Hungarian (magyar nyelv 
listen (help·info)) is a Uralic language (more specifically a Ugric language) unrelated to most other languages in Europe. It is spoken in Hungary and by the Hungarian minorities in seven neighbouring countries. The Hungarian name for the language is Magyar (IPA: [ˈmɒɟɒr̪]).
Hungarian has long been of great interest to linguists as one of the small number of modern European languages that do not belong to the Indo-European language family. Due to the Uralic heritage, Hungarian often sounds completely foreign to speakers of Indo-European languages. It is sometimes considered to be one of the most difficult languages for speakers of English to learn well.[1]
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. 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). As with many European languages, there are a few hundred thousand speakers of Hungarian in the United States as well.
History
Classification
Hungarian is a Uralic language, more specifically an 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[2]. As to the source of this ethnonym in the Slavic languages, current literature favors the hypothesis that the Turkic "On-ogur" ("Ten arrows" or "Ten tribes") is the origin for the word Hungarian [3][4][5].
There are numerous regular sound correspondences between Hungarian and the other Ugric languages. For example, Hungarian /aː/ corresponds to Khanty /o/ in certain positions, and Hungarian /h/ corresponds to Khanty /x/, while Hungarian final /z/ corresponds to Khanty final /t/. For example, Hungarian ház (IPA: [haːz]) "house" vs. Khanty xot (IPA: [xot]) "house", and Hungarian száz (IPA: [saːz]) "hundred" vs. Khanty sot (IPA: [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 languagesAntiquity 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[6], to state administration or even to family relations have such backgrounds. Interestingly, Hungarian syntax and grammar was not influenced in a similarly dramatic way.
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.
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: útra). 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's a compound formed with an auxiliary verb).
The first printed Hungarian book was published in Cracow in 1533, by Benedek Komjáti. The work's title is Az Szent Pál levelei magyar nyelven[7], 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.