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Hungarian Language

Hungarian language

The Hungarian language is a Finno-Ugric language spoken in Hungary and in the adjacent states of Romania, Slovakia, Ukraine, Serbia, Croatia, Austria, and Slovenia (to all of which Hungary lost territory after World War I). The Hungarian name for the language is magyar . There are about 14.5 million speakers, of whom 10 million live in Hungary. The largest minority concentration is in the now Romanian counties of Transylvania, including Harghita (Hargita), Mureş (Maros), and Covasna (Kovászna), with approximately one and a half million Magyars.

Classification

Hungarian is a member of the Ugric languages, a sub-group of the Finno-Ugric language family, which in turn is a branch of the Uralic languages. 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.

Sound correspondences

There are numerous regular sound correspondances between Hungarian and the other Ugric languages. For example, Hungarian á corresponds to in certain positions, and Hungarian h corresponds to Khanty , while Hungarian final z corresponds to Khanty final . For example, Hungarian ház "house" vs. Khanty "house", and Hungarian száz "hundred" vs. Khanty "hundred". The distance between the Ugric and Finnic languages is greater, but the correspondances are also regular. The relationship is most obvious when comparing all the Ugric languages with all the Finnic languages, for then individual idiosyncracies are averaged out, but here we will just compare Hungarian with Finnish.
- Finnish [p] corresponds to Hungarian [f] (just like Latin [p] in pater corresponds to English [f] in father):
- Finnish [k] corresponds to Hungarian [k] before front vowels
- Finnish [k] corresponds to Hungarian [h] before back vowels (just like Latin [k] in canine corresponds to English [h] in hound)
- Finnish [t] corresponds to Hungarian [t] at the beginning of a word
- Finnish [l] corresponds to Hungarian [l] This is just a sample. Even in the small number of words above, other regular sound correspondances are evident, such as Finnish [nt] and Hungarian [d] in "to know" and "bird/goose".

Geographic distribution

Hungarian is spoken in the following countries: :Source: National census, Ethnologue Hungarian speakers are also found in Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, The Netherlands, Italy, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, United States, and in other parts of the world, adding an additional million speakers.

Official status

Hungarian is the official language of Hungary, and thus an official language of the European Union. Besides, Hungarian is one of official languages of Vojvodina and an official language of three municipalities in Slovenia (Hodos, Dobranak and Lendva), along with Slovene. Hungarian is officially recognized as a minority or regional language in Austria, Croatia and Slovakia.

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; they are all mutually intelligible.

Phonology

Hungarian has 14 vowel phonemes and 25 consonant phonemes. The vowel phonemes are pairs of long and short vowels. Most of these pairs have similar vowel qualities, but the pairs written with and do not. Consonant length is also distinctive in Hungarian. Most of the consonant phonemes can occur geminate. The sound voiced palatal plosive , written , is unlike any in English. It occurs in the name of the country, "Magyarország" (Hungary), pronounced . Primary stress is always on the first syllable of a word. There is sometimes secondary stress on other syllables, especially in compounds, e.g. "viszontlátásra" (see you later) pronounced . Front-back vowel harmony is an important feature of Hungarian phonology.

Grammar

Hungarian is an agglutinative language. Most grammatical information is given through suffixes. For example: at the table = az asztalnál (space relation), at 5 o'clock = öt órakor (time relation). There is also one grammatical prefix (leg- for superlatives). An unusual feature of Hungarian are the 2 verb conjugations. 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.

Lexicon

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 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). 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 30,000 words.) Hungarian words are built around so called word-bushes, for example kör-köröz-körös-kering-kerge-kurta (originally related to "circle", "round"). Due to this feature words with similar meaning often arise from the same root. The lexicon of Hungarian contains words borrowed from various Turkic languages, including Turkish, as well as several loan words from German and Slavic. The basic vocabulary shares 1000-1200 words from Uralic languages like Finnish and Estonian (e.g., the numbers egy ~ yksi ~ üks (1), kettő ~ kaksi ~ kaks (2), három ~ kolme ~ kolm (3), négy ~ neljä ~ neli (4); víz ~ vesi ~ vesi (water); kéz ~ käsi ~ käsi (hand); vér ~ veri ~ veri (blood); fej ~ pää ~ pea (head) which have regular sound correspondences, so most linguists classify them as Finno-Ugric languages, a subgroup of the Uralic language family. These 1000-1200 original word roots, however, account for about 80-90% of the words in an average present-day text, due to their wide-ranging compounds, derivations and formations, several dozens of words from a single root. The proportion of the word roots in Hungarian lexicon is as follows: Finno-Ugric 21 %, Slavic 20 %, German 11 %, Turkic 9.5 %, Latin and Greek 6 %, Romance 2.5 %, Other of known origin 1 %, Other of uncertain origin 30%. Except for a few Latin and Greek loan-words, these are undiscernible for native speakers; they were entirely adapted into Hungarian lexicon.

Word formation

Words can be compound (as in German) and derived (with suffixes). There are also compound words using verbs which have their individual meanings, for example egyedülálló single (eg. person), whereas egyedül álló means something which stands alone.

Noteworthy lexical items

Two words for "red"

There are two basic words for "red" in Hungarian. (They are basic in the sense that you can't say one is a sub-type of the other, like "scarlet" is a kind of "red".) Piros is used for lighter or vivid red, and often for inanimate, artificial things, as well as for things seen as cheerful or neutral. Vörös is used for darker red, and often for animate things, as well as for serious or emotionally involved/affected things. Since these attributes don't overlap in every case, their usage is not entirely regular or predictable. – According to Berlin, B and Kay, P (1969) Basic Color Terms, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, Hungarian is unique in having two basic colour words for red.

Kinship terms

In Hungarian there exist separate words for brothers and sisters depending on relative age: (The original word for "elder sister" has become obsolete, and has been replaced by the generic word for "sister".) Besides, separate prefixes exist for up to the 5th ancestors and descendants: On the other hand, no lexical items exist 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:

Writing system

For more information see also Hungarian alphabet. Hungarian is written using a variant of the 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 additional letters. These include letters with acute accents (á,é,í,ó,ú) which represent long vowels, with umlauts (ö and ü) and their long counterparts ő and ű. Sometimes ô or õ is used for ő and û for ű, due to the limitations of the Latin-1 / ISO-8859-1 codepage, though these are not part of the Hungarian language. Hungarian can be properly represented with the Latin-2 / ISO-8859-2 codepage, but this codepage is not always available. (Hungarian is the only language using both ő and ű.) Of course, Unicode includes them, and they therefore can be used on the Internet. For a complete table of the pronunciation of the Hungarian alphabet, see the X-SAMPA description in the Hungarian Wikipedia (in Hungarian, but the table is obvious), which transliterates Hungarian letters into IPA and X-SAMPA characters. Additionally, the letter pairs <ny>, <ty>, and <gy> represent the palatal consonants , , and (a little like the "dy" sound in British "duke" or American "would you"). Hungarian uses <s> for and <sz> for /s/, which is the reverse of Polish. is and <cs> is . All these digraphs are considered single letters. is also a "single letter digraph", but is pronounced like /j/ (English <y>), and mostly appears in old words. More exotic letters are <dz> and <dzs> . They are hard to find even in a longer text. Two examples are madzag; edzeni (rope; to train) and dzsungel (jungle). Single R's are tapped, like the Spanish "pero"; Double R's and initial R's are trilled, like the Spanish "perro". Hungarian distinguishes between long and short vowels, where the long vowels are written with acutes, and between long consonants and short consonants, where the long consonants are written double. The digraphs, when doubled, become trigraphs: +=, but changing line: :... busz- :szal... Usually a trigraph is a double digraph, but there are a few exceptions: tizennyolc "eighteen" is tizen + nyolc. There are doubling minimal pairs: tol (push) vs. toll (feather). While it seems unusual to English speakers at first, once one learns the new orthography and pronunciations, written Hungarian is nearly totally phonemic.

Name order

The Hungarian language uses the so-called eastern name order, in which the family name comes first and the given name comes last. However, as a rule, names are represented in the western name order when used in foreign languages. Thus for example Edward Teller, the Hungarian-born physicist, is known in Hungary as Teller Ede. On the other hand, western names retain their order when used in Hungarian. Therefore:
- Kiss János, amikor Los Angelesben járt, látta John Travoltát. translates to
- When János Kiss was in Los Angeles, he saw John Travolta. Note: or John Kiss. While common prior to the 20th century, given names are usually not translated into English. See also: Hungarian name.

Examples

When a word has its own stress (rather than clinging on the previous ones), it is practically always placed on the first syllable in Hungarian.
- Hungarian (person, language): magyar
- hello: szia (informal) (sounds almost exactly like American "see ya") But you only say this to people that you know well. When you address a stranger you use the more formal "good day": jó napot (kívánok)
- good-bye: viszontlátásra (formal) (see above), viszlát (semi informal)
- please: kérem (szépen) (This literally means "I ask (it) well". See next for a more common form of the polite request)
- 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? , more polite (and word-for-word) version Hol van a mosdó?
- generic toast: egészségedre!
- juice: gyümölcslé
- water: víz
- wine: bor
- beer: sör
- tea: tea
- milk: tej
- Do you speak English?: Beszél angolul?
- I love you: szeretlek
- Help!: Segítség!

Reactions

Sir John Bowring

Sir John Bowring was a Hungarian-speaking English diplomat. This is what he said about the Hungarian language in 1830:
- The Hungarian language goes far back. It developed in a very particular manner and its structure reaches back to times, when most of the now spoken European languages did not even exist. It is a language which developed steadily and firmly in itself, and in which there is logic and mathematics with the adaptability and malleability of strength and chords. The Englishmen should be proud that his language indicates an epic of human history. One can show forth its origin; and alien layers can be distinguished in it, which gathered together during the contacts with different nations. Whereas the Hungarian language is like a rubble-stone; consisting of only one piece, on which the storms of time left not a scratch. It's not a calendar that adjusts to the changes of the ages. It needs no one, it doesn't borrow, does no buckstering, and doesn't give or take from anyone. This language is the oldest and most glorious monument of a national sovereignty and a mental independence. What scholars cannot solve, they ignore. In philosophy it's the same way as archeology. The floors of the old Egyptian temples, which were made out of only one rock, can't be explained. No one knows where they came from, or from which mountain the wonderous mass was taken. How they were transported and lifted to the top of the temples. The genuineness of the Hungarian language is a phenomenon much more wonderous than this. He who solves it shall be analyzing the Divine secret; in fact the first thesis of this secret: “In the beginning there was Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” But by this time, of course, the modern understanding of Hungarian origins was already well understood.

Marc Martin

The book Járt utat kétszer járj ("Tread twice the trodden path", ISBN 9633675820) was published in 2004, a sultry declaration of love for the Hungarian language, written by a native Frenchman, a translator, Marc Martin. (His name is given on the cover in the Hungarianized form, Martin Márk.) He first met the language through a record of Bluebeard's Castle by Bartók. The back cover dedication was written by Péter Nádas (whose novel A Book of Memories he had translated into French). The "trodden path" refers to his original life, family, neighbourhood, which he wanted to break away from, by being re-born into a new life and a new language.

Controversy over origins

There are various alternative speculations about the origins of the Hungarian language, even fanciful ideas about Hungarian being derived from the Sumerian language, but these are dismissed by linguists owing to a lack of evidence:
- Hungarian has often been claimed to be related to Hunnish, since Hungarian legends and histories show close ties between the two peoples. Some people believe that the Székely, a part of the Hungarians living in Romania, are descended from the Huns. However, the link with Hunnish is uncertain, and it is not even known which languages the Huns spoke.
- For many years (from 1869), it was matter of dispute whether Hungarian was a Finno-Ugric language, or was more closely related to the Turkic languages, a controversy known as the "Ugric-Turkish war". It is only in the discipline of linguistics that the victory of the Finno-Ugrists can be described as more or less complete, due to the evidence of the languages themselves. However, the origin of a language is not necessarily equivalent to the genetic origin of the people which speak it, as for example can be seen with the Turkic-speaking Azeris, who are genetically kin to the Armenians. Regular sound changes that can be shown between corresponding elements of the basic vocabulary of Hungarian and other Uralic languages provide sufficient evidence to conclude that the languages are related. But while the language is clearly Finno-Ugric, the Hungarian people show more genetic similarities to people (such as Germans, Slavs, and Turks) who are closer to them geographically than the Finns, who in turn are more genetically similar to their Scandinavian neighbors than to the Hungarians. Such influences occur whenever people marry their neighbors, and as yet genetics has had little to say about the historical origins of the Hungarian people. The Finns, for example, are a poor example of the Finnic peoples genetically, for they seem to be predominantly Scandinavian in origin. A better genetic comparison for Hungarian would be with other Finnic peoples. Regardless, there are noticeable Turkic influences in the Hungarian language. It appears that the Hungarians took over animal breeding from the Turkic Chuvash, and they were neighbors for many centuries, 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. And all the Ugric languages, not just Hungarian, have Turkic loanwords related to horse riding. As for the Huns, they were a large, loose grouping of tribes, who joined together at different points in their migrations. It may well be that the Huns of Asia met up with the Hungarians in the course of their long migration westward. At any rate, the Huns were defeated in the West in 451. Some then settled in the region that is now Hungary, but long before the migrations that brought the Hungarian people to the area. As Finno-Ugrist scientists say, for this purpose no extra-linguistic (i.e. no empiric) evidence is needed, and the Finno-Ugrian theory is supported by what linguistics knows about related languages in general and could only be refuted if all other established language relationships were refuted at the same time. Other scientists dealing with the origin of Hungarian language (historians, linguists) regard these opinions as simplification.

See also


- Wikibooks - Learn Hungarian
- Hungarian grammar
- Hungarian alphabet
- Hungarian phonology
- Hungarian literature
- Hungarian tongue-twisters
- List of English words of Hungarian origin
- Hungary
- Hungarian people

External links


- [http://www.filolog.com/languageStrangeCake.html Hungarian - A Strange Cake on the Menu - article by Nádasdy Ádám]
- [http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=HNG Ethnologue report for Hungarian]
- [http://www.ut.ee/Ural/num.html Numerals of some Uralic languages]
- [http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/3093/finnugor.html Uralic page]
- [http://impulzus.sch.bme.hu/info/magyar.shtml Introduction to Hungarian]
- [http://www.lmp.ucla.edu/profiles/profh02.htm Hungarian Profile]
- [http://www.speech.kth.se/~bea/hungarian.pdf "The Hungarian Language: A Short Descriptive Grammar"] by Beáta Megyesi (PDF document)
- [http://www.indiana.edu/~iuihsl/homethisisoldbutgoodone.html The old site of the Indiana University Institute of Hungarian Studies (various resources)]
- [http://miejipang.homestead.com/untitled18.html Let's try to learn Hungarian (Magyar) and Turkish!]
- [http://www.nyariegyetem.hu/regi/hlga/ang1.html Grammar, phonology and syntax plus some history of the language]
- [http://www.rpi.edu/~sofkam/magyar.html Hungarian Language Learning References] on the Hungarian Language Page (short reviews of useful books)
- [http://www.nyariegyetem.hu/ Debrecen Summer School] (with Hungarian Language and Culture Courses)
- [http://www.bbi.hu/main.php?folderID=865&langchanged=eng Balassi Bálint Institute] (Hungarian language teaching)
- [http://users.tpg.com.au/etr/oldhu/halotti.html One of the oldest Hungarian texts - A Halotti Beszéd (The Funeral Oration)]

Linguistic chapters from the Encyclopaedia Humana Hungarica (1–5)


- [http://mek.oszk.hu/01900/01993/html/index2.html Introduction to the History of the Language; The Pre-Hungarian Period; The Early Hungarian Period; The Old Hungarian Period]
- [http://mek.oszk.hu/01900/01955/html/index2.html The Linguistic Records of the Early Old Hungarian Period; The Linguistic System of the Age]
- [http://mek.oszk.hu/01900/01949/html/index2.html The Old Hungarian Period; The System of the Language of the Old Hungarian Period]
- [http://mek.oszk.hu/01900/01919/html/index2.html The Late Old Hungarian Period; The System of the Language]
- [http://mek.oszk.hu/01900/01911/html/index2.html The First Half of the Middle Hungarian Period; Turkish Loan Words]
- (The English translations of volumes 6 to 9 are in preparation.)

Dictionaries


- [http://dict.sztaki.hu/english-hungarian Hungarian-English-Hungarian]
- [http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/translation/Hungarian/ Dictionary] with Hungarian - English Translations from [http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org Webster's Online Dictionary] - the Rosetta Edition
- [http://seas3.elte.hu/delg/people/core/lazar/falsefriends.html Hungarian-English False friends] (False friend)
- [http://www.notam02.no/~hcholm/altlang/ht/Hungarian.html Hungarian slang]
- [http://www.japanmagyarszotar.hu/ Hungarian-Japanese-Hungarian online dictionary]

Online Language Courses


- [http://www.personal.psu.edu/faculty/a/d/adr10/hungarian.html A Hungarian Language Course] by Aaron Rubin
- [http://www.hungarotips.com/hungarian/b/ Online course hungarotips.com]
- [http://www.afs.hu/hungary/study.html Study Hungarian! (AFS.com)]
- [http://www.single-serving.com/Hungarian/ Hungarian Phrase Guides]
- [http://www.magyarora.com/ Magyaróra: New paths to the Hungarian language]
- [http://www.hungarotips.com/hungarian/ Hungarian Language Lessons - Puzzles, Quizzes, Sound Files]

More links for learners


- [http://www.sprachprofi.de.vu/english/h.htm Course, Vocabularies, Phrases, Literature...]
- Category:Agglutinative languages Category:Languages of Austria Category:Languages of Hungary Category:Languages of Romania Category:Languages of Slovakia Category:Languages of Slovenia Category:Languages of Vojvodina Category:Vowel harmony languages ko:헝가리어 ja:ハンガリー語

Language

A language is a system of symbols, generally known as lexemes and the rules by which they are manipulated. The word language is also used to refer to the whole phenomenon of language, i.e., the common properties of languages. Though language is commonly used for communication, it is not synonymous with it. Human language is a natural phenomenon, and language learning is instinctive in childhood. In their natural form, human languages use patterns of sound or gesture for the symbols in order to communicate with others through the senses. Though there are thousands of human languages, they all share a number of properties from which there are no known deviations. Humans have also invented (or arguably in some cases discovered) many other languages, including constructed human languages such as Esperanto or Klingon, programming languages such as Python or Ruby, and various mathematical formalisms. These languages are not restricted to the properties shared by natural human languages.

Properties of language

Languages are not just sets of symbols. They also contain a grammar, or system of rules, used to manipulate the symbols. While a set of symbols may be used for expression or communication, it is primitive and relatively unexpressive, because there are no clear or regular relationships between the symbols. Because a language also has a grammar, it can manipulate its symbols to express clear and regular relationships between them. For example, imagine going on a walk with a person who only knew individual symbols, or words. If you saw a dog, he might say, "Dog scare" or "Scare Dog". Although any English speaker would have some notion of what he was talking about, the relationship between the words is unclear. Is he scared of dogs? Or just that dog? Or does he want to scare the dog off? Does he think the dog is scared? But if you respond, "I’m not scared of dogs," the relationship between dog and scare is quite apparent and hence the meaning of the utterance. Another important property of language is the arbitrariness of the symbols. Any symbol can be mapped onto any concept (or even onto one of the rules of the grammar). For instance, there is nothing about the Spanish word nada itself that forces Spanish speakers to use it to mean nothing. That is the meaning all Spanish speakers have memorized for that sound pattern. But for Croatian speakers nada means hope. However, it must be understood that just because in principle the symbols are arbitrary does not mean that a language cannot have symbols that are iconic of what they stand for. Words such as meow sound similar to what they represent, but they could be replaced with words such as jarn, and as long as everyone memorized the new word, the same concepts could be expressed with it.

Human languages

Human languages are usually referred to as natural languages, and the science studying them is linguistics. Making a principled distinction between one language and another is usually impossible. For example, the boundaries between named language groups are in effect arbitrary due to blending between populations (the dialect continuum). For instance, there are dialects of German very similar to Dutch which are not mutually intelligible with other dialects of (what Germans call) German. Some like to make parallels with biology, where it is not always possible to make a well-defined distinction between one species and the next. In either case, the ultimate difficulty may stem from the interactions between languages and populations. (See Dialect or August Schleicher for a longer discussion.) The concepts of Ausbausprache, Abstandsprache, and Dachsprache are used to make finer distinctions about the degrees of difference between languages or dialects.

Origins of human language

Scientists do not yet agree on when language was first used by humans (or their ancestors). Estimates range from about two million (2,000,000) years ago, during the time of Homo habilis, to as recently as forty thousand (40,000) years ago, during the time of Cro-Magnon man. The nature of speech means that there is almost no data on which to base conclusions on the subject.

Language taxonomy

The classification of natural languages can be performed on the basis of different underlying principles (different closeness notions, respecting different properties and relations between languages); important directions of present classifications are:
- paying attention to the historical evolution of languages results in a genetic classification of languages—which is based on genetic relatedness of languages,
- paying attention to the internal structure of languages (grammar) results in a typological classification of languages—which is based on similarity of one or more components of the language’s grammar across languages,
- and respecting geographical closeness and contacts between language-speaking communities results in areal groupings of languages. The different classifications do not match each other and are not expected to, but the correlation between them is an important point for many linguistic research works. (There is a parallel to the classification of species in biological phylogenetics here: consider monophyletic vs. polyphyletic groups of species.) The task of genetic classification belongs to the field of historical-comparative linguistics, of typological—to linguistic typology. See also: Taxonomy, Taxonomic classification—for the general idea of classification and taxonomies.

Genetic classification

The world’s languages have been grouped into families of languages that are believed to have common ancestors. Some of the major families are the Indo-European languages, the Afro-Asiatic languages, the Austronesian languages, and the Sino-Tibetan languages. The shared features of languages from one family can be due to shared ancestry. (Compare with homology in biology.)

Typological classification

An example of a typological classification is the classification of languages on the basis of the basic order of the verb, the subject and the object in a sentence into several types: SVO, SOV, VSO, and so on, languages. (, for instance, belongs to the SVO language type.) The shared features of languages of one type (= from one typological class) may have arisen completely independently. (Compare with analogy in biology.) Their cooccurence might be due to the universal laws governing the structure of natural languages—language universals.

Areal classification

The following language groupings can serve as some linguistically significant examples of areal linguistic units, or sprachbunds: Balkan linguistic union, or the bigger group of European languages; Caucasian languages. Although the members of each group are not closely genetically related, there is a reason for them to share similar features, namely: their speakers have been in contact for a long time within a common community and the languages converged in the course of the history. These are called areal features. NB. One should be careful about the underlying classification principle for groups of languages which have apparently a geographical name: besides areal linguistic units, the taxa of the genetic classification (language families) are often given names which themselves or parts of which refer to geographical areas.

Constructed languages

One prominent artificial language, called Esperanto, was created by L. L. Zamenhof. It is a compilation of various elements of different languages, and it is intended to be an easy-to-learn language. Another prominent artificial language, called Ido, is intended to be reformed Esperanto. Other constructed languages strive to be more logical than natural languages; a prominent example of this is Lojban. Other writers, such as J. R. R. Tolkien, have created fantasy languages, for literary, artistic, or personal reasons. One of Tolkien’s languages is called Quenya, which is a form of Elvish. It has its own alphabet, and its phonology and syntax are modelled on Finnish. Linguist Mark Okrand has devised Klingon and Vulcan for Star Trek, which have since been developed into full languages.

The study of language

The oldest surviving written grammar for any language is believed to be the Tolkāppiyam (தொல்காப்பியம்), a book on the grammar of the Tamil language, written around 200 BCE by Tolkāppiyar. Its classification of the alphabet into consonants and vowel was a breakthrough. The historical record of the study of language begins in North India with Pāṇini, the 5th century BCE grammarian who formulated 3,959 rules of Sanskrit morphology, known as the (अष्टाध्यायी). grammar is highly systematized and technical. Inherent in its analytic approach are the concepts of the phoneme, the morpheme, and the root; the phoneme was only recognized by Western linguists some two millennia later. In the Middle East, the Persian linguist Sibawayh made a detailed and professional description of Arabic in 760 CE in his monumental work, Al-kitab fi an-nahw (الكتاب في النحو, The Book on Grammar), bringing many linguistic aspects of language to light. In his book he distinguished phonetics from phonology. Later in the West, the success of science, mathematics, and other formal systems in the 20th century led many to attempt a formalization of the study of language as a "semantic code". This resulted in the academic discipline of linguistics, the founding of which is attributed to Ferdinand de Saussure.

