HungarianSARAH CARUTHERS

Uralic

Finno-Ugric

A Brief History

As nomads, the people who would

become Hungarians had encounters with

Iranians and Turks, leading to some loan

words.

1000 = Establishment of the Kingdom of

Hungary

1200s = Mongol invasions

150 years of Ottoman Empire and

Turkish/Muslim influence

Habsburg Family – Austro-Hungarian

Communist rule post WW2

Fall of Communism 1989

Mongols

Ottoman Empire

Habsburg Family: Austro-Hungarian Empire

Hungarian

Features• AGGLUTINATIVE.

• SVO WORD ORDER.

• ~13 MILLION SPEAKERS.

• OFFICIAL LANGUAGE OF HUNGARY.

• SPOKEN IN HUNGARY, AUSTRIA, CROATIA, POLAND, ROMANIA, SERBIA, SLOVAKIA, SLOVENIA, UKRAINE.

• KINGDOM OF HUNGARY FOUNDED IN 1000 BY STEPHEN I OF HUNGARY, WHO ADOPTED THE LATIN SCRIPT.

• ONE OF THE EARLIEST WRITTEN TEXTS IN HUNGARIAN WAS A FUNERAL ORATION WRITTEN IN 1196.

• THE FIRST COMPLETE BOOK, THE LETTERS OF SAINT PAUL, TRANSLATED BY BENEDEKKOMJÁTI, WAS PUBLISHED IN 1533 IN KRAKÓW IN POLAND.

• ALSO, 2 DIFFERENT WORDS FOR THE COLOR ‘RED’.

Consonants & Vowels

Sound Features

Vowels 7 pairs of short and long vowels

Vowel harmony

Divided by front vs. back and rounded vs. unrounded (in front)

Exceptions to vowel harmony rule may be from a phoneme no longer present in modern Hungarian: unrounded back vowel /ɨ/, or its long counterpart /ɨː/

híd-nál

‘bridge-at’

This shows that the rules are sensitive to the original sounds in place.

Consonants Almost every consonant can be geminated

Orthography does not use consonant diacritics

So many consonant clusters…

Which leads to many assimilation rules. Typically, the last consonant of the cluster dictates which change takes place.

Voicing, devoicing, nasal/sibilant/palatal assimilation, degemination, liquid assimilation/deletion

központ -> [køspont] 'center'

Dialects

9 Major Dialects:

• Western Transdanubia

• Central Transdanubia

• Southern Transdanubia

• Southern Great Plains

• Palóc

• Tisza–Körös

• Northeast Hungary

• Székely

• Moldavian (Csángó)

Most dialects are mutually intelligible; natives have the most trouble with Csángó and Oberwart in Austria.

Csángó

• Csángó is geographically isolated from

other major dialects.

• Ethnic minority of Romania.

• No consensus on total population size –

estimates from 20-60,000.

• Few modern researchers.

• Supposedly has preserved some

features of Old Hungarian.

Székely rovásírás (Szekler script)

Runes cont.

ALPHABET SYSTEM.

MAY BE DESCENDED FROM OLD TURKIC SCRIPT.

READS RIGHT TO LEFT.

THREE VERTICAL DOTS INDICATE SPACES BETWEEN WORDS.

FIRST OBJECT FOUND WITH THE WRITING WAS AN AXE SOCKET.

THERE ARE VERY FEW FOUND OBJECTS ALTOGETHER WITH THE SCRIPT INTACT.

USED UNTIL 11TH C.

SMALL COMEBACK IN 18TH C.

Runic Comparison

Turkic Runes - Orkhon Hungarian Runes - Székely

Naming

Conventions

Common family names:

Nagy (big), Horváth (Croat), Kovács

(smith), Szabó (tailor), Tóth (Slavic), Farkas

(wolf), Varga (leatherworker)

During the Austro-Hungarian Empire,

people who were not ethnically

Hungarian (Germans, Jews, and Slovaks)

were encouraged to adopt Hungarian

surnames.

German: Zsengeller, Scheiberné

Eastern naming conventions: family name first, then given name.

• Tamás Nagy -> Nagy Tamás

The given name is still used when speaking to or about someone.

Typically no middle names, but may be becoming more popular.

Baptismal names are not used for any official records.

References

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Fin

no-Ugric-languages

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Ura

lic-languages

https://www.omniglot.com/writing/hu

ngarian_runes.htm

http://www.eliznik.org.uk/EastEurope/

History/migration-map/hungarian-

migration.htm

https://www.ethnologue.com/langua

ge/hun

https://www.omniglot.com/writing/ork

hon.htm