Josef Budenz (Hungarian: József Budenz) (13 June 1836–15 April 1892) was a German
comparative linguist specializing in
Finno-Ugric
Finno-Ugric ( or ; ''Fenno-Ugric'') or Finno-Ugrian (''Fenno-Ugrian''), is a traditional grouping of all languages in the Uralic language family except the Samoyedic languages. Its formerly commonly accepted status as a subfamily of Uralic is ba ...
who researched the origins 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 Hungar ...
.
Early life and education
József Budenz graduated from high school in
Fulda
Fulda () (historically in English called Fuld) is a town in Hesse, Germany; it is located on the river Fulda and is the administrative seat of the Fulda district (''Kreis''). In 1990, the town hosted the 30th Hessentag state festival.
Histor ...
in 1854
and studied in
Marburg
Marburg ( or ) is a university town in the German federal state (''Bundesland'') of Hesse, capital of the Marburg-Biedenkopf district (''Landkreis''). The town area spreads along the valley of the river Lahn and has a population of approximat ...
and from 1855 for three years in
Göttingen
Göttingen (, , ; nds, Chöttingen) is a university city in Lower Saxony, central Germany, the capital of the eponymous district. The River Leine runs through it. At the end of 2019, the population was 118,911.
General information
The ori ...
, among others with
Theodor Benfey :''This is about the German philologist. For Theodor Benfey (born 1925) who developed a spiral periodic table of the elements in 1964, see Otto Theodor Benfey.''
Theodor Benfey (; 28 January 1809, in Nörten near Göttingen26 June 1881, in Göttin ...
with a focus on
Indo-European
The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Du ...
comparative linguistics
Comparative linguistics, or comparative-historical linguistics (formerly comparative philology) is a branch of historical linguistics that is concerned with comparing languages to establish their historical relatedness.
Genetic relatedness ...
. He received his doctorate in 1858.
Career
In 1858 he was in Budapest and taught in
Székesfehérvár
Székesfehérvár (; german: Stuhlweißenburg ), known colloquially as Fehérvár ("white castle"), is a city in central Hungary, and the country's ninth-largest city. It is the regional capital of Central Transdanubia, and the centre of Fej� ...
. In 1861 he was appointed librarian of the
Hungarian Academy of Sciences
The Hungarian Academy of Sciences ( hu, Magyar Tudományos Akadémia, MTA) is the most important and prestigious learned society of Hungary. Its seat is at the bank of the Danube in Budapest, between Széchenyi rakpart and Akadémia utca. Its ma ...
. He deepened his knowledge of
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 lan ...
and
Altaic languages under the guidance of . From 1868 he was a full professor of Altaic comparative linguistics, the chair having been established especially for him. In 1871 he became a full member of the
Hungarian Academy of Sciences
The Hungarian Academy of Sciences ( hu, Magyar Tudományos Akadémia, MTA) is the most important and prestigious learned society of Hungary. Its seat is at the bank of the Danube in Budapest, between Széchenyi rakpart and Akadémia utca. Its ma ...
. On 17 March 1884, he was honored in the university auditorium. From 1876 he was a corresponding member of the
Russian Academy of Sciences
The Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS; russian: Росси́йская акаде́мия нау́к (РАН) ''Rossíyskaya akadémiya naúk'') consists of the national academy of Russia; a network of scientific research institutes from across t ...
in
St. Petersburg.
Origins of Hungarian
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 was 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
SUPERFAMILY is a database and search platform of structural and functional annotation for all proteins and genomes. It classifies amino acid sequences into known structural domains, especially into SCOP superfamilies. Domains are functional, str ...
of
Ural–Altaic languages
Ural-Altaic, Uralo-Altaic or Uraltaic is a linguistic convergence zone and former language-family proposal uniting the Uralic and the Altaic (in the narrow sense) languages. It is generally now agreed that even the Altaic languages do not share ...
.
The debate came to a head in the 1880s between the two camps,
known as the
Ugric-Turkic war.
One camp proposed that Hungarians were related to
Turanians, supported by
Arminius Vambery who wrote a book on the topic and was a friend of Budenz. Budenz attacked Vambery's book in a lecture at the Hungarian Academy, and challenged his methods as unscientific. Vambery struck back with his own accusations against his friend.
After things settled, the Finno-Ugric hypothesis was concluded the sounder of the two, mainly based on work by Budenz.
Death
Budenz died in Budapest on 15 April 1892, and was buried on 17 April 1892.
Memorials and retrospectives
On 27 May 1963, a memorial plaque was dedicated in his honor at the house where he was born, currently in use as the town hall of the village where he formerly attended school in Rasdorf.
The commemorative plaque bears the inscription: "Here stood until 1954 the house in which on 13 June 1836 Joseph Budenz was born. He was a professor at the University of Budapest from 1868 until his death on 15 April 1892, and is the founder of modern Finno-Ugric comparative linguistics. Donated by the Societas Uralo-Altaica on May 23, 1963."
The
Fuldaer Geschichtsblätter
The ''Fuldaer Geschichtsblätter'' is the official publication of the Fuldaer Geschichtsverein, the historical society of the German city of Fulda in Hesse, founded 1896. The magazine
A magazine is a periodical publication, generally publishe ...
also published an article about him in 1936 on the centenary of his birth.
[ as cited in ]
The Budenz ''Gymnasium'' in Budapest published a Budenz memorial book in Hungarian in 2002. A "Budenz Day" is held every year at the Finno-Ugrian Seminar of the University of Göttingen.
Works
*
* ''Übersicht der Verzweigung der ugrischen Sprachen'', 1878
*
See also
*
Comb Ceramic culture
The Comb Ceramic culture or Pit-Comb Ware culture, often abbreviated as CCC or PCW, was a northeast European culture characterised by its Pit–Comb Ware. It existed from around 4200 BCE to around 2000 BCE. The bearers of the Comb Ceramic cultu ...
*
Estonian language
Estonian ( ) is a Finnic language, written in the Latin script. It is the official language of Estonia and one of the official languages of the European Union, spoken natively by about 1.1 million people; 922,000 people in Estonia and 160, ...
*
Finnic languages
The Finnic (''Fennic'') or more precisely Balto-Finnic (Balto-Fennic, Baltic Finnic, Baltic Fennic) languages constitute a branch of the Uralic language family spoken around the Baltic Sea by the Baltic Finnic peoples. There are around 7  ...
*
Finnish language
Finnish ( endonym: or ) is a Uralic language of the Finnic branch, spoken by the majority of the population in Finland and by ethnic Finns outside of Finland. Finnish is one of the two official languages of Finland (the other being Swedi ...
*
Finno-Permic languages
*
Indo-Uralic languages
Indo-Uralic is a controversial hypothetical language family consisting of Indo-European and Uralic.
The suggestion of a genetic relationship between Indo-European and Uralic is often credited to the Danish linguist Vilhelm Thomsen in 1869 (P ...
*
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 ...
*
Old Permic script
The Old Permic script ( kv, Важ Перым гижӧм, ), sometimes known by its initial 2 characters as Abur or Anbur, is a "highly idiosyncratic adaptation" of the Cyrillic script once used to write medieval Komi (a member of the Permic bra ...
*
Pre-Finno-Ugric substrate
*
Proto-Finnic language
*
Proto-Uralic homeland hypotheses
Various Proto-Uralic homeland hypotheses on the origin of the Uralic languages and the location (Urheimat or homeland) and period in which the Proto-Uralic language was spoken, have been advocated over the years.
Homeland hypotheses
Europe vers ...
*
Proto-Uralic language
Proto-Uralic is the unattested reconstructed language ancestral to the modern Uralic language family. The hypothetical language is believed to have been originally spoken in a small area in about 7000–2000 BCE, and expanded to give differentia ...
*
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 ...
*
Turanism
Turanism, also known as pan-Turanianism, pan-Turanism, or simply Turan, is a pseudoscientific pan-nationalist cultural and political movement proclaiming the need for close cooperation or political unification between people who are claimed by ...
*
Ural-Altaic languages
*
Uralic languages
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 ...
*
Uralic–Yukaghir languages
*
Uralo-Siberian languages
Uralo-Siberian is a hypothetical language family consisting of Uralic, Yukaghir, Eskaleut, possibly Nivkh, and formerly Chukotko-Kamchatkan. It was proposed in 1998 by Michael Fortescue, an expert in Eskaleut and Chukotko-Kamchatkan, in his b ...
*
Uralo-Siberian languages
Uralo-Siberian is a hypothetical language family consisting of Uralic, Yukaghir, Eskaleut, possibly Nivkh, and formerly Chukotko-Kamchatkan. It was proposed in 1998 by Michael Fortescue, an expert in Eskaleut and Chukotko-Kamchatkan, in his b ...
*
Volga Finns
The Volga Finns (sometimes referred to as Eastern Finns) are a historical group of indigenous peoples of Russia living in the vicinity of the Volga, who speak Uralic languages. Their modern representatives are the Mari people, the Erzya and the ...
References
;Notes
;Citations
Further reading
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External links
Jozsef Budenz in th
(in Hungarian)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Budenz, Josef
1836 births
1892 deaths
19th-century linguists
Finno-Ugrists
Hungarian-German people
German librarians
Linguists from Germany
Linguists of Hungarian
Members of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences