“Hungarian language”的意思、由来-开放百科全书

Hungarian ({{audio|Hu-magyar_nyelv.ogg|magyar nyelv}}) is a Finno-Ugric language spoken in Hungary and parts of several neighbouring countries. It 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 (Subcarpathia), central and western Romania (Transylvania), northern Serbia (Vojvodina), northern Croatia and northern Slovenia (Mur region). It is also spoken by Hungarian diaspora communities worldwide, especially in North America (particularly the United States and Canada) and Israel. Like Finnish and Estonian, Hungarian belongs to the Uralic language family. With 13 million speakers, it is the family's largest member by number of speakers.

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. Hungarian has traditionally been assigned to the Ugric branch within the Finno-Ugric group, 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 is now frequently questioned.^[3]^[4]

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 Ǫgry/Ǫgrove (sg. Ǫgrinŭ) seemed to confirm that.^[5] Current literature favors the hypothesis that it comes from the name of the Turkic tribe Onogur (which means "ten arrows" or "ten tribes").^[6]^[7]^[8]

There are numerous regular sound correspondences between Hungarian and the other Ugric languages. For example, Hungarian {{IPA|/aː/}} corresponds to Khanty {{IPA|/o/}} in certain positions, and Hungarian {{IPA|/h/}} corresponds to Khanty {{IPA|/x/}}, while Hungarian final {{IPA|/z/}} corresponds to Khanty final {{IPA|/t/}}. For example, Hungarian ház {{IPA-hu|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.

History

Prehistory

Scholarly consensus

The traditional view holds that the Hungarian language diverged from its Ugric relatives in the first half of the 1st millennium BC, in western Siberia east of the southern Urals.^[9] The Hungarians gradually changed their lifestyle from being settled hunters to being nomadic pastoralists, probably as a result of early contacts with Iranian nomads (Scythians and Sarmatians). In Hungarian, Iranian loanwords date back to the time immediately following the breakup of Ugric and probably span well over a millennium.^[10] 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 nāy).

Archaeological evidence from present day southern Bashkortostan confirms the existence of Hungarian settlements between the Volga River and the Ural Mountains.^[11]

The Onogurs (and Bulgars) later had a great influence on the language, especially between the 5th and 9th centuries. This layer of Turkic loans is large and varied (e.g. szó "word", from Turkic; and daru "crane", from the related Permic languages), and includes words borrowed from Oghur Turkic; e.g. borjú "calf" (cf. Chuvash păru, părăv vs. Turkish buzağı);^[12] dél ‘noon; south’ (cf. Chuvash tĕl vs. Turkish dial. düš).^[13] Many words related to agriculture,^[14] state administration and even family relationships show evidence of such backgrounds.{{citation needed|date=June 2018}} Hungarian syntax and grammar were not influenced in a similarly dramatic way over these three centuries.{{citation needed|date=June 2018}}

After the arrival of the Hungarians in the Carpathian Basin, the language came into contact with a variety of speech communities, among them Slavic, Turkic, and German. Turkic loans from this period come mainly from the Pechenegs and Cumanians, who settled in Hungary during the 12th and 13th centuries: e.g. koboz "cobza" (cf. Turkish kopuz ‘lute’); komondor "mop dog" (< *kumandur < Cuman). Hungarian borrowed many words from neighbouring Slavic languages: e.g. tégla ‘brick’; mák ‘poppy’; karácsony ‘Christmas’^[15]). These languages in turn borrowed words from Hungarian: e.g. Serbo-Croatian ašov from Hung ásó ‘spade’. About 1.6 percent of the Romanian lexicon is of Hungarian origin.^[16]^[17]

Alternative views

Hungarian historian and archaeologist Gyula László claims that geological data from pollen analysis seems to contradict the placing of the ancient Hungarian homeland near the Urals.^[18]

There have been attempts, dismissed by mainstream linguists as pseudoscientific comparisons, to show that Hungarian is related to other languages, such as Hebrew, Hunnic, Sumerian, Egyptian, Etruscan, Basque, Persian, Pelasgian, Greek, Chinese, Sanskrit, English, Tibetan, Magar, Quechua, Armenian, Japanese, and at least 40 other languages.^[19]

Historical controversy over origins

Today the consensus among linguists is that Hungarian is a member of the Uralic family of languages.

The classification of Hungarian as a Uralic/Finno-Ugric rather than a Turkic language continued to be a matter of impassioned political controversy throughout the 18th and into the 19th centuries. During the latter half of the 19th century, a competing hypothesis proposed a Turkic affinity of Hungarian, or, alternatively, that both the Uralic and the Turkic families formed part of a superfamily of Ural–Altaic languages. 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, mainly based on work by the German linguist {{Interlanguage link multi|Josef Budenz|de}}.^[20]

Hungarians did in fact absorb some Turkic influences during several centuries of cohabitation. For example, the Hungarians appear to have learned animal husbandry techniques from the Turkic Chuvash people, as a high proportion of words specific to agriculture and livestock are of Chuvash origin. A strong Chuvash influence was also apparent in Hungarian burial customs.

Old Hungarian

The first written accounts of Hungarian, mostly personal name and place names, date to the 10th century. No significant texts written in Old Hungarian script have survived, as wood, the medium of writing in use at the time, was perishable.{{citation needed|date=June 2018}}

The Kingdom of Hungary was founded in 1000 by Stephen I. The country became a Western-styled Christian (Roman Catholic) state, with Latin script replacing Hungarian runes. The earliest remaining fragments of the language are found in the establishing charter of the abbey of Tihany from 1055, intermingled with Latin text. The first extant text fully written in Hungarian is the Funeral Sermon and Prayer, which dates to the 1190s. Although the orthography of these early texts differed considerably from that used today, contemporary Hungarians can still understand a great deal of the reconstructed spoken language, despite changes in grammar and vocabulary.{{citation needed|date=June 2018}}

A more extensive body of Hungarian literature arose after 1300. The earliest known example of Hungarian religious poetry is the 14th-century Lamentations of Mary. The first Bible translation was the Hussite Bible in the 1430s.^[21]^[22]

The standard language lost its diphthongs, and several postpositions transformed into suffixes, including 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, while today only two or three are used.^[23]^[24]

Modern Hungarian

In 1533, Kraków printer Benedek Komjáti published the first Hungarian-language book set in movable type, a translation of the letters of Saint Paul entitled Az zenth Paal leueley magyar nyeluen (modern orthography: Az Szent Pál levelei magyar nyelven).{{citation needed|date=June 2018}}

By the 17th century, the language already closely resembled its present-day form, although two of the past tenses remained in use. German, Italian and French loans also began to appear. Further Turkish words were borrowed during the period of Ottoman rule (1541 to 1699).{{citation needed|date=June 2018}}

In the 18th century a group of writers, most notably Ferenc Kazinczy, spearheaded a process of nyelvújítás (language revitalization). Some words were shortened (győzedelem > győzelem, 'triumph' or 'victory'); a number of dialectal words spread nationally (e.g., cselleng 'dawdle'); extinct words were reintroduced (dísz, 'décor'); a wide range of expressions were coined using the various derivative suffixes; and some other, less frequently used methods of expanding the language were utilized. This movement produced more than ten thousand words, most of which are used actively today.{{citation needed|date=June 2018}}

The 19th and 20th centuries saw further standardization of the language, and differences between mutually comprehensible dialects gradually diminished.{{citation needed|date=June 2018}}

In 1920, Hungary signed the Treaty of Trianon, losing 71 percent of its territory and one-third of the ethnic Hungarian population along with it.{{citation needed|date=June 2018}}

Today the language holds official status nationally in Hungary and regionally in Romania, Slovakia, Serbia, Austria and Slovenia.{{citation needed|date=June 2018}}

Geographic distribution

Hungarian has about 13 million^[34]^[35]^[36] 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.^[25] About 2.2 million speakers live in other 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^[37] 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: Hodoš, 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%.^[38]

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 Bacău 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.

Phonology

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

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

The sound voiced palatal plosive {{IPA|/ɟ/}}, written {{angle bracket|gy}}, sounds similar to 'd' in British English 'duty'. It occurs in the name of the country, "Magyarország" (Hungary), pronounced {{IPA|/ˈmɒɟɒrorsaːɡ/}}. It is one of three palatalised consonants, the others being {{angle bracket|ty}}, {{angle bracket|ny}}, and (historically) {{angle bracket|ly}}.

A single 'r' is pronounced as an alveolar tap (akkora 'of that size'), but a double 'r' is pronounced as an alveolar trill (akkorra 'by that time'), like in Spanish.

Prosody

Primary stress is always on the first syllable of a word, as in Finnish and the neighbouring Slovak and Czech. There is a secondary stress on other syllables in compounds: viszontlátásra ("goodbye") is pronounced {{IPA|/ˈvisontˌlaːtaːʃrɒ/}}. Elongated vowels in non-initial syllables may seem to be stressed to an English-speaker, as length and stress correlate in English.

Grammar

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

Vowel harmony

Hungarian uses vowel harmony to attach suffixes to words. That 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 the rule.

Nouns

Nouns have 18 cases,{{cn|reason=Some sources say really only 3 (because Hungarian is an agglutinative language) others say 17, or 18; others say up to 30. |date=February 2019}} which 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 cases express a combination of the source-location-target and surface-inside-proximity ternary distinctions (three times three cases); there is a separate case ending –ból/–ből meaning a combination of source and insideness: 'from inside of'.

Possession is expressed by a possessive suffix on the possessed object, rather than the possessor as in English (Peter's apple becomes Péter almája, literally 'Peter apple-his'). Noun plurals are formed with–k (az almák ‘the apples’), but after a numeral, the singular is used (két alma ‘two apples’, literally ‘two apple’; not *két almák).

Unlike English, Hungarian uses case suffixes and nearly always postpositions instead of prepositions.

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

Adjectives

Adjectives precede nouns (a piros alma 'the red apple') and have three degrees: positive (piros 'red'), comparative (pirosabb 'redder') and superlative (a legpirosabb 'the reddest').

If the noun takes the plural or a case, an attributive adjective is invariable: a piros almák 'the red apples'. However, a predicative adjective agrees with the noun: az almák pirosak 'the apples are red'. Adjectives by themselves can behave as nouns (and so can 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), three moods (indicative, conditional and imperative-subjunctive), two numbers (singular or plural), three persons (first, second and third) and definiteness.

The last feature is most characteristic: the definite conjugation is used with a transitive verb whose (direct) object is definite (Péter eszi az almát. "Peter eats the apple".), but 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".){{Clarify|date=March 2015|reason=Does Hungarian also have the concept of indirect objects (equating in English to prepositional phrases); and if so, into which class would fall the conjugation of a verb with an indirect, definite object? ("Peter watches for the apple.")}}

Since conjugation expresses the person and number, personal pronouns are usually omitted except for emphasis.

The present tense is unmarked, and the past is formed by using the suffix –t or –tt: hall 'hears'; hallott 'heard', past. Future may be expressed with the present tense (usually with a word defining the time of the event: holnap 'tomorrow') or by using the auxiliary verb fog (similar to the English 'will'), followed by the infinitive.

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

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

Vowel harmony also plays a major role in verb conjugations. All Hungarian verb conjugations (as well as postpositions and possessive suffixes, for that matter) can be thought of as 'templates' into which vowels are inserted. Based on the nature of a verb's infinitive, which always ends in '-ni', one can create a generic 'template', which has mostly consonants. The vowels are then inserted into the 'template' according to the rules of vowel harmony, based on the categorization of the vowel in the verb root (front, back, rounded, unrounded).

Word order

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

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

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

The focus shows the new information for the listeners that may not have been known or that their knowledge must be corrected. For example, "Én vagyok az apád". ('I am your father'. Literally, 'It is I who am your father'.), from the movie The Empire Strikes Back, the pronoun I (én) is in the focus and implies that it is new information, and the listener thought that someone else is his father.

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

Politeness

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

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

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^[40] 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 uses the 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.

Vocabulary

During the first early phase of Hungarian language reforms (late 18th and early 19th centuries) more than ten thousand words were coined,^[41] several thousand of which are still actively used today (see also Ferenc Kazinczy, the leading figure of the Hungarian language reforms.) Kazinczy's chief goal was to replace existing words of German and Latin origins with newly-created Hungarian words. As a result, Kazinczy and his later followers (the reformers) significantly reduced the formerly high ratio of words of Latin and German origins in the Hungarian language, which were related to social sciences, natural sciences, politics and economics, institutional names, fashion etc.

Giving an accurate estimate for the total word count is difficult, since it is hard to define "a word" in agglutinating languages, due to the existence of affixed words and compound words. To obtain a meaningful definition of compound words, we have to exclude such compounds whose meaning is the mere sum of its elements. The largest dictionaries giving translations from Hungarian to another language contain 120,000 words and phrases^[42] (but this may include redundant phrases as well, because of translation issues){{clarify|date=March 2019}}. The new desk lexicon of the Hungarian language contains 75,000 words^[42] and the Comprehensive Dictionary of Hungarian Language (to be published in 18 volumes in the next twenty years) is planned to contain 110,000 words.^[43] The default Hungarian lexicon is usually estimated to comprise 60,000 to 100,000 words.^[44] (Independently of specific languages, speakers actively use at most 10,000 to 20,000 words,^[45] with an average intellectual using 25,000 to 30,000 words.^[44]) However, all the Hungarian lexemes collected from technical texts, dialects etc. would total up to 1,000,000 words.^[46]

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 some hundreds word roots with other Uralic languages like Finnish, Estonian, Mansi and Khanty. Examples are the verb él "live" (Finnish elää^[47]), the numbers kettő (2), három (3), négy (4) (cf. Mansi китыг kitig, хурум khurum, нила nila, Finnish kaksi, kolme, neljä,^[47] Estonian kaks, kolm, neli, ), as well as víz 'water', kéz 'hand', vér 'blood', fej 'head' (cf. Finnish^[47] and Estonian vesi, käsi, veri, Finnish pää,^[47] 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 statesmanship & religion were, too.^[48]

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^[50] 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.

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:

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 reduplication (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:

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.

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".^[52]

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.

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".)

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

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

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:

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 practised by some enthusiasts.

Modern Hungarian is written using an expanded Latin alphabet, and has a phonemic orthography, i.e. pronunciation can generally be predicted from the written language. In addition to the standard letters of the Latin alphabet, Hungarian uses several modified Latin characters to represent the additional vowel sounds of the language. These include letters with acute accents (á, é, í, ó, ú) to represent long vowels, and umlauts (ö and ü) and their long counterparts ő and ű to represent front vowels. Sometimes (usually as a result of a technical glitch on a computer) {{angle bracket|ô}} or {{angle bracket|õ}} is used for {{angle bracket|ő}}, and {{angle bracket|û}} for {{angle bracket|ű}}. This is often due to the limitations of the Latin-1 / ISO-8859-1 code page. These letters are not part of the Hungarian language, and are considered misprints. Hungarian can be properly represented with the Latin-2 / ISO-8859-2 code page, but this code page is not always available. (Hungarian is the only language using both {{angle bracket|ő}} and {{angle bracket|ű}}.) Unicode includes them, and so they can be used on the Internet.

Additionally, the letter pairs {{angle bracket|ny}}, {{angle bracket|ty}}, and {{angle bracket|gy}} represent the palatal consonants {{IPA|/ɲ/}}, {{IPA|/c/}}, and {{IPA|/ɟ/}} (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 {{angle bracket|s}} for {{IPA|/ʃ/}} and {{angle bracket|sz}} for {{IPA|/s/}}, which is the reverse of Polish usage. The letter {{angle bracket|zs}} is {{IPA|/ʒ/}} and {{angle bracket|cs}} is {{IPA|/t͡ʃ/}}. These digraphs are considered single letters in the alphabet. The letter {{angle bracket|ly}} is also a "single letter digraph", but is pronounced like {{IPA|/j/}} (English {{angle bracket|y}}), and appears mostly in old words. The letters {{angle bracket|dz}} and {{angle bracket|dzs}} {{IPA|/d͡ʒ/}} 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: {{angle bracket|sz}} + {{angle bracket|sz}} = {{angbr|ssz}}, e.g. művésszel ("with an artist"). But when the digraph occurs at the end of a line, all of the letters are written out. For example, ("with a bus"):

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 + gyűrű = jegygyűrű ("engagement/wedding ring", jegy means "sign", "mark". The term jegyben lenni/járni means "to be engaged"; gyűrű 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 {{IPA|/j/}}).

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 United States 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:

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 the last of these is also translated in English from the original Italian or possibly Ligurian).

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.

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

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 kezdődik." or "A találkozó 10³⁵-kor kezdődik." – "The meeting begins at 10.35.").

Also, in verbal and written communication it is common to use "délelőtt" (literally "before noon") and "délután" (lit. "after noon") abbreviated as "de." and "du." respectively. Délelőtt and délután is said or written before the time, e.g. "Délután 4 óra van." – "It's 4 p.m.". However e.g. "délelőtt 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:

Addresses

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

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:

Vocabulary examples

Numbers

Time

Conversation

See also

Bibliography

Courses

Grammars

Others

Notes

1. ^{{cite web|url=https://www.coe.int/t/dg4/education/minlang/Report/PeriodicalReports/CroatiaPR5_hr.pdf | title=Peto izvješće Republike Hrvatske o primjeni Europske povelje o regionalnim ili manjinskim jezicima-Fifth report on implementation of the European Charter for Regional and Minority Languages | date=October 2013 | author=Government of Croatia | publisher=Council of Europe | page=34-36 | language=hr | format=PDF | accessdate=18 March 2019}}
2. ^{{cite web|url=https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/hu.html|title=The World Factbook — Central Intelligence Agency|website=Cia.gov|accessdate=8 October 2017}}
3. ^Salminen, Tapani (2002): Problems in the taxonomy of the Uralic languages in the light of modern comparative studies
4. ^Michalove, Peter A. (2002) The Classification of the Uralic Languages: Lexical Evidence from Finno-Ugric. In: Finnisch-Ugrische Forschungen, vol. 57
5. ^{{Citation | last = Lebedynsky | first = Iaroslav | language = French | title = Les Nomades: Les peuples nomades de la steppe des origines aux invasions mongoles |trans-title=The Nomads: the steppe nomad people from origins to Mongol invasions | page = 191}}.
6. ^Sugar, P.F..A History of Hungary. University Press, 1996: p. 9
7. ^Maxwell, A. Magyarization, Language Planning and Whorf: The word Uhor as a Case Study in Linguistic Relativism Multilingua 23: 319, 2004.
8. ^Marcantonio, Angela. The Uralic Language Family: Facts, Myths and Statistics. Blackwell Publishing, 2002: p. 19
9. ^{{Cite book |title=The Uralic Languages |last= Abondolo |first=Daniel |publisher=Routledge |year=1998 |location=London |pages=1–42 |chapter=Introduction}}
10. ^{{Cite book |title=The Uralic Languages |last=Abondolo |first=Daniel |publisher=Routledge |year=1998 |location=London |pages=453 |chapter=Hungarian}}
11. ^Attila Türk, A magyar őstörténet és a szaltovói régészeti kultúrkör. PhD, University of Szeged, 2011 .
12. ^András Róna-Tas & Árpád Berta, West Old Turkic: Turkic Loanwords in Hungarian. Part 1: Introduction, A-K (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2011), 151-2.
13. ^Róna-Tas & Berta, WOT 2011/1: 291-4.
14. ^{{cite web|title=Hungary – Early history|url=http://memory.loc.gov/frd/cs/hutoc.html|work=Library of Congress (public domain)|accessdate=2008-06-29}}
15. ^Gábor Zaicz, Etimológiai szótár: Magyar szavak és toldalékok eredete, s.v. “karácsony” (Tinta Könyvkiadó, 2006)
16. ^{{Cite book |title=Vocabularul reprezentativ al limbilor romanice |last=Sala |first=Marius |publisher=Editura Ştiinţifică şi Enciclopedică |year=1988 |location=Bucharest}}
17. ^Kim Schulte, "Loanwords in Romanian", Loanwords in the World's Languages: A Comparative Handbook (Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 2009), 239.
18. ^Laszlo Gyula, The Magyars: Their Life and Civilization, (1996). On p. 37 he states: “This seemed to be an impeccable conclusion until attention was paid to the actual testimony of tree-pollen analyses, and these showed that the linguists had failed to take into account changes in the vegetation zones over the millennia. After analysis of the plant pollens in the supposed homeland of the Magyars, which were preserved in the soil, it became clear to scientists that the taiga and deciduous forests were only in contact during the second millennium B.C.E., which is much too late to affect Finno-Ugrian history. So the territory sought by the linguists as the location of the putative ‘ancient homeland’ never existed. At 5,000-6,000 B.C.E., the period at which the Uralic era has been dated, the taiga was still thousands of kilometres away from the Ural mountains and the mixed deciduous forest had only just begun its northward advance.”
19. ^Miklós Zsirai: Őstörténeti csodabogarak. Budapest, 1943.
20. ^{{cite journal|journal=Linguistica Uralica|issue=2/2001|author1-first=Angela|author1-last=Marcantonio|author2-first=Pirjo|author2-last=Nummenaho|author3-first=Michela|author3-last=Salvagni|url=http://www.kirj.ee/public/va_lu/l37-2-1.pdf|format=PDF|title=The "Ugric-Turkic Battle": A Critical Review|accessdate=8 October 2017|year=2001}}
21. ^{{cite book|author=Katalin É Kiss|title=The Evolution of Functional Left Peripheries in Hungarian Syntax|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ExRCBAAAQBAJ&pg=PT76|year=2014|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-870985-5|page=76}}
22. ^{{cite book|author1=Robert B. Kaplan|author2=Richard B. Baldauf|title=Language Planning and Policy in Europe|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ei6TGveKcuEC&pg=PA55|year=2005|publisher=Multilingual Matters|isbn=978-1-85359-811-1|page=55}}
23. ^{{cite book|author1=Eric Mathieu|author2=Robert Truswell|title=Micro-Change and Macro-Change in Diachronic Syntax|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SCwpDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA66|year=2017|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-874784-0|pages=66–}}
24. ^The future is formed with an auxiliary verb and so is sometimes not counted as a separate tense. (See also: periphrasis.)
25. ^¹{{cite web|url=http://www.ksh.hu/nepszamlalas/tablak_teruleti_00|title=Központi Statisztikai Hivatal|website=Ksh.hu|accessdate=8 October 2017}}
26. ^{{cite web|url=http://www.recensamantromania.ro/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/TS5.pdf|title=Romanian census 2011|website=Recensamantromania.ro|accessdate=8 October 2017}}
27. ^This number is a lower estimate, as 382,493 people (7.0% of the total population) did not specify their mother tongue.
28. ^Slovak census 2011 {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121114081722/http://portal.statistics.sk/showdoc.do?docid=50553 |date=2012-11-14 }}
29. ^Languages of Vojvodina
30. ^Ukrainian census 2001 {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100820175518/http://www.ukrcensus.gov.ua/eng/results/general/language/ |date=August 20, 2010 }}
31. ^{{cite web|url=http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/QTTable?_bm=y&-geo_id=01000US&-qr_name=DEC_2000_SF3_U_QTP16&-ds_name=DEC_2000_SF3_U|title=American FactFinder - Results|first=U.S. Census|last=Bureau|website=factfinder.census.gov|accessdate=8 October 2017}}
32. ^{{cite web|url=http://www12.statcan.ca/english/census01/products/standard/themes/RetrieveProductTable.cfm?Temporal=2001&PID=55670&APATH=3&GID=431515&METH=1&PTYPE=55430&THEME=41&FOCUS=0&AID=0&PLACENAME=0&PROVINCE=0&SEARCH=0&GC=0&GK=0&VID=0&FL=0&RL=0&FREE=0|title=File Not Found|website=12.statcan.ca|accessdate=8 October 2017}}
33. ^{{cite web|url=http://www.sbs.com.au/censusexplorer/|title=SBS Census Explorer|website=Sbs.com.au|accessdate=8 October 2017}}
34. ^{{cite web|url=http://www.ethnologue.com/language/hun|title=Hungarian|website=Ethnologue.com|accessdate=8 October 2017}}
35. ^{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=vpNOCLJImNkC&pg=PA9 |title=Hungarian Practical Dictionary: Hungarian-English, English-Hungarian |last=Szabó |first=Éva |date=2005 |publisher=Hippocrene Books |location=New York |pages=9 |language=en}}
36. ^{{Cite book |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Ox89vJtDfMYC&pg=PA1 |title=Hungarian-English/English-Hungarian: Dictionary & Phrasebook |last=Ward |first=Judit Hajnal |date=2002 |publisher=Hippocrene Books |pages=1}}
37. ^{{cite web|url=http://factfinder.census.gov/servlet/DTTable?_bm=y&-state=dt&-context=dt&-reg=DEC_2000_SF4_U_PCT001:001%7C547;&-ds_name=ACS_2006_EST_G00_&-TABLE_NAMEX=&-ci_type=A&-mt_name=ACS_2006_EST_G2000_B04003&-CONTEXT=dt&-tree_id=4001&-all_geo_types=N&-redoLog=true&-geo_id=01000US&-search_results=01000US&-format=&-_lang=en|title=American FactFinder - Search|first=U.S. Census|last=Bureau|website=factfinder.census.gov|accessdate=8 October 2017}}
38. ^{{Cite web|url=https://www.rferl.org/a/1096369.html|title=Romania: Law Allows Use Of Minority Languages In Public Administration|website=RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty|language=en|access-date=2018-10-30}}
39. ^{{Harvcoltxt|Szende|1994|p=91}}
40. ^{{cite web|url=http://www.kanizsaujsag.hu/hirek/8351/miert-tegezik-a-magyarokat-a-multik/|title=Miért tegezik a magyarokat a multik? - Kanizsa Újság|first=Kanizsa|last=Ujsag|website=Kanizsaujsag.hu|accessdate=8 October 2017}}
41. ^Kálmán Szily presented approx. 10,000 words in his book A magyar nyelvújítás szótára ("Dictionary of Hungarian language reform", vol. 1–2: 1902 and 1908), without aiming to be comprehensive
42. ^¹A nyelv és a nyelvek ("Language and languages"), edited by István Kenesei. Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, 2004, {{ISBN|963-05-7959-6}}, p. 77)
43. ^The first two volumes of the 20-volume series were introduced on 13 November, 2006, at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080417043907/http://www.e-nyelv.hu/enyelv.php?page=hir_elem.php~id=41 |date=2008-04-17 }} (in Hungarian)
44. ^¹"Hungarian is not difficult" (interview with Ádám Nádasdy)
45. ^A nyelv és a nyelvek ("Language and languages"), edited by István Kenesei. Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, 2004, {{ISBN|963-05-7959-6}}, p. 86)
46. ^A nyelv és a nyelvek ("Language and languages"), edited by István Kenesei. Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, 2004, {{ISBN|963-05-7959-6}}, pp. 76 and 86)
47. ^¹²³{{cite web|title="Related words" in Finnish and Hungarian|url=http://www.helsinki.fi/~jolaakso/f-h-ety.html|publisher=Helsinki University Bulletin|accessdate=2008-06-15}}
48. ^{{cite web|url=http://www.rmki.kfki.hu/~lukacs/DETREHUN.htm|title=PROTO-MAGYAR TEXTS FROM THE MIDDLE OF 1st MILLENIUM?|website=Rmki.kfki.hu|accessdate=8 October 2017}}
49. ^A nyelv és a nyelvek ("Language and languages"), edited by István Kenesei. Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, 2004, {{ISBN|963-05-7959-6}}, p. 134)
50. ^The Structure and Development of the Finnish Language, The Uralic and Altaic Series: 1960–1993 V.1-150, By Denis Sinor, John R. Krueger, Lauri Hakulinen, Gustav Bayerle, Translated by John R. Krueger, Compiled by Gustav Bayerle, Contributor Denis Sinor, Published by Routledge, 1997{{ISBN|0-7007-0380-2}}, {{ISBN|978-0-7007-0380-7}}, 383 pages. p. 307
51. ^{{cite web|url=http://www.nemzetismeret.hu/?id=3.2 |title=It's written in chapter Testrészek |publisher=Nemzetismeret.hu |date= |accessdate=2010-01-31}}
52. ^Berlin, B and Kay, P (1969). "Basic Color Terms." Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press
53. ^{{cite web|url=https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:Hungarian_cardinal_numbers|title=Category:Hungarian cardinal numbers - Wiktionary|website=en.wiktionary.org|accessdate=8 October 2017}}
54. ^{{cite web|url=https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:hu:Days_of_the_week|title=Category:hu:Days of the week |publisher=Wiktionary|accessdate=8 October 2017}}
55. ^{{cite web|url=https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:hu:Months|title=Category:hu:Months |publisher=Wiktionary |accessdate=8 October 2017}}

Classification

History

Prehistory

Scholarly consensus

Alternative views

Historical controversy over origins

Old Hungarian

Modern Hungarian

Geographic distribution

Official status

Dialects

Phonology

Prosody

Grammar

Vowel harmony

Nouns

Adjectives

Verbs

Word order

Politeness

Vocabulary

Word formation

Compounds

Noteworthy lexical items

Points of the compass

Two words for "red"

Kinship terms

Extremely long words

Hungarian words in English

Writing system

Word order

Name order

Hungarian names in foreign languages

Foreign names in Hungarian

Date and time

Addresses

Vocabulary examples

Numbers

Time

Conversation

See also

Bibliography

Courses

Grammars

Others

Notes

References

External links

Encyclopaedia Humana Hungarica

Dictionaries