Hungarian Language

The Mysterious History of the Hungarian Language

Hungary is a nation in Central Europe that is surrounded on all sides by other European nations. The official language of Hungary is the Hungarian language. It is also the official language of Slovenia and Vojvodina, and the European Union recognizes Hungarian as an official language. It is spoken by 14.5 million people, mainly in Hungary (which boasts 10 million of the speakers), Romania, Slovakia, Ukraine, Serbia, Croatia, Austria, and Slovenia. Hungarian is also an official minority language in Austria, Croatia, and Slovakia.  There are pockets of areas worldwide, including the United States, however, where the Hungarian language is spoken.

The Hungarian language is a Finno-Urgic language, which, together with Finnish and Estonian, makes up a language family within the Uralic languages. The Hungarian language, which is referred to as Magyar by the Hungarian people, is made up of several different dialects. All of these dialects are reciprocally understood by one another. The written Hungarian language uses an alternate of the Latin alphabet, with several letters having been added to it through the years.

The origin of the Hungarian language is sort of a mystery. It is an isolated language in Central Europe. It is not associated to the languages spoken in any of the countries neighboring Hungary, which are Slavic, Germanic, and Romance families of languages. Therefore, there is a great deal of debate regarding the exact source of the Hungarian language is. There are at least two theories on the matter, and very little evidence to go with them. 

There is speculation that the Hungarian language is linked to the Hunnish language. The Huns made their first appearance in Europe around the 4th century.  They were a group of Nomadic tribal peoples. Although no evidence exists, some believe the Huns were aligned with or related to the Hungarians, and that they eventually integrated. There are tales that illustrate similarities between the two groups of people, but little other evidence. The language of the Huns was proto-Altaic, which was akin to modern Turkic languages.

For over a century, the debate continued whether the Hungarian language was Finno-Ugric or more aligned with the Turkic languages (which would serve to reinforce the Hunnish theory).  But the evidence of the current languages has seemed to put this theory to rest. However, the Hungarian people do show a more inherent connection to the people that reside closer to them than the Finnish people (for example, the Turks, Germans, and Slavs). The Finnish people, in fact, are more akin to their neighbors to the north (Scandinavians) than to the Hungarian people.

There are certain Turkic influence on the Hungarian language. This more than likely come from the idea that the Hungarian people took over the animal breeding trade from the Turkic Chuvash peoples. They remained neighbors for a very long time, and thus many words relating to animal breeding and agriculture come from the native Chuvash tongue.

Because the Hungarian language is agglutinative, meaning many words are built with prefixes and suffixes, it can be hard for a non-native to learn. The agglutinative aspect of the language makes the vocabulary of the language very complex, in addition to the fact that there is no gender assignment in the language. For English speakers trying to learn the Hungarian language, this will be an obstacle at first. But, because the Latin alphabet is used, it is possible to grasp the Hungarian language once a few of the rules of grammar are established and understood. In addition, the pronunciation of the Hungarian language is not as difficult to learn as some of the Slavic or Germanic languages. The interesting history of the Hungarian language, along with its challenging grammatical rules, makes it an interesting language for any person to learn.

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