Hungarian is a
Uralic language
The Uralic languages (; sometimes called Uralian languages ) form a language family of 38 languages spoken by approximately 25million people, predominantly in Northern Eurasia. The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are Hungarian (w ...
of the
Ugric
The Ugric or Ugrian languages ( or ) are a proposed branch of the Uralic language family. The name Ugric is derived from Ugrians, an archaic exonym for the Magyars (Hungarians) and Yugra, a region in northwest Russia.
Ugric includes three ...
group. It has been spoken in the region of modern-day
Hungary
Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the ...
since the
Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin in the late 9th century.
Hungarian's ancestral language probably separated from the
Ob-Ugric languages
The Ob-Ugric languages are a commonly proposed branch of the Uralic languages, grouping together the Khanty (Ostyak) and Mansi (Vogul) languages. Both languages are split in numerous and highly divergent dialects. They, along with Hungarian, ar ...
during the
Bronze Age
The Bronze Age is a historic period, lasting approximately from 3300 BC to 1200 BC, characterized by the use of bronze, the presence of writing in some areas, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second prin ...
. 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
The Old Hungarian script or Hungarian runes ( hu, Székely-magyar rovás, 'székely-magyar runiform', or ) is an alphabetic writing system used for writing the Hungarian language. Modern Hungarian is written using the Latin-based Hungarian alph ...
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
The Funeral Sermon and Prayer ( hu, Halotti beszéd és könyörgés) is the oldest known and surviving contiguous Hungarian text, written by one scribal hand in the Latin script and dating to 1192–1195. It is found on f.154a of the Codex Pr ...
'', 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
Hungary in its modern (post-1946) borders roughly corresponds to the Great Hungarian Plain (the Pannonian Basin). During the Iron Age Europe, Iron Age, it was located at the crossroads between the cultural spheres of the Celts, Celtic tribes (suc ...
, from the initial invasion of Pannonia in AD 896, to the collapse of the Kingdom of Hungary following the
Battle of Mohács
The Battle of Mohács (; hu, mohácsi csata, tr, Mohaç Muharebesi or Mohaç Savaşı) was fought on 29 August 1526 near Mohács, Kingdom of Hungary, between the forces of the Kingdom of Hungary and its allies, led by Louis II, and thos ...
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
The Age of Enlightenment or the Enlightenment; german: Aufklärung, "Enlightenment"; it, L'Illuminismo, "Enlightenment"; pl, Oświecenie, "Enlightenment"; pt, Iluminismo, "Enlightenment"; es, La Ilustración, "Enlightenment" was an intel ...
, which prompted
language reform
Language reform is a kind of language planning by widespread change to a language. The typical methods of language reform are simplification and linguistic purism. Simplification regularises vocabulary, grammar, or spelling. Purism aligns the langu ...
s that resulted in the Modern Hungarian language.
Events of the 1530s and 1540s brought a new situation to the country: the time of
Humanism
Humanism is a philosophy, philosophical stance that emphasizes the individual and social potential and Agency (philosophy), agency of Human, human beings. It considers human beings the starting point for serious moral and philosophical in ...
– which had flourished only a few decades earlier under
Matthias Corvinus
Matthias Corvinus, also called Matthias I ( hu, Hunyadi Mátyás, ro, Matia/Matei Corvin, hr, Matija/Matijaš Korvin, sk, Matej Korvín, cz, Matyáš Korvín; ), was King of Hungary and Croatia from 1458 to 1490. After conducting several m ...
– 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
The Reformation (alternatively named the Protestant Reformation or the European Reformation) was a major movement within Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the Catholic Church and in ...
. 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
Kraków (), or Cracow, is the second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city dates back to the seventh century. Kraków was the official capital of Poland until 1596 ...
in the
Kingdom of Poland
The Kingdom of Poland ( pl, Królestwo Polskie; Latin: ''Regnum Poloniae'') was a state in Central Europe. It may refer to:
Historical political entities
* Kingdom of Poland, a kingdom existing from 1025 to 1031
* Kingdom of Poland, a kingdom exi ...
in 1533. It is a partial Bible translation, containing the
Pauline epistles. The translation was done by
Benedek Komjáti Benedek is a Hungarian name which can be either a surname or a given name. It is the Hungarian name equivalent to Benedict. It may refer to:
Surname
* Dalma Ružičić-Benedek (born 1982), a Hungarian-born Serbian sprint canoer
* David Benedek (bor ...
. The
New Testament
The New Testament grc, Ἡ Καινὴ Διαθήκη, transl. ; la, Novum Testamentum. (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus, as well as events in first-century Chri ...
's first printed edition was published by
János Sylvester
János Sylvester sometimes known as János Erdősi (1504–1552) was a 16th-century Hungarian figure of the Reformation, and also a poet and grammarian, who was the first to translate the New Testament into Hungarian in 1541.
Life
He was bo ...
(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
Aesop's Fables, or the Aesopica, is a collection of fables credited to Aesop, a slave and storyteller believed to have lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 564 BCE. Of diverse origins, the stories associated with his name have descended to ...
– 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
Hungarian () is an Uralic 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 Hungarian ...
begins with the
Uralic
The Uralic languages (; sometimes called Uralian languages ) form a language family of 38 languages spoken by approximately 25million people, predominantly in Northern Eurasia. The Uralic languages with the most native speakers are Hungarian (w ...
era, in the
Neolithic
The Neolithic period, or New Stone Age, is an Old World archaeological period and the final division of the Stone Age. It saw the Neolithic Revolution, a wide-ranging set of developments that appear to have arisen independently in several p ...
age, when the linguistic ancestors of all Uralic languages coexisted in the area of the
Ural Mountains
The Ural Mountains ( ; rus, Ура́льские го́ры, r=Uralskiye gory, p=ʊˈralʲskʲɪjə ˈɡorɨ; ba, Урал тауҙары) or simply the Urals, are a mountain range that runs approximately from north to south through western ...
.
[The speakers of the Uralic languages are not related genetically, only linguistically.]
Many Hungarian words, particularly among the language's most basic vocabulary (cf.
Swadesh list
The Swadesh list ("Swadesh" is pronounced ) is a classic compilation of tentatively universal concepts for the purposes of lexicostatistics. Translations of the Swadesh list into a set of languages allow researchers to quantify the interrelatednes ...
) 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
The Samoyedic () or Samoyed languages () are spoken around the Ural Mountains, in northernmost Eurasia, by approximately 25,000 people altogether. They derive from a common ancestral language called Proto-Samoyedic, and form a branch of the Urali ...
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#Family tree.)
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
The Ob-Ugric languages are a commonly proposed branch of the Uralic languages, grouping together the Khanty (Ostyak) and Mansi (Vogul) languages. Both languages are split in numerous and highly divergent dialects. They, along with Hungarian, ar ...
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
Hungarians, also known as Magyars ( ; hu, magyarok ), are a nation and ethnic group native to Hungary () and historical Hungarian lands who share a common culture, history, ancestry, and language. The Hungarian language belongs to the Urali ...
had moved southwest from their previous territories, the region west of the
Ural Mountains
The Ural Mountains ( ; rus, Ура́льские го́ры, r=Uralskiye gory, p=ʊˈralʲskʲɪjə ˈɡorɨ; ba, Урал тауҙары) or simply the Urals, are a mountain range that runs approximately from north to south through western ...
, the eastern frontier of
Europe
Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirel ...
; hence the
Hungarian language
Hungarian () is an Uralic 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 Hungarian ...
separated from its closest relatives, the
Ob-Ugric languages
The Ob-Ugric languages are a commonly proposed branch of the Uralic languages, grouping together the Khanty (Ostyak) and Mansi (Vogul) languages. Both languages are split in numerous and highly divergent dialects. They, along with Hungarian, ar ...
, 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 Mansies and Khanties moved northeast.) Proto-Hungarian likely had contacts with the
Permic languages
The Permic or Permian languages are a branch of the Uralic language family. They are spoken in several regions to the west of the Ural Mountains within the Russian Federation. The total number of speakers is around 950,000, of which around 550 ...
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 resources 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
The Black Sea is a marginal mediterranean sea of the Atlantic Ocean lying between Europe and Asia, east of the Balkans, south of the East European Plain, west of the Caucasus, and north of Anatolia. It is bounded by Bulgaria, Georgia, Rom ...
(Levédia). With the fall of
Attila's empire, the
Huns
The Huns were a nomadic people who lived in Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Eastern Europe between the 4th and 6th century AD. According to European tradition, they were first reported living east of the Volga River, in an area that was part ...
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
Hunor and Magor were, according to Hungarian legend, the ancestors of the Huns and the Magyars. The legend was first promoted in ''Gesta Hunnorum et Hungarorum''. The legend's aim in providing a common ancestry for the Huns and the Magyars was ...
. According to the legend they were the twin sons of King
Nimrod
Nimrod (; ; arc, ܢܡܪܘܕ; ar, نُمْرُود, Numrūd) is a biblical figure mentioned in the Book of Genesis and Books of Chronicles. The son of Cush and therefore a great-grandson of Noah, Nimrod was described as a king in the land of ...
and the ancestors of the Huns and the Magyars (Hungarians) respectively.
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
Writing is a medium of human communication which involves the representation of a language through a system of physically inscribed, mechanically transferred, or digitally represented symbols.
Writing systems do not themselves constitute h ...
, using the
Old Hungarian script
The Old Hungarian script or Hungarian runes ( hu, Székely-magyar rovás, 'székely-magyar runiform', or ) is an alphabetic writing system used for writing the Hungarian language. Modern Hungarian is written using the Latin-based Hungarian alph ...
(rovásírás). Later, the Hungarians also came into contact with the
Khazars
The Khazars ; he, כּוּזָרִים, Kūzārīm; la, Gazari, or ; zh, 突厥曷薩 ; 突厥可薩 ''Tūjué Kěsà'', () were a semi-nomadic Turkic people that in the late 6th-century CE established a major commercial empire coverin ...
and moved westward to Etelköz, where the Magyars lived as an independent nation.
In 895–896, under the rulership of Prince
Árpád
Árpád (; 845 – 907) was the head of the confederation of the Magyar tribes at the turn of the 9th and 10th centuries. He might have been either the sacred ruler or '' kende'' of the Hungarians, or their military leader or '' g ...
, they crossed the
Carpathian Mountains, and settled the Carpathian Basin, the area of present-day
Hungary
Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the ...
. 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
An endonym (from Greek: , 'inner' + , 'name'; also known as autonym) is a common, ''native'' name for a geographical place, group of people, individual person, language or dialect, meaning that it is used inside that particular place, group, ...
"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!
‘From the arrows of the Hungarians, O Lord deliver us!’
The Hungarians
call themselves (). The name ''Magyar'' once was the name of a Hungarian tribe, ''Megyer(i)''. It 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
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had diffused there from the northwest in the late ...
''mānuṣa'',
Avestan ''manuš'' "man, male"). The external name 'Hungary' () was recorded in the 13th century by Anonymous in the
Gesta Hungarorum
''Gesta Hungarorum'', or ''The Deeds of the Hungarians'', is the earliest book about Hungarian history which has survived for posterity. Its genre is not chronicle, but ''gesta'', meaning "deeds" or "acts", which is a medieval entertaining li ...
''("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:
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
Agriculture or farming is the practice of cultivating plants and livestock. Agriculture was the key development in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created food surpluses that enabled people t ...
and
viticulture
Viticulture (from the Latin word for '' vine'') or winegrowing (wine growing) is the cultivation and harvesting of grapes. It is a branch of the science of horticulture. While the native territory of '' Vitis vinifera'', the common grape vine, ...
have the same background.
Phonetics
=Vowels
=
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
Finnish may refer to:
* Something or someone from, or related to Finland
* Culture of Finland
* Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland
* Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people
* Finnish cuisine
See also ...
, 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
In phonology, vowel harmony is an assimilatory process in which the vowels of a given domain – typically a phonological word – have to be members of the same natural class (thus "in harmony"). Vowel harmony is typically long distance, mea ...
, 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 ''is 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
A diphthong ( ; , ), also known as a gliding vowel, is a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: that is, the tongue (and/or other parts of the speech ...
to simple vowels had already begun in the Proto-Hungarian period.
=Consonants
=
Plosives between vowels developed to
spirants, and those after
nasal stops became
voice
The human voice consists of sound made by a human being using the vocal tract, including talking, singing, laughing, crying, screaming, shouting, humming or yelling. The human voice frequency is specifically a part of human sound producti ...
d:
Grammar
The language developed its interesting features, the transitive and intransitive verb conjugations. (See
Hungarian grammar (verbs).) Marked possessive relations appeared. The accusative marker -''t'' was developed, as well as many
verb tense
In grammar, tense is a category that expresses time reference. Tenses are usually manifested by the use of specific forms of verbs, particularly in their conjugation patterns.
The main tenses found in many languages include the past, present, ...
s.
Old Hungarian (10th to 15th centuries)
By the 10th century, the
Hungarians
Hungarians, also known as Magyars ( ; hu, magyarok ), are a nation and ethnic group native to Hungary () and historical Hungarian lands who share a common culture, history, ancestry, and language. The Hungarian language belongs to the Urali ...
had established a principality in present-day
Hungary
Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the ...
and its neighbourhood. In 1000, Vajk — the later
Stephen I of Hungary
Stephen I, also known as King Saint Stephen ( hu, Szent István király ; la, Sanctus Stephanus; sk, Štefan I. or Štefan Veľký; 975 – 15 August 1038), was the last Grand Prince of the Hungarians between 997 and 1000 or 1001, and the ...
— got his
crown
A crown is a traditional form of head adornment, or hat, worn by monarchs as a symbol of their power and dignity. A crown is often, by extension, a symbol of the monarch's government or items endorsed by it. The word itself is used, partic ...
from the
Pope
The pope ( la, papa, from el, πάππας, translit=pappas, 'father'), also known as supreme pontiff ( or ), Roman pontiff () or sovereign pontiff, is the bishop of Rome (or historically the patriarch of Rome), head of the worldwide Cathol ...
, and the history of the Christian
Kingdom of Hungary
The Kingdom of Hungary was a monarchy in Central Europe that existed for nearly a millennium, from the Middle Ages into the 20th century. The Principality of Hungary emerged as a Christian kingdom upon the coronation of the first king Stephen ...
began.
In the 1490s, Hungarian was spoken by about 3.2 million people; this number was fairly high at the time. The first examples of official and legal use are dated back to these years. Some personal letters and wills are known. Nevertheless, the
Ottoman Empire
The Ottoman Empire, * ; is an archaic version. The definite article forms and were synonymous * and el, Оθωμανική Αυτοκρατορία, Othōmanikē Avtokratoria, label=none * info page on book at Martin Luther University) ...
put pressure on neighbouring nations, just like on Hungary — the latter was unstable at the time, due to internal lordship disputes. This led to the Hungarian (led by
Louis II of Hungary
Louis II ( cs, Ludvík, hr, Ludovik , hu, Lajos, sk, Ľudovít; 1 July 1506 – 29 August 1526) was King of Hungary, Croatia and Bohemia from 1516 to 1526. He was killed during the Battle of Mohács fighting the Ottomans, whose victory led to t ...
) loss of the
Battle of Mohács
The Battle of Mohács (; hu, mohácsi csata, tr, Mohaç Muharebesi or Mohaç Savaşı) was fought on 29 August 1526 near Mohács, Kingdom of Hungary, between the forces of the Kingdom of Hungary and its allies, led by Louis II, and thos ...
(1526). In 1541, Ottomans finally captured the capital,
Buda as well. The country was split into three parts; the southern regions fell under Ottoman rule; the western parts officially remained "Kingdom of Hungary", with Habsburg kings; and the eastern area, mainly
Transylvania
Transylvania ( ro, Ardeal or ; hu, Erdély; german: Siebenbürgen) is a historical and cultural region in Central Europe, encompassing central Romania. To the east and south its natural border is the Carpathian Mountains, and to the west the Ap ...
and the
Partium
Partium (from Latin '' partium'', the genitive of ''pars'' "part, portion") or ''Részek'' (in Hungarian) was a historical and geographical region in the Kingdom of Hungary during the early modern and modern periods. It consisted of the eastern a ...
became independent. Historical linguists set the end of the Old Hungarian period at 1526, as it is a such important date in Hungarian history.
Literary records
The
Latin language
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of t ...
was made official in the country—especially in the 11th to 15th centuries, the language of literature and religion was Latin. However, Hungarian was used in certain cases; sometimes it was fitted into Latin documents, to avoid later disputes about proprietary rights.
However, the first official document of Hungary is not in Latin, but in
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
—this is the "Charter of the nuns of Veszprémvölgy",
["''Veszprémvölgy''" is a place name, around present-day ]Veszprém
Veszprém (; german: Weißbrunn, sl, Belomost) is one of the oldest urban areas in Hungary, and a city with county rights. It lies approximately north of the Lake Balaton. It is the administrative center of the county (comitatus or 'megye') of ...
. dated to 997. The text contains some Hungarian (and also some Slavic) place names: e.g. (compound formed from 'shaft' + an obsolete Turkic
loanword
A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because t ...
, 'coalition'—today ''Szárberény''); 'plough'; (from ''meleg'' 'warm' + -''di'' diminutive suffix).
The next most important document is the "
Establishing charter of the abbey of Tihany
The establishing charter of the abbey of Tihany is a document known for including the oldest written words in the Hungarian language. The document, dated to 1055, lists the lands the king donated to the newly founded Tihany Abbey. It is mostly in ...
", dated to 1055. In the Latin text, 3 Hungarian sentences, 58 words, and 33 suffixes are present. The longest sentence is, in the original spelling, ''feheruuaru rea meneh hodu utu rea'' (reconstructed pronunciation: ; modern Hungarian: "
Fehérvárra menő hadi útra"—the postposition "rea", meaning "onto", became the suffix "-ra/-re"—English: 'up to the military road going to
Fehérvár'). Today, the vellum is kept in the abbey of
Pannonhalma
Pannonhalma (german: Martinsberg; sk, Rábsky Svätý Martin) is a town in Győr-Moson-Sopron County, western Hungary, with approximately 4,000 inhabitants. It is about from Győr. Archduke Otto Habsburg's heart is kept at the Pannonhalma Archa ...
.
Skipping intermediate Hungarian relics, the next important item is the "
Funeral Sermon and Prayer
The Funeral Sermon and Prayer ( hu, Halotti beszéd és könyörgés) is the oldest known and surviving contiguous Hungarian text, written by one scribal hand in the Latin script and dating to 1192–1195. It is found on f.154a of the Codex Pr ...
" from 1192. This is the first text completely in Hungarian. The document is found on the 154th page of the Codex Pray (Pray here is not English; it is a name).
—Quoted from the
Funeral Sermon and Prayer
The Funeral Sermon and Prayer ( hu, Halotti beszéd és könyörgés) is the oldest known and surviving contiguous Hungarian text, written by one scribal hand in the Latin script and dating to 1192–1195. It is found on f.154a of the Codex Pr ...
, 1192.
Literature in Hungarian is counted since the previous writing. The first known Hungarian poem has the title '
Laments of Mary'—its theme is the story of
Jesus
Jesus, likely from he, יֵשׁוּעַ, translit=Yēšūaʿ, label= Hebrew/ Aramaic ( AD 30 or 33), also referred to as Jesus Christ or Jesus of Nazareth (among other names and titles), was a first-century Jewish preacher and religiou ...
' crucifixion, from the viewpoint of
Mary
Mary may refer to:
People
* Mary (name), a feminine given name (includes a list of people with the name)
Religious contexts
* New Testament people named Mary, overview article linking to many of those below
* Mary, mother of Jesus, also calle ...
. It was denoted around 1300, but possibly it is not the first version. Its text is clear, easy to understand and logical, free of
latinisms. The first verse:
The next important relic—with a cheerless history—is the "Fragment of Königsberg", dated approximately to the 1350s. This is the remains of the first known, explicitly proven Hungarian
book
A book is a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images, typically composed of many pages (made of papyrus, parchment, vellum, or paper) bound together and protected by a cover. The technical term for this physi ...
. The codex had arrived at
Wrocław
Wrocław (; german: Breslau, or . ; Silesian German: ''Brassel'') is a city in southwestern Poland and the largest city in the historical region of Silesia. It lies on the banks of the River Oder in the Silesian Lowlands of Central Europe, rou ...
,
Poland
Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populou ...
, by the end of the century; there, because it was not understandable to the Polish bookbinder, it was chopped and used to bind a Latin book. The other important book from the time is the Codex Jókay; a 15th-century copy of an original from 1372. The codex is about the life of
Francis of Assisi.
In the early 15th century, some non-comprehensive Latin-Hungarian dictionaries, or rather word lists, were composed. Some shorter texts are also known. The most important work is however the first translation of the
Bible
The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts ...
: the
Hussite Bible
The Hussite Bible ( hu, Huszita Biblia; sometimes also "The Bible of the Franciscans") is the oldest known Bible translations into Hungarian, Hungarian, as well as general Uralic languages, Uralic Bible translation, dated to the 1420s–1430s.
His ...
, dated to 1416. The Bible was translated by priests
Tamás Pécsi Tamás () is a Hungarian, masculine given name. It is a Hungarian equivalent of the name Thomas.
The given name may refer to:
* Tamás Bognár (born 1978), Hungarian footballer
* Tamás Gábor (1932–2007), Hungarian Olympic champion épée f ...
and
Bálint Ujlaki. They were affected by the concepts of
Jan Hus
Jan Hus (; ; 1370 – 6 July 1415), sometimes anglicized as John Hus or John Huss, and referred to in historical texts as ''Iohannes Hus'' or ''Johannes Huss'', was a Czech theologian and philosopher who became a Church reformer and the insp ...
during their university years (1399–1411) in
Prague
Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and List of cities in the Czech Republic, largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 milli ...
. The
Inquisition
The Inquisition was a group of institutions within the Catholic Church whose aim was to combat heresy, conducting trials of suspected heretics. Studies of the records have found that the overwhelming majority of sentences consisted of penances, ...
pursued Hussitism, and the translation was confiscated from the translators; regardless it became so popular that several authentic copies of the original survive.
More and more Hungarian books were written, most of them religious. Over and above the "Laments of Mary", the other important item of Old Hungarian poetry is ''Szabács viadala'' ("Triumph of
Šabac
Šabac (Serbian Cyrillic: Шабац, ) is a city and the administrative centre of the Mačva District in western Serbia. The traditional centre of the fertile Mačva region, Šabac is located on the right banks of the river Sava. , the city ...
"). Reputedly, it was denoted in the year of the battle (1476); in this, Hungarian troops led by King
Matthias of Hungary had a glorious victory over the
Ottoman army — its issue is secular. It is possibly a fragment of a longer poem. A quotation:
Some
Old Hungarian script
The Old Hungarian script or Hungarian runes ( hu, Székely-magyar rovás, 'székely-magyar runiform', or ) is an alphabetic writing system used for writing the Hungarian language. Modern Hungarian is written using the Latin-based Hungarian alph ...
inscriptions are also known, such as the "Alphabet of Nikolsburg" (1483) and a number of deciphered and undeciphered inscriptions.
Linguistic changes
Vocabulary
In this period, Hungarian developed several new words. One way this happened was through
loanword
A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because t ...
s coming from languages whose speakers mediated the new concepts. On the other hand, internal word formation also took place, in which the words for new concepts were derived from earlier words.
Compared to Modern Hungarian, Old Hungarian was rich in derivative suffixes. Most of these suffixes are also derived from other suffixes, so they can be aligned in "suffix-bushes". There were numerous diminutive suffixes, non-productive in today's Hungarian, e.g. -''d'' ("", from ""—"tiny hill"); -''t'' (it left its trace in some geographic names) ''-n, -ny, -m'' (as in ''kicsiny'', from ''kicsi''—very little).
Forming compounds was also a way to coin new terms.
But then again, there are several loanwords dating back to the period 896–1526. Loans were mainly acquired from
Slavic languages
The Slavic languages, also known as the Slavonic languages, are Indo-European languages spoken primarily by the Slavic peoples and their descendants. They are thought to descend from a proto-language called Proto-Slavic, spoken during the ...
(for example, 'king'),
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
** Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ge ...
(e. g. 'prince'), and
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
(e. g., 'church'). As emerges from the previous examples, these words are primarily associated with Christianity and politics. Other loans are the names of animals living outside Hungary, terms of technology, and so on.
Grammar
;Verbs
Like English, Modern Hungarian has two verb tenses: past and nonpast. Futurity is expressed using the auxiliary verb ''foɡ''. However, Old Hungarian had six verb tenses: Past Narrative (Latin: praeteritum), Past Finite, Past Complex, Present, Future Simple, and Future Complex.
Past Narrative was marked using the suffixes ''-é'', ''-á'' in transitive and ''-e'', ''-a'' in intransitive. The tense was used to describe an array of past events originally. The verb ''várni'' 'to wait' conjugated in this tense:
Future simple was expressed using the suffix -''nd''.
[Traces of future simple are still found in the language. The future suffix, -nd, is an element of the suffix -''andó/-endő'', used to derive a kind of participles. Example: ''elintézendő'' 'something that has to be administered in future'.] Future complex (the present-day future tense of the language) is conjugated in the following way:
: Infinitive + auxiliary verb 'fog'
: ''menni fog''—he/she is going to go
Middle Hungarian
The first printed
book
A book is a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images, typically composed of many pages (made of papyrus, parchment, vellum, or paper) bound together and protected by a cover. The technical term for this physi ...
written in Hungarian was published in
Kraków
Kraków (), or Cracow, is the second-largest and one of the oldest cities in Poland. Situated on the Vistula River in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, the city dates back to the seventh century. Kraków was the official capital of Poland until 1596 ...
in 1533, by
Benedek Komjáti Benedek is a Hungarian name which can be either a surname or a given name. It is the Hungarian name equivalent to Benedict. It may refer to:
Surname
* Dalma Ružičić-Benedek (born 1982), a Hungarian-born Serbian sprint canoer
* David Benedek (bor ...
. The work's title is ''Az Szent Pál levelei magyar nyelven'' (In original spelling: ''Az zenth Paal leueley magyar nyeluen''), i.e. ''The letters of Saint Paul in the Hungarian language''. In the 17th century, the language was already very similar to its present-day form, although two of the past tenses were still used.
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
** Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ge ...
,
Italian
Italian(s) may refer to:
* Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries
** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom
** Italian language, a Romance language
*** Regional Ita ...
and
French loans also appeared in the language by these years. Further Turkish words were borrowed during the
Ottoman occupation of much of Hungary between 1541 and 1699.
Linguistic changes
The vowel system of Hungarian had developed roughly to its current shape by the 16th century. At its fullest the system included eight phonemes occurring both short and long:
[Kálmán 1972, 67–68]
This largely symmetric system was complicated only by the presence of open illabial as the long counterpart of short . In modern Hungarian this is mainly found as a front vowel.
The contrasts between mid and open-mid (including their long counterparts) have later been mostly lost. The shift > took place widely during the 16th and 17th centuries, across most of the Hungarian-speaking area. In several dialects this however did not lead to a merger; in response, may have been either raised to , or (in northeastern dialects)
diphthongized to . The shift > also arose equally early in the central dialects underlying Standard Hungarian. Its spread to the other Hungarian dialects has however been much slower.
Modern Hungarian
In the late 18th century, the language was incapable of clearly expressing new scientific concepts, and several writers found the vocabulary a bit scant for literary purposes. Thus, a group of writers, most notably
Ferenc Kazinczy
Ferenc Kazinczy (in older English: Francis Kazinczy, October 27, 1759 – August 23, 1831) was a Hungarian author, poet, translator, neologist, an agent in the regeneration of the Hungarian language and literature at the turn of the 19th centu ...
, began to compensate for these imperfections. Some words were shortened (''győzedelem'' > ''győzelem'', 'triumph' or 'victory'); a number of
dialect
The term dialect (from Latin , , from the Ancient Greek word , 'discourse', from , 'through' and , 'I speak') can refer to either of two distinctly different types of linguistic phenomena:
One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a ...
al 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 was called the '
language reform
Language reform is a kind of language planning by widespread change to a language. The typical methods of language reform are simplification and linguistic purism. Simplification regularises vocabulary, grammar, or spelling. Purism aligns the langu ...
' (Hungarian: ''nyelvújítás,'' lit. "language renewal"), and produced more than ten thousand words, many of which remain in active use today. The reforms contributed to the installment of Hungarian as the official language over Latin in the country in 1844. The
Csángó Hungarians did not take part in the language reforms of the Age of Enlightenment, so their dialect is the most archaic form of Hungarian.