Animal (nonhuman) language

While the term animal languages is widely used, most researchers agree that they are not as complex or expressive as human language; a more accurate term is animal communication. Some researchers argue that there are significant differences separating human language from the communication of other animals, and that the underlying principles are not related. In several widely publicised instances, animals have been trained to mimic certain features of human language. For example, chimpanzees and gorillas have been taught hand signs based on American Sign Language; however, they have never been taught its grammar. There was also a case in 2003 of Kanzi, a captive bonobo chimpanzee allegedly independently creating some words to mean certain concepts. While animal communication has debated levels of semantics, it has not been shown to have syntax in the sense that human languages do. Some researchers argue that a continuum exists among the communication methods of all social animals, pointing to the fundamental requirements of group behaviour and the existence of "mirror cells" in primates. This, however, may not be a scientific question, but is perhaps more one of definition. What exactly is the definition of the word "language"? Most researchers agree that, although human and more primitive languages have analogous features, they are not homologous.

Formal languages

Mathematics and computer science use artificial entities called formal languages (including programming languages and markup languages, but also some that are far more theoretical in nature). These often take the form of character strings, produced by some combination of formal grammar and semantics of arbitrary complexity.

See also


- Common phrases in different languages
- Computer-assisted language learning (a historical perspective)
- Deception
- Ethnologue, which provides a fairly complete list of languages, locations, population and genetic affiliation
- Extinct language
- FOXP2 (Language gene)
- ILR scale (defines five levels of language proficiency)
- ISO 639 (2- and 3-letter codes for language names)
- Language education
- Language reform
- Language policy
- Language school
- Linguistic protectionism
- Linguistics basic topics
- List of language academies
- List of languages
- List of official languages
- Naming
- Non-verbal communication
- Non-sexist language
- Official language
- Orthography
- Philology and Historical linguistics
- Philosophy of language
- Profanity
- Psycholinguistics
- Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
- Slang
- Symbolic communication
- Speech therapy
- Terminology
- Tongue-twister
- Translation
- Whistled language

References


- Crystal, David (1997). The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
- Crystal, David (2001). The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
- Katzner, K. (1999). The Languages of the World. New York, Routledge.
- McArthur, T. (1996). The Concise Companion to the English Language. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
- Kandel, Jessel, and Schwartz (1991). Principles of Neural Science. McGraw Hill (esp. p. 1173).

External links


- [http://www.zompist.com/ Mark Rosenfelder’s Metaverse] provides a useful listing of 5000 languages and dialects (grouped by their relationships), where the numbers one to ten in each language may be found
- [http://www.geocities.com/agihard/mohl/mohl_languages.html Museum of Languages]
- The [http://www.ethnologue.com/ Ethnologue], a catalog of the world’s languages
- [http://www.language-capitals.com Language Capitals] Guide to 8 major languages of the world with facts, characteristics and varieties
- [http://www.vistawide.com/languages/ World Languages and Cultures] — Practical information and resources on languages and language learning
- [http://www.georgetown.edu/faculty/ballc/animals/animals.html Animal sounds in different languages]
- [http://www.netz-tipp.de/languages.html Distribution of languages on the Internet]
- [http://classweb.gmu.edu/accent/ Speech accent archive]
- [http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/G_Kunkel/homepage.htm a collection of bird songs] provides many kinds of bird songs
- [http://acp.eugraph.com The Animal Communication Project]
- [http://reference.allrefer.com/encyclopedia/categories/lang.html Language Articles]
- [http://www.primitivism.com/language.htm Language: Origin and Meaning by John Zerzan] Category:Technology als:Sprache zh-min-nan:Gí-giân ko:언어 ms:Bahasa nb:Språk ja:言語 simple:Language th:ภาษา

Finno-Ugric language

The Finno-Ugric languages form a subfamily of the Uralic languages. The majority of linguists believe that Hungarian, Finnish and Estonian, among other languages, should be included in the group. Unlike most of the other languages spoken in Europe, the Finno-Ugric languages are not part of the Indo-European family of languages. The Uralic languages also include the Samoyedic languages, and some linguists use the terms Finno-Ugric and Uralic as synonyms. Many of the smaller Finno-Ugric languages are endangered and near extinction.

Origins

The "Urheimat" of Proto-Finno-Ugric, the hypothetical proto-language of the modern Finno-Ugric languages, cannot be located with any certainty. The area which lies in what is now central and northern European Russia (i.e., west of the Ural mountains) is generally assumed as a likely candidate, at a time of maybe the 3rd millennium BC. This is based on the linguistic migration theory, which appears to suggest a "centre of gravity" somewhere around the middle Volga River, and on reconstructed plant and animal names (notably including spruce, Siberian pine, Siberian fir, Siberian larch, brittle willow/elm, and hedgehog). Reconstructed Proto-Finno-Ugric contains Indo-Iranian loanwords, notably the words for "honeybee" and "honey", probably from the time when Indo-Iranian tribes (such as Scythians and Sarmatians) inhabited the Eurasian steppes. There is evidence that before the arrival of the Slavic speaking tribes to the area of modern-day Russia, speakers of Finno-Ugric languages may have been scattered across the whole area between the Urals and the Baltic Sea. This was the distribution of the Comb Ceramic Culture, a stone age culture which appears to have corresponded to the Finno-Ugric speaking populations, c. 4200 BC–c. 2000 BC. There have been attempts to relate the Finno-Ugric languages to the Indo-European languages, but there are not enough similarities to link them with any certainty. Similar inflectional endings exist, but whether or not they are genetically related is not resolvable. Common lexicon not attestable to borrowing is thin, and no sound laws are established. Conversely, there have been suggestions that the Germanic languages evolved from an Indo-European language such as Celtic imposed on a Finnic substrate, but no satisfactory proof yet exists. A portion of the Baltic-Finnic lexicon is not shared with the remaining Finno-Ugric languages and may be due to a pre-Finnic substrate, which may coincide in part with the substrate of the Indo-European Baltic languages. As far as the Sami (Lappic) languages are concerned, a hypothesis has been advanced that the ancestors of the Sami originally spoke a different language, but adopted their current tongue under the pressure of their Finnic-speaking neighbours. According to data obtained in several representative studies on the genes of Europeans, strong presence of genetic lines which can be associated with the modern Finnic-speaking peoples are found throughout northern Europe from the British Isles to the Ural area. According to the interpretation of the geneticists who conducted the study, the ancestors of modern Germanic and Slavic-speaking peoples were in fact largely speakers of Finno-Ugric languages at some earlier time. Weak presence of the genes which could associate them with, for example, the earliest Indo-European peoples indicates that the Indo-European languages were taken over from more advanced, but less numerous, newcomers as a part of "cultural package" at the time of the Neolithic Revolution - shift from gathering to agriculture. Thus, the Finno-Ugric languages and their modern speakers do not originate in the area near Ural mountains, but rather likely were one of the three indigenous European ethnic groups, which together provided about 80 % of modern European genetic material. Proto-Finno-Ugric was perhaps the original language of North-East Europe. Going back further in time, according to Kalevi Wiik, the earliest Finno-Ugric speakers and their languages were likely to originate from the territory of modern Ukraine (so-called “Ukrainian refuge”) during the last glacial period, when the whole northern Europe was covered with ice. It should be noted that genes do not necessarily correlate with languages, and that many of the above interpretations given by the geneticists are not accepted by the majority of archaeologists and linguists, most of whom still put the Finno-Ugric Urheimat in the central or northeastern part of European Russia or the area of the Ural Mountains in the Bronze Age, identifying it with the Comb Ceramic culture. Wiik’s interpretation of Neolithic farmers as early Indo-Europeans also contradicts the prevailing Kurgan hypothesis.

History

The first mention of a Uralic people is in Tacitus' Germania, mentioning the Finns as adjacent to Germanic territory. In the late 15th century, European scholars noted the resemblance of the names Hungaria and Yugria, the names of settlements east of the Ural. They assumed a connection, but did not look into linguistic evidence. In 1671, Swedish scholar Georg Stiernhielm commented on the similarities of Lapp, Estonian and Finnish, and also on a few similar words in Finnish and Hungarian, while the German scholar Martin Vogel tried to establish a relationship between Finnish, Lapp and Hungarian. These two authors were thus the first to outline what was to become the classification of a Finno-Ugric family. In 1717, Swedish professor Olof Rudbeck proposed about 100 etymologies connecting Finnish and Hungarian, of which about 40 are still considered valid (Collinder, 1965). In the same year, the German scholar J. G. von Eckhart (published in Leibniz' Collectanea Etymologica) for the first time proposed a relation to the Samoyedic languages. By 1770, all constituents of Finno-Ugric were known, almost 20 years before the traditional starting-point of Indo-European studies. Nonetheless, these relationships were not widely accepted. Especially Hungarian intellectuals were not interested in the theory and preferred to assume connections with Turkic tribes, an attitude characterized by Ruhlen (1987) as due to "the wild unfettered Romanticism of the epoch". Still, in spite of the hostile climate, the Hungarian Jesuit J. Sajnovics suggested a relationship of Hungarian and Lapp in 1770, and in 1799, the Hungarian Samuel Gyarmathi published the most complete work on Finno-Ugric to that date. At the beginning of the 19th century, research on Finno-Ugric was thus more advanced than Indo-European research. But the rise of Indo-European comparative linguistics absorbed so much attention and enthusiasm that Finno-Ugric linguistics was all but eclipsed in Europe; in Hungary, the only European country that would have had a vested interest in the family (Finland and Estonia being under Russian rule), the political climate was too hostile for the development of Uralic comparative linguistics. Some progress was made, however, culminating in the work of the German Jozsef Budenz, who for 20 years was the leading Finno-Ugric specialist in Hungary. Another late-19th-century contribution is that of Hungarian linguist Ignac Halasz, who published extensive comparative material of Finno-Ugric and Samoyedic in the 1890s, and whose work is at the base of the wide acceptance of the Samoyed-Finno-Ugric relationship today. During the 1990s, linguists Kalevi Wiik, Janos Pusztay and Ago Künnap and historian Kyösti Julku announced a "breakthrough in Present-Day Uralistics", dating Proto-Finnic to 10,000 BC. The theory was almost entirely unsuccessful in the scientific community (cf. Merlijn de Smit, see external links).

Structural features

All of the Finno-Ugric languages share structural features and basic vocabulary. Around 200 basic words have been proposed and include word stems for concepts related to humans such as names for relatives and body parts. This common vocabulary includes, according to Lyle Campbell, at least 55 words related to fishing, 33 related to hunting and eating animals, 12 related to reindeer, 17 related to plant foods, 31 related to technology, 26 related to building, 11 related to clothing, 18 related to climate, 4 related to society, 11 related to religion, and 3 related to commerce, giving an interesting picture of proto-Finno-Ugric society. The structural features are seen by linguists as strong evidence for a common ancestry. These include inflection by adding suffixes (instead of prepositions in English). The Finno-Ugric languages are also famous for having a large number of grammatical cases, of which Finnish has at least 15 and Hungarian has at least 24. Another feature of the Finno-Ugric languages is that verbs are inflected, i.e. conjugated, by person and number. (This is the familiar way verbs are conjugated in most Indo-European languages; but Chinese, Vietnamese and other isolating languages do not share this feature.) Finally, the Finno-Ugric languages lack possessive pronouns, such as my and your, communicating the same information via declension. In some languages, the genitive of the personal pronoun is used to express possession. Examples: Estonian mu koer 'my dog' (literally 'I-gen. dog'), Northern Sami mu beana 'my dog' (literally 'I-gen. dog') or beatnagan 'my dog' (literally 'dog-my'). In others, a pronominal suffix is used, optionally together with the genitive case of a pronoun: thus Finnish (minun) koirani, 'my dog' (literally 'I-gen. dog-my'), from koira "dog". Similarly, Hungarian, lacking determinative possessive pronouns, uses possessive noun suffixes, optionally together with pronouns; cf. 'the dog' = a kutya vs. 'my dog' = az én kutyám (literally, 'the I dog-my') or simply a kutyám (literally, 'the dog-my'). Hungarian, however, does have independent possessive pronouns; e.g. enyém 'mine', tiéd 'yours', etc. These are declined; e.g. nom. enyém, acc. enyémet, dat. enyémnek, etc.

Classification

It is generally agreed that the Finno-Ugric subfamily of the Uralic languages has the following members: Ugric (Ugrian)
- Hungarian
  - Hungarian
- Ob Ugric (Ob Ugrian)
  - Khanty (Ostyak)
  - Mansi (Vogul) Finno-Permic (Permian-Finnic)
- Permic (Permian)
  - Komi (Komi-Zyrian, Zyrian)
  - Komi-Permyak
  - Udmurt (Votyak)
- Finno-Volgaic (Finno-Cheremisic, Finno-Mari, Volga-Finnic)
  - Mari (Cheremisic)
    - Mari (Cheremis)
  - Mordvinic (Mordvin, Mordvinian)
    - Erzya
    - Moksha
  - Extinct Finno-Volgaic languages of uncertain position
    - Merya (position uncertain, extinct)
    - Meshcherian (position uncertain, extinct)
    - Muromian (position uncertain, extinct)
  - Finno-Lappic (Finno-Saamic, Finno-Samic)
    - Sami (Samic, Saamic, Lappic, Lappish)
      - Western Sami (Western Samic)
      -
- Southern Sami
      -
- Ume Sami — Nearly extinct
      -
- Lule Sami
      -
- Pite Sami — Nearly extinct
      -
- Northern Sami
      - Eastern Sami (Eastern Samic)
      -
- Kainuu Sami — Extinct
      -
- Kemi Sami — Extinct
      -
- Inari Sami
      -
- Akkala Sami — Nearly extinct
      -
- Kildin Sami
      -
- Skolt Sami
      -
- Ter Sami — Nearly extinct
    - Baltic-Finnic (Balto-Finnic, Balto-Fennic, Finnic, Fennic)
      - Estonian (including Võru and Seto dialects, whose status as separate languages is disputed)
      - Finnish (including Meänkieli or Tornedalian Finnish, Kven Finnish, and Ingrian Finnish)
      - Izhorian (Ingrian) - Nearly extinct
      - Karelian
      -
- Karelian proper
      -
- Lude (Ludic, Ludian)
      -
- Olonets Karelian (Livvi, Aunus, Aunus Karelian, Olonetsian)
      - Livonian (Liv) — Nearly extinct
      - Veps (Vepsian)
      - Votic (Votian, Vod) — Nearly extinct

Disputes

The classification of Finno-Ugric within Uralic, and of Finnic and Ugric within Finno-Ugric, is accepted by practically all scholars. Dispute is at present largely confined to the Finno-Permic family, surrounding different proposals for the arrangement of the its subgroups and regarding the validity of the Volgaic group. The term Volgaic denoted a branch believed to include Mari and Mordvinic languages, but it has now become obsolete: research has shown that it was a geographic classification rather than a linguistic one. The Mordvinic languages are more closely related to the Finno-Lappic languages than they are to the Mari languages. Another dispute surrounds the affinity of the Yukaghir languages, which is traditionally regarded as a language isolate, with some scholars proposing a strong affinity to Uralic (Collinder, 1965). The relation of the Finno-Permic and the Ugric groups is remote by some standards. With a time depth of only 3 or 4 thousand years, it is far younger than many major families such as Indo-European or Semitic, and about the same age as, for instance, the Eastern subfamily of Nilotic. But the grouping is still far from transparent — the absence of early records constitutes an obstacle to exact reconstruction not found in, for example, Indo-European or Semitic. While much has been speculatively deduced about the Finno-Ugric Urheimat, little is certain, and, of course, the relatedness of the languages does not necessarily imply any racial or cultural unity of the peoples speaking them. Linguists criticizing the Finno-Ugric group (e.g. Angela Marcantonio, see References) believe that Ugric and Finnic are more distantly related than proponents advertise, and possibly are no closer than the Turkic and Ugric groups. These linguists propose an Ural-Altaic supergroup. Such proposals do not contest the ultimate relatedness of Finno-Ugric, but rather try to include more languages (on even more tenuous grounds) into the family. Other supergroups have been advanced (Uralo-Dravidian, Finno-Basque, Hungaro-Sumerian) but are almost universally regarded as spurious.

