Hungarian is a Uralic language of the Ugric group. It has been spoken in the region of modern-day Hungary since the Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin in the late 9th century.
Hungarian's ancestral language probably separated from the Ob-Ugric languages during the Bronze Age. There is no attestation for a period of close to two millennia. Records in Old Hungarian begin fragmentarily in epigraphy in the Old Hungarian script beginning in the 10th century; isolated Hungarian words are attested in manuscript tradition from the turn of the 11th century. The oldest surviving coherent text in Old Hungarian is the Funeral Sermon and Prayer, dated to 1192. The sermon begins with the words Latiatuc feleym zumtuchel mic vogmuc. yſa pur eſ chomuv uogmuc ( — "Do you see, my friends, what we are: truly, we are only dust and ash.") The first Hungarian translation of the Bible is the Hussite Bible, dated to 1416.
The Old Hungarian period by convention covers Medieval Hungary, from the initial invasion of Pannonia in AD 896, to the collapse of the Kingdom of Hungary following the Battle of Mohács of 1526. Printing begins during Middle Hungarian, from 1526 to 1772, i.e. from the first books printed in Hungarian to the Age of Enlightenment, which prompted language reforms that resulted in the Modern Hungarian language.
Events of the 1530s and 1540s brought a new situation to the country: the time of Humanism – which had flourished only a few decades earlier under Matthias Corvinus – was over; the population, both in villages and towns, was terrorized by Ottoman raids; the majority of the country was lost; and the remainder began to feel the problems of the new Habsburg rule. This predicament caused backwardness in the cultural life as well. However, Hungary, with the great territorial and human losses, soon entered into a new cultural era, the Reformation. This religious movement heartened many authors to find new ways. Cultural life was primarily based in Transylvania, but Royal Hungary also saw the rebirth of the Hungarian culture.
The first printed book written in Hungarian was printed in Kraków in the Kingdom of Poland in 1533. It is a partial Bible translation, containing the Pauline epistles. The translation was done by Benedek Komjáti. The New Testament's first printed edition was published by János Sylvester (1541). He also composed the first scientific analysis of the Hungarian language, in 1539, titled "Grammatica Hungarolatina". Like Komjáti, Sylvester printed his works in Cracow. The previous publications, however, were not Protestant in their sense. The first directly reformed Hungarian book was Imre Ozorai's Argument, published in Cracow, in 1535.
Among other works, Aesop's Fables – a collection of moral short stories – was first translated into Hungarian by Gábor Pesti (1536). These are the first denoted Hungarian short stories. The first attempt to standardize Hungarian was by Mátyás Bíró Dévai. He proposed a logical and feasible orthography to the language. His book, Orthographia, is known from its second edition, printed in 1549.
Prehistory
Separation from Common Uralic
The history of the Hungarian language begins with the Uralic era, in the Neolithic age, when the linguistic ancestors of all Uralic languages coexisted in the area of the Ural Mountains.The speakers of the Uralic languages are not related genetically, only linguistically.
CategoryWord in HungarianMeaningReconstructed Proto-UralicNotesCognate in Finnish Fishing, waterhal'fish' *kalakalatat'(a kind of) fish'An obsolete word. The word tat in modern Hungarian means 'stern'.*totki 'tench'See note 2.totki (Tinca tinca)hálómesh*kalawkalinvízwater*wetivete-folyó'river'Jó no longer means river in Hungarian; instead, the term folyó is used, derived from the verb folyni 'flow'. However, certain geographic names in Hungary prove the existence of the word jó: Berettyó (from Berek-jó 'Grove-river'), Sajó (from Só-jó) etc. Also compare Finnish joki 'river'.*jukaSee note 3.jokiárflood(Ugric) *sarVlápfen, bog*loppiHunting, animalsidegnerve *jänti 'string'jänne 'tendon, sinew'ínfibre*sëxni 'vein'suoniíjbow*joŋsijousinyílarrow*ńëxlinuolifogolypartridge*püŋipyynyúlhare*ńomalahollóraven*kulakaDaily lifefő(z) cook *pexi(-ta)fazékpan*patapatamony'bird egg'Mony is also unknown in Modern Hungarian.*munaSee note 4.munafonspin*puna 'braid'punoövbelt*wüŋävyövasiron*waśkivaski 'copper'Familyapa'father' *ëppi 'father-in-law'fele(ség)'wife'*pälä 'half'meny'daughter-in-law'*mińäminiävő'son-in-law'*wäŋiwvävynapa'mother-in-law'*ana-ëppianoppi
Many Hungarian words, particularly among the language's most basic vocabulary (cf. Swadesh list) are traced back to common Uralic origin: words of a corresponding shape occur in other Uralic languages as well, and linguists have not been able to classify them as loanwords. Those that are not present in the Samoyedic languages are commonly also described as being of Finno-Ugric origin, but the existence of a definite distinction between "Uralic" and "Finno-Ugric" is disputed. (See Uralic languages#Traditional classification.)
As the Uralic unity disintegrated between the 4th and the 2nd millennium BC, the speakers of Samoyedic languages moved eastwards, while others, such as the Finnic and Hungarian speakers, moved westward. Hungarian and the Ob-Ugric languages show several similarities and are known as the Ugric group, which is commonly (but not universally) considered a proper sub-branch of Uralic: that is, the Hungarian and Ob-Ugric languages would descend from a common Proto-Ugric language. The speakers of Ugric languages were still living close together approximately until 1000 BC, when the ancestors of Hungarians separated for good from the Ob-Ugrians.