The 19th and 20th centuries saw further standardization of the language, and differences between the already mutually comprehensible dialects gradually lessened. In 1920, due to the
Treaty of Trianon
The Treaty of Trianon (french: Traité de Trianon, hu, Trianoni békeszerződés, it, Trattato del Trianon) was prepared at the Paris Peace Conference and was signed in the Grand Trianon château in Versailles on 4 June 1920. It forma ...
, Hungary lost 71% of its territories, along with these, 33% of the ethnic Hungarian population. Today, the language is official in Hungary, and regionally also
in Romania,
Slovakia
Slovakia (; sk, Slovensko ), officially the Slovak Republic ( sk, Slovenská republika, links=no ), is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east, Hungary to the south, Austria to the s ...
, and
Serbia
Serbia (, ; Serbian: , , ), officially the Republic of Serbia (Serbian: , , ), is a landlocked country in Southeastern and Central Europe, situated at the crossroads of the Pannonian Basin and the Balkans. It shares land borders with Hungar ...
.
See also
*
Hungarian language
Hungarian () is an Uralic 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 Hungarian ...
*
*
Hungarian dialects
Hungarian has ten dialects. These are fully mutually intelligible, and do not differ significantly from standard Hungarian except for the Csángó dialect. They are mostly distinguished by pronunciation; although there are differences in vocab ...
*
Hungarian literature
Hungarian literature is the body of written works primarily produced in Hungarian,
*
Funeral Sermon and Prayer
The Funeral Sermon and Prayer ( hu, Halotti beszéd és könyörgés) is the oldest known and surviving contiguous Hungarian text, written by one scribal hand in the Latin script and dating to 1192–1195. It is found on f.154a of the Codex Pr ...
*
Old Hungarian 'Lamentations of Mary'
The Old Hungarian ''Lamentations of Mary'' (OHLM) () is the oldest existing Hungarian poem. It was copied in c. 1300 into a Latin codex, similarly to the first coherent Hungarian text, the '' Halotti beszéd'' (''Funeral Oration''), which was wri ...
*
History of Hungary
Hungary in its modern (post-1946) borders roughly corresponds to the Great Hungarian Plain (the Pannonian Basin). During the Iron Age, it was located at the crossroads between the cultural spheres of the Celtic tribes (such as the Scordisci, Boii ...
*
Alternative theories of Hungarian language origins
The Hungarian language is a member of the Uralic language family. The Hungarian Academy of Sciences and scientific support worldwide accept this conclusion. However, there is a history of other theories from before and after the Uralic connectio ...
Notes
Reference works
* Balázs, Géza: ''The Story of Hungarian. A Guide to the Language''. Transl. by Thomas J. DeKornfeld. Budapest: Corvina Publishing, 1997.
* Berta, Arpád &
Róna-Tas, András: ''West Old Turkic: Turkic Loanwords in Hungarian'' (Turcologica 84). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2011.
* Kálmán, Béla: ''Hungarian historical phonology''. Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1972.
* Molnár, József—Simon, Györgyi: ''Magyar nyelvemlékek''. 3rd edition, Budapest: Tankönyvkiadó, 1980.
* Dr. Inczefi, Géza: ''A magyar nyelv fejlődéstörténete''. Typescript. Budapest: Tankönyvkiadó, 1969.
* Heltai, Gáspár: ''Száz fabvla.'' Kolozsvár: Heltai Press, 1566.
* Lakó, György: ''Proto-Finno-Ugric sources of the Hungarian phonetic stock'' (Uralic and Altaic series 80). Indiana University Press, 1968.
* ''A magyar középkor története''. Pannonica, 2006.
* Papp, István: ''Unkarin kielen historia'' (Tietolipas 54). Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 1968.
* Ruffy, Péter: ''Bujdosó nyelvemlékeink''. Budapest: Móra Publishing, 1977.
{{DEFAULTSORT:History Of The Hungarian Language
Hungarian language
Hungarian () is an Uralic 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 Hungarian ...
Hungarian language
Language
Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of ...
Hungarian language
Hungarian () is an Uralic 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 Hungarian ...