Common vocabulary

This is a small sample of cognates in basic vocabulary across Uralic, illustrating the sound laws (based on the Encyclopædia Britannica and Hakkinen 1979). Note that in general two cognates don't have the same meaning; they merely have the same origin. Thus, the English word in each row should be regarded as an approximation of the original meaning, not a translation of the other words. (Orthographical notes: The hacek (š) denotes postalveolar articulation, while the accent (ś) denotes a secondary palatal articulation. The Finnish letter 'y' [y] represents the same phoneme (a rounded or centralized [i]) as the letter 'ü' in other languages. The voiced dental spirant [ð] is the origin of the standard Finnish 'd', which is realized differently in each dialect today. The same sound is marked with the letter đ in the Sami languages. The Sami 'č' is a voiceless postalveolar affricate [ʧ]. Hungarian 'gy' is the palatalized [dʲ], not a 'g'.)

Numbers

The numbers from 1 to 10 in Finnish, Estonian, Võro, North Sami, Erzya, Meadow Mari, Mansi, Hungarian, and Proto-Finno-Ugric. One reconstruction for numbers 8 and 9 is
- kak+teksa '10–2' and
- yk+teksa '10–1', where
- teksa cf. deka is a Indo-European loan; notice that the difference between /t/ and /d/ is not phonemic, unlike in Indo-European.

Finno-Ugric Swadesh lists

100-word Swadesh lists for certain Finno-Ugric languages can be compared and contrasted at the Rosetta Project website: [http://64.81.54.21:8080/live/search/contribute/swadesh/view?ethnocode=FIN Finnish], [http://64.81.54.21:8080/live/search/contribute/swadesh/view?ethnocode=EST Estonian], [http://64.81.54.21:8080/live/search/contribute/swadesh/view?ethnocode=HNG Hungarian], [http://64.81.54.21:8080/live/search/contribute/swadesh/view?ethnocode=MYV Erzya]. Notice that particularly the Finnish list is unreliable, because it contains several neologisms or formal words, e.g. henkilö (from henki life + place suffix) instead of the more commonly used ihminen, which is a Baltic Finnic word. The Finnish list has also spelling errors suggesting it was compiled by a person who does not know Finnish.

See also


- Uralic languages
- Uralo-Siberian languages

External links


- [http://www.helsinki.fi/~jolaakso/fgrlinks.html] A more comprehensive link collection
- [http://www.helsinki.fi/~jolaakso/fufaq.html FAQ about Finno-Ugrian Languages]
- [http://homepage.univie.ac.at/Johanna.Laakso/am_rev.html Linguistic Shadow-Boxing] Johanna Laakso's book review of Angela Marcantonio's "The Uralic language family. Facts, myths and statistics"
- [http://www.geocities.com/isolintu/voodoo.html Uralic Linguistics Vs. Voodoo Science!] A collection of links about the "new paradigm" debate by Merlijn de Smit
- [http://www.zompist.com/asia.htm Numbers in Asian languages] Counting to ten in a variety of languages
- [http://ugri.info/ Ugri.info Finno-Ugric peoples infobase]
- Finno-Ugric Electronic Library by the Finno-Ugric Information Center in Syktyvkar, Komi Republic (interface in Russian and English, texts in Mari, Komi, Udmurt, Erzya and Moksha languages): http://library.finugor.ru/

References


- Benkő, Loránd: Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Ungarischen (Etymological Dictionary of Hungarian). Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1992-1997., ISBN 9630562278
- Collinder, Björn: Fenno-Ugric Vocabulary. Uppsala, 1955, ISBN 3871181870.
- Collinder, Björn: An introduction to the Uralic languages. Berkely, California
- Campbell, Lyle: Historical Linguistics: An Introduction. Edinburgh University Press 1998.
- Csepregi Márta (ed.): Finnugor kalauz (Finno-Ugric Guide). Budapest: Panoráma, 1998., ISBN 9632438620
- Encyclopædia Britannica 15th ed.: Languages of the World: Uralic languages. Chicago, 1990.
- Häkkinen, Kaisa: Suomalais-ugrilaisten kielten etymologisen tutkimuksen asemasta ja ongelmista (About the situation and problems of the etymological research of the Finno-Ugric languages) (1979), in Nykysuomen rakenne ja kehitys (Structure and development of modern Finnish) volume 2, (NRJK 2) Pieksämäki 1984, ISBN 951-717-360-1.
- Laakso, Johanna: Karhunkieli. Pyyhkäisyjä suomalais-ugrilaisten kielten tutkimukseen (A Bear Tongue. Views on the Research of the Finno-Ugric Languages). Helsinki: SKS, 1999.
- Laakso, Johanna (ed.): Uralilaiset kansat (Uralic Peoples). Porvoo - Helsinki - Juva: WSOY, 1992, ISBN 951-0-16485-2.
- Marcantonio, Angela: What Is the Linguistic Evidence to Support the Uralic Theory or Theories? - In Linguistica Uralica 40, 1, pp 40-45, 2004.
- Marcantonio, Angela: The Uralic Language Family: Facts, Myths and Statistics. 2003.
- Marcantonio, Angela, Pirjo Nummenaho, and Michela Salvagni: The "Ugric-Turkic Battle": A Critical Review. In Linguistica Uralica 37, 2, pp 81-102, 2001. [http://www.kirj.ee/esi-l-lu/l37-2-1.pdf Online version].
- Ruhlen, Merritt, A Guide to the World's languages, Stanford, California (1987), pp. 64–71.
- Sammallahti, Pekka: Historical phonology of the Uralic languages. - In: Denis Sinor (ed.), The Uralic languages. Description, history and foreign influences. Leiden - New York - København - Köln: Brill, 1998.
- Sammallahti, Pekka, Matti Morottaja: Säämi - suoma - säämi škovlasänikirje (Inari Sami - Finnish - Inari Sami School Dictionary). Helsset/Helsinki: Ruovttueatnan gielaid dutkanguovddaš/Kotimaisten kielten tutkimuskeskus, 1983, ISBN 951-9475-36-2.
- Sammallahti, Pekka: Sámi - suoma - sámi sátnegirji (Northern Sami - Finnish - Northern Sami Dictionary). Ohcejohka/Utsjoki: Girjegiisá, 1993, ISBN 951-8939-28-4.
- Sinor, Denis (ed.): Studies in Finno-Ugric Linguistics: In Honor of Alo Raun (Indiana University Uralic and Altaic Series : Volume 131). Indiana Univ Research, 1977, ISBN 0933070004.
- Vikør, Lars S. (ed.): Fenno-Ugric. In: The Nordic Languages. Their Status and Interrelations. Novus Press, pp. 62-74, 1993.
- Wiik, Kalevi: Eurooppalaisten juuret, Atena Kustannus Oy. Finland, 2002.
- Языки народов СССР III. Финно-угорские и самоитйские языки (Languages of the Peoples in the USSR III. Finno-Ugric and Samoyedic Languages). Москва (Moscow): Наука (Nauka), 1966.
- A magyar szókészlet finnugor elemei. Etimológiai szótár (The Hungarian Vocabulary of Finno-Ugric Origin. Etymological Dictionary). Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1967-1978. Category:Finno-Ugric languages

Hungary

The Republic of Hungary (Magyar Köztársaság ), or Hungary (Magyarország ), is a landlocked country in Central Europe, bordered by Austria, Slovakia, Ukraine, Romania, Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia. It is known locally as the Country of the Magyars.

History

Main article: History of Hungary In the time of the Roman Empire, the Romans called the region Pannonia (west from the Danube river). After Rome fell the Migration Period brought on many invaders. First came the Huns, who built up a powerful empire under Attila. The name "Hungary" may be influenced by the name of the Hun people, although it probably comes from the name of a later, 7th century state called Onogur (or possibly from the name of the city Ungvár, which was possibly the first major city the Magyars occupied). After the Hunnish rule faded, Germanic tribes Lombards and Gepids ruled in Pannonia for about 100 years, during which the Slavic tribes also began migrating south. In the 560s, these were supplanted by the Avars who would maintain their supremacy of the land for over two centuries. The Franks under Charlemagne from the west and the Bulgars from the southeast finally managed to overthrow the Avars in the early 9th century. Soon after, the Franks retreated, and the Slavonic kingdom of Great Moravia and the Balaton Principality controlled much of Pannonia until the end of the century. Finally, the Magyars migrated to Hungary in the late 9th century. Tradition holds that the Country of the Magyars (Hungary) was founded by Árpád, who led the Magyars into the Pannonian plains after 895. The Kingdom of Hungary was established in 1000 by King St. Stephen I. Initially the history of Hungary was developed in a triangle with that of Poland and Bohemia, with the many liaisons with Popes and Emperors of the Holy Roman Empire. Hungary was partially demolished with a great loss of life in 1241–1242 by Mongol (Tatar) armies of Batu Khan. Gradually Hungary under the rule of the dynasty of the Árpáds turned into an independent kingdom which formed a distinct Central European culture with ties to greater West European civilisation. Ruled by the Angevins since 1308, the Kingdom of Hungary briefly extended its control over Wallachia and Moldavia. The non-dynastic king Matthias Corvinus, son of John Hunyadi, ruled the Kingdom of Hungary from 1458 to 1490. He strengthened Hungary and its government. Under his rule, Hungary (notably the northern parts, some of which are in Slovakia today) became an important artistic and cultural centre of Europe during the Renaissance. Hungarian culture influenced others, for example the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Together with Polish and Czech lands, Hungary formed the Visegrád group of countries. Today an alliance of the same name exists again with the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland. Hungarian independence ended with the Ottoman conquest at the beginning of the 16th century; the parts of Hungary that were not conquered by the Ottomans were annexed by Austria (the rulers of which were Hungarian kings at the same time) in the West, and became the independent Principality of Transylvania in the East, where thus Hungarian statedom was preserved. After 150 years, Austria and her Christian allies retook also the territory of today's Hungary by the end of the 17th century from the Islamic Ottoman Empire. After the final retreat of the Turks, struggle began between the Hungarian nation and the Habsburg kings for the protection of noblemen's rights (thus guarding the autonomy of Hungary). The fight against Austrian absolutism resulted in the unsuccessful popular freedom fight led by a Transylvanian nobleman, Ferenc II Rákóczi, between 1704 and 1711. The revolution and war of 1848–1849 eliminated serfdom and secured civil rights. The Austrians were finally able to prevail only with Russian help. Thanks to the victories against Austria by the French-Italian coalition (the Battle of Solferino, 1859) and Prussia (Battle of Königgratz, 1866), Hungary would eventually, in 1867, manage to become an autonomous part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (see Ausgleich). Having achieved this, the Hungarian government took an effort to nationally unify the kingdom by Magyarisation of the various other nationalities. This lasted until the end of World War I, when the Austro-Hungarian empire collapsed. On November 16, 1918, an independent Hungarian Republic was proclaimed. In March 1919 the communists took power, and in April, Béla Kun proclaimed the Hungarian Soviet Republic. This government, like its predecessor, proved to be short lived; after some initial military successes against the Czechoslovak army, the Romanians attacked to prevent a campaign in Transylvania. By August more than half of present-day Hungary, including Budapest, was placed under Romanian occupation, which lasted until November. Rightist military forces, led by the former Austro-Hungarian Admiral Miklós Horthy, entered Budapest in the wake of the Romanian army's departure and filled the vacuum of state power. In January 1920, elections were held for a unicameral assembly, and Admiral Horthy was subsequently elected Regent, thereby formally restoring Hungary to a kingdom, although there were no more Kings of Hungary, despite attempts by the former Habsburg king to return to power. Horthy continued to rule with autocratic powers until 1944. In June 1920, the Treaty of Trianon was signed, fixing Hungary's borders. Compared with the pre-war Kingdom, the size and population of this new Hungary were reduced by about two-thirds; about one-third of the Magyar population became minorities in the neighbouring countries. Therefore, Hungarian politics and culture of the interwar period were saturated with irredentism and revisionism (the restoration of 19th century "greater Hungary" by whatever means necessary). Horthy made an alliance with Nazi Germany in the 1930s, in the hope of revising the territorial losses that had followed World War I. The alliance did lead to some territories being given to Hungary in the two Vienna Awards. Hungary then assisted the German occupation of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, occupying the Banat right afterwards, and finally entered World War II in 1941, fighting primarily against the Soviet Union. In October 1944, Hitler replaced Horthy with the Hungarian Nazi collaborator Ferenc Szálasi and his Arrow Cross Party in order to avert Hungary's defection to the Allied side, which were constantly threatened since the Allied invasion of Italy. Hungary passed a series of anti-Semitic laws throughot the 1920s and thirties, and some massacres of Jews by Hungarian forces took place in the early part of the Second World War, but Hungary initially resisted large scale deportation of its Jewish population. Ultimately, however, during the German occupation, the Arrow Cross Party and government authorities participated fully in the Holocaust: in May and June of 1944, Hungarian police deported nearly 440,000 Jews in more than 145 trains, mostly to Auschwitz [http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/index.php?ModuleId=10005458]. Ultimately, over 533,000 Jews in Hungary were killed during the Holocaust, as well as several tens of thousands of Roma. Following the fall of Nazi Germany, Hungary became part of the Soviet area of influence and was appropriated into a communist state following a short period of democracy in 1946–1947. After 1948 Communist leader Mátyás Rákosi established a Stalinist rule in the country, which was barely bearable for the war-torn country. This led to the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and an announced withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact which were met with a massive military intervention by the Soviet Union. From the 1960s on to the late 1980s Hungary enjoyed a distinguished status of "the happiest barrack" within the Eastern bloc, under the rule of late controversial communist leader János Kádár, who exercised autocratic rule during this period. In the late 1980s, Hungary led the movement to dissolve the Warsaw Pact and shifted toward multiparty democracy and a market-oriented economy. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Hungary developed closer ties with Western Europe, joined NATO in 1999 and the European Union on May 1, 2004. See Also: Kingdom of Hungary, Hungary before the Magyars

Politics

Main article: Politics of Hungary The President of the Republic, elected by the parliament every 5 years, has a largely ceremonial role, but powers also include appointing the prime minister. The prime minister selects cabinet ministers and has the exclusive right to dismiss them. Each cabinet nominee appears before one or more parliamentary committees in consultative open hearings and must be formally approved by the president. The unicameral, 386-member National Assembly (the Országgyűlés) is the highest organ of state authority and initiates and approves legislation sponsored by the prime minister. National parliamentary elections are held every 4 years (the last was in April 2002). A 15-member Constitutional Court has power to challenge legislation on grounds of unconstitutionality.

Administrative divisions

Main article: Counties of Hungary Hungary is subdivided administratively into 19 counties, in addition to which there is one capital city (főváros): Budapest. There are also 23 so-called urban counties (singular megyei jogú város), These are:
Urban countiesCounties (County Capital)

- Békéscsaba
- Debrecen
- Dunaújváros
- Eger
- Érd
- Győr
- Hódmezővásárhely
- Kaposvár
- Kecskemét
- Miskolc
- Nagykanizsa
- Nyíregyháza
- Pécs
- Salgótarján
- Sopron
- Szeged
- Székesfehérvár
- Szekszárd
- Szolnok
- Szombathely
- Tatabánya
- Veszprém
- Zalaegerszeg
- Bács-Kiskun (Kecskemét)
- Baranya (Pécs)
- Békés (Békéscsaba)
- Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén (Miskolc)
- Csongrád (Szeged)
- Fejér (Székesfehérvár)
- Győr-Moson-Sopron (Győr)
- Hajdú-Bihar (Debrecen)
- Heves (Eger)
- Jász-Nagykun-Szolnok (Szolnok)
- Komárom-Esztergom (Tatabánya)
- Nógrád (Salgótarján)
- Pest (Budapest)
- Somogy (Kaposvár)
- Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg (Nyíregyháza)
- Tolna (Szekszárd)
- Vas (Szombathely)
- Veszprém (Veszprém)
- Zala (Zalaegerszeg)
See also: List of historic counties of Hungary

Geography

List of historic counties of Hungary Main article: Geography of Hungary Hungary's landscape consists mostly of the flat to rolling plains of the Carpathian Basin, with hills and lower mountains to the north along the Slovakian border (highest point: the Kékes at 1,014 m). Hungary is divided in two by its main waterway, the Danube (Duna); other large rivers include the Tisza and Dráva, while the western half contains Lake Balaton, a major body of water. The largest thermal lake in the world, Lake Hévíz (Hévíz Spa), is located in Hungary. The second largest lake in the Carpathian Basin (and probably the largest artificial lake in Europe) is Lake Theiss (Tisza-tó).

Climate

Hungary has a continental climate, with cold, cloudy, humid winters and warm to hot summers. Average annual temperature is 9.7 °C (49.5 °F). Temperature extremes are about 38 °C (100 °F) in the summer and −29 °C (−20 °F) in the winter. Average temperature in the summer is 27 to 32 °C (81 to 90 °F), and in the winter it is 0 to −15 °C (32 to 5 °F). The average yearly rainfall is approximately 600 mm (24 in). A small, southern region of the country near Pécs enjoys a Mediterranean climate. The relative isolation of the Carpathian Basin makes it susceptible to droughts and the effects of global warming are already felt. According to popular opinion, and many scientists in the latest decades the country became drier, as droughts are quite common; and summers became hotter, winters became milder. Because of these reasons snow has become much more rare in the area than before. Popular opinion also states that the four-season system became a two-season system as spring and autumn are getting shorter and shorter, even vanishing some years. Most of Hungary is surrounded by thick forests and mountainous plains.

Economy

Main article: Economy of Hungary Hungary continues to demonstrate strong economic growth as one of the newest members of the European Union (since 2004). Together with Slovenia and the Czech Republic, Hungary provides one of the highest standard of living among Eastern European countries. The private sector accounts for over 80% of GDP. Hungary gets nearly one third of all foreign direct investment flowing in to Central Europe. Foreign ownership of and investment in Hungarian firms are widespread, with cumulative foreign direct investment totalling more than US$23 billion since 1989. Hungarian sovereign debt was upgraded in 2000 to the second-highest rating among all the Central European transition economies. Inflation and unemployment – both priority concerns in 2001 – have declined substantially. Economic reform measures such as health care reform, tax reform, and local government financing have not yet been addressed by the present government. The Hungarian government has expressed a desire to adopt the euro currency in 2010, but the introduction of the currency is currently only in the early planning stages.

Demographics

Historical


- Circa 900 AD- according to various sources 250,000 - 400,000 Magyars settled in the Pannonian plain, inhabited predominantly by Slavs
- 1222 - 2,000,000 at the time of Golden Bull
- 1242 - 1,200,000 after the Mongol-Tatars invasion
- 1370 - 2,500,000 at the time of Angevin kings
- 1490 - 4,000,000 before the Ottoman conquest (3.2 million Magyars)
- 1699 - 3,300,000 at the time of Treaty of Karlowitz (less than 2 million Magyars)
- 1711 - 3,000,000 at the end of Kuruc War (1.6 million Magyars)
- 1790 - 8,000,000 (39% Magyars)
- 1828 - 11,495,536
- 1846 - 12,033,399
- 1880 - 13,749,603 (46% Magyars)
- 1900 - 16,838,255 (51,4% Magyars)
- 1910 - 18,264,533 (54,5% Magyars, 5% Jews)
- 1920 - 7.516.000 after the Treaty of Trianon (90% Magyars, 6.1% Jews)

Present

Main article: Demographics of Hungary For some 95% of the population, mostly Hungarians, the mother tongue is Hungarian, a Finno Ugric language unrelated to any neighbouring language. Several ethnic minorities exist: Roma (2%), Germans (1.2%), Romanians (0.8%), Slovaks (0.4%), Croats (0.2%), Serbs (0.2%) and Ukrainians (0.1%). The largest religion in Hungary is Catholicism – Roman and Greek – (approx 50% of the population), with a Calvinist minority (around 30%) and Lutherans (5%). However, these formal figures are not wholly representative, since the Hungarian population is not particularly religious; no more than 25% actively practice their faith. Due to historical reasons, significant Hungarian minority populations can be found in the surrounding countries, notably in Ukraine (in Transcarpathia), Slovakia, Romania (in Transylvania), and Serbia (in Vojvodina). Austria (in Burgenland), Croatia, and Slovenia are also host to a number of ethnic Magyars.

Minorities

Several ethnic minorities exist: Roma (2%), Germans (1.2%), Romanians (0.8%), Slovaks (0.4%), Croats (0.2%), Serbs (0.2%) and Ukrainians (0.1%). As regards education, there are special problems associated with the Roma minority. Currently slightly more than 70 percent of Roma children complete primary schooling, but only one third continue studies into the intermediate (secondary) level. This is far lower than the more than 90 percent proportion of children of non-Roma families who continue studies at an intermediate level. The situation is made still worse by the fact that a large proportion of young Roma are qualified in subjects that provide them with only limited chances for employment. Less than 1 percent of Roma hold higher educational certificates.

Culture

Main article: Culture of Hungary
- List of Hungarians
- List of Hungarian rulers
- List of Hungarian writers
- List of universities in Hungary
- List of colleges in Hungary
- Public holidays in Hungary
- Music of Hungary
- Hungarian cuisine
- Eastern name order used in Hungarian personal names
- Common Hungarian surnames
- Hungarian jokes
- Magyar Cserkészszövetség (HUngarian Scout Association)
- Curse of Turan

Miscellaneous topics


- Communications in Hungary
- Foreign relations of Hungary
- [http://hu.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Hungarian Wikipedia]
- List of cities in Hungary
- Military of Hungary
- Name days in Hungary
- Transportation in Hungary
- History of the Jews in Hungary

External links

General info


- [http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07547a.htm A detailed article on Hungary from a Christian point of view] (Catholic Encyclopedia)
- [http://www.europa.eu.int/comm/enlargement/hungary/ Country Profile Hungary] – tons of material and links
- [http://hungary.lap.hu/ Link collection for foreign visitors and residents of Hungary]
- [http://www.parlament.hu/parl_en.htm Official site of the National Assembly]
- [http://www.magyarorszag.hu/angol/ Hungarian Government Portal] with comprehensive information
- [http://www.keh.hu/index_en.html Official site of the President of Hungary]
- [http://www.meh.hu/english Official site of the Prime Minister of Hungary]
-
- [http://www.visitors.hu/index_en.html Hungary for Visitors] – Descriptions of the main regions for tourists
- [http://www.demos.hu/Audit Hungary's Strategic Audit 2005] – Comprehensive analyses of Hungary's past 15 years and current state of development (click the Union Jack to see the English language version)
- [http://www.mythinglinks.org/euro~east~finno~Hungary.html A short, but valid summary about Hungary in English]

History


- [http://www.hungarianhistory.com History of Hungary – The Corvinus Library]
- [http://cityguide.budapestrooms.com/hungary/history1.htm History of Hungary – Chronological Survey: 2500 BC – AD 2004]
- [http://www.hunmagyar.org/hungary/history/index.html Hungarian History] (Turanian Lands, Turanian Peoples)
- [http://www.bh.org.il/V-Exh/hungary/index.html In The Land of Hagar - The Jews of Hungary] – A Virtual Exhibition

Culture


- [http://www.hungarianbookfoundation.hu/Html/Translation_grant.htm Hungarian Book Foundation]
- [http://www.pafi.hu/kiirok/mfordhaz.htm Funds available for translators of Hungarian works - in Hungarian]
- [http://translations.bookfinder.hu/indexa.htm Translation of Hungarian literary works - a database] Category:European Union member states Category:Republics Category:Landlocked countries fiu-vro:Ungari als:Ungarn zh-min-nan:Magyar-kok ko:헝가리 ms:Hungary ja:ハンガリー simple:Hungary th:ประเทศฮังการี

Romania

:Romania (formerly also spelled Rumania or Roumania; Romanian: România ) is a country in Europe. It is bordered by Ukraine and Moldova in the northeast; Hungary in the west; Serbia and Bulgaria to the south along the Danube River. Romania has a stretch of sea coast on the Black Sea and the eastern and southern Carpathian mountains run through its centre. Romania has been a member of NATO since 2004, and is also an acceding country to the European Union. The EU Accession Treaty was signed in early 2005, and Romania is due to join the Union on January 1, 2007.

Name

Main article: Etymology of Romania