Proto-Hungarian
Around 1000 BC, the linguistic ancestors of the Hungarians had moved southwest from their previous territories, the region west of the Ural Mountains, the eastern frontier of Europe; hence the Hungarian language separated from its closest relatives, the Ob-Ugric languages, which further divided into the Mansi language and the Khanty language. (This split may have occurred only later, and their speakers were influenced by an Asian, possibly Western-Siberian tribe, as the Mansis and Khantys moved northeast.) Proto-Hungarian likely had contacts with the Permic languages at this time, as indicated by a nontrivial number of shared vocabulary and sound developments (which are not found in the other Uralic languages).
The Hungarians gradually changed their way of living from settled hunting to nomadic cattle-raising. Their most important animals included sheep and cattle. There are no written sources on the era, thus little is known about it.
After a long journey, the Hungarians had settled the coastal region of the northeastern Black Sea (Levédia). With the fall of Attila's empire, the Huns had receded to this area, and established their new state, which also ruled over the Hungarians. A possible memoir of this is a Hungarian myth of Hunor and Magor. According to the legend they were the twin sons of King Nimrod and the ancestors of the Huns and the Magyars (Hungarians) respectively.Simon of Kéza: The Deeds of the Huns and Hungarians (13th century)
After the Hunnish rule ended, the Hungarians came into contact with the Göktürks and were significantly influenced by them. The Göktürk Turk Empire flourished in the 6th century. This is probably the time when the Hungarians started writing, using the Old Hungarian script (rovásírás). Later, the Hungarians also came into contact with the Khazars and moved westward to Etelköz, where the Magyars lived as an independent nation.
In 895–896, under the rulership of Prince Árpád, they crossed the Carpathian Mountains, and settled the Carpathian Basin, the area of present-day Hungary. They also began to establish their own state here, namely the Principality of Hungary. They launched a number of plundering raids both westward into former Francia and southward into the Byzantine Empire.
A saying or prayer mentioning the exonym "Hungarians" () was common in the 10th century, at the time of intense raiding of various parts of Europe by these tribes. It's attested in the Song of the Watchmen of Modena in 924 AD: A sagittis Hungarorum libera nos Domine! ‘Lord save us from the arrows of the Hungarians!’
The Hungarians call themselves (). The name Magyar once was the name of a Hungarian tribe, Megyer(i), which likely means "talking man". The first syllable may be cognate to the ethnonym Mansi, which in the Mansi language (манси mańśi) means simply 'man, Mansi'. The (Ob-)Ugric word has been proposed to be an old Indo-Iranian loan (cf. Sanskrit mānuṣa, Avestan manuš "man, male"). The external name 'Hungary' () was recorded in the 13th century by Anonymous in the Gesta Hungarorum ("The Deeds of the Hungarians)", the first extant Hungarian chronicle, as originating in the 9th century from the castle Ung () now in Slovakia. ...et uocatus est Arpad Dux Hunguarie, et ab Hungu omnes sui milites uocati sunt Hunguari... ‘...and he was called Árpád Duke of Hungary, and from Ung all his warriors were called Hungarians...’
Early loanwords There are some really early loanwords in Hungarian, which enriched the language's vocabulary, estimated to 25,000 words at the time. Here are some examples:
Origin Loans before the separation from the Ob-Ugric languages Loans after the separation from the Ob-Ugric languages Iranian arany 'gold'; szarv 'horn'; száz 'hundred'These words have cognates also in the Finno-Permic languages and they may as well have been loaned earlier from Proto-Indo-Iranian. ezer 'thousand', híd 'bridge', réz 'copper', sajt 'cheese', tej 'milk', tíz 'ten', zöld 'green'Berta & Róna-Tas 2011, pp. 1331–1339 Turkic hattyú 'swan', szó 'word', hód 'beaver' homok 'sand', harang 'bell', ér 'worth sth' Permic agyar 'fang', daru 'crane', hagyma 'bulb'
In the era of the Turkic influences, Hungarians developed especially culturally: the borrowed vocabulary consists of terms referring to sophisticated dressing, and the words of a learned upper class society. The phrases of basic literacy are also of Turkic origin. A number of words related to agriculture and viticulture have the same background.
Phonetics
Vowels HungarianFinnishTranslationhalkalafishkő; köv-kivistonelúdlintuhu: goose, fi: birdkézkäsihand The phonetic system of Hungarian went through large changes in the Old Hungarian period. The most important change was the disappearance of the original Uralic word-ending vowels, which eroded in many descendant languages (among others Finnish, however, largely preserves these sounds; see the table on the right). Even so, declined forms of the nouns and inflected verbs of Uralic origin still show traces of the lost sounds: ló (horse)—lovas (rider); kő (stone)—köves (stony). This was the process of phonetic reduction. The earliest written records of Hungarian from the 9th century still show some retained word-final vowels, e.g. in hodu 'army' > modern had.
Possibly there had been also present a velar ï sound as well, later replaced by a palatal i. Today, since Hungarian has vowel harmony, some words containing the palatal sound i pick up the back suffix when conjugated or declined—instead of the front suffix, which is usual for i'''s of other origin. Some examples: nyíl (arrow) → nyilat (accusative; instead of *nyilet); inni ([v inf], to drink) → ivás (drinking [n], instead of *ivés).
The transition from diphthongs to simple vowels had already begun in the Proto-Hungarian period.
Consonants Plosives between vowels developed to spirants, and those after nasal stops became voiced: