hungarians and the origin of hungarian a connection between identity and language by lászló honti

7/31/2019 Hungarians and the Origin of Hungarian A Connection Between Identity and Language by László Honti

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Hungarians and the Origin of HungarianA Connection Between Identity and Language

by László Honti

0. The majority of European languages belong to the so-called Indo-European (or Indo-Germanic) family. Thisfamily has several groups: Germanic languages (for example, German and English), Romance languages (for example, Italian and French), and Slavic languages (for example, Russian and Polish), Greek and Albanian; thisfamily has many members in Asia, too, the most well-known are Persian and Hindi. According to currentscientific views, the Basque language, spoken in the border area between France and Spain, has no relativesand cannot be categorized into any language family.Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian, Lappish and several other languages, the majority of which are spoken in Russia, belong to the Finno-Ugric language family. This latter

group is part of a bigger family, called Uralic, the other branch of which comprises the Samoyedic languages.These languages are spoken in Siberia.

1. The Homelands of the Uralic Peoples (s. p. xx)2. A Chronology of the Uralic Family Tree (s. p. xx)

During the past decades, instead of the original external terms for the indigenous peoples,internal terms are used: Lappish = Sami, Cheremis = Mari, Votyak = Udmurt, Zyryan = Komi,Vogul = Mansi, Ostyak = Khanty, Yurak(-Samoyed) = Nenets, Yenisey-Samoyed = Enets, Tavgi(-Samoyed) = Nganasan3. The area of the primeval homeland (s. p. xx)

These names are worth a short explanation: the whole family is called Uralic because the proto-language called Uralic used to be spoken along the Ural Mountain around 6000 years ago. Alllanguages belonging to the Uralic family come from this Uralic proto-language. Most probably this proto-language was spoken on both sides of the Ural Mountain. This was the so-called Uralic primeval homeland. Moreover, people speaking Uralic languages still live there. The term „Finno-Ugric” was coined similarly to Indo-Germanic and Indo-European. The two most distant groups of languages that were thought to be in the same family were taken to form the compound word. Inthis group Finnish and Hungarian are the most distant relatives, geographically; the first is spokenin Northern Europe, while the latter in Central Europe. Finnish is thus accounted for, but Ugricmust be further explained: the origins can be dated to the first millennium B. C., when the Proto-Hungarians lived in the Bulgarian-Turkic state around the river Volga. The community of those people was called *onogur (< *on ogur ’ten Oguz [i. e. Turkic] tribes’) and this term was taken byOld Russian from where it was in turn taken and Latinized form (hungarus) by European languages(REW 1958: 172, EWUng 2: 1573–1574).

1. How do we determine if two or more languages are related?The so-called historical-comparative linguistics deals with the genealogy between languages, whichin fact means — as shown by its name — applying linguistic methods from both fields of science.Historical linguistics examines the changes that have taken place during the life of one language or a group of languages and tries to explain the reasons for these changes. Comparative linguisticsresearches the relations between two or more languages, whether they are relatives, if they come



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from the same ancestors. These two fields are not, of course, independent of each other. Duringresearch the results and discoveries of both can and should be mutually relevant. Descriptivelinguistics, which describes the state of language at one period of time deals with the building blocks of one particular language, how they function and how they are related.

Linguistics was not born from one day to the next. A demand arose within communities of people who gathered into organized societies to put down information necessary for their survival.At first, information was engraved into stone or clay boards, and later it was drawn or written on papyrus rolls. This process started in periods that are indescribably distant. It is certain that someaspects of language were dealt with in all early civilizations where writing was used. Language wasstudied with scientific interest in ancient India, the heritage of which is significant in thedevelopment of universal linguistic thinking: Pānini and his colleagues, in the 4th century B. C., took some „linguistic” observations that are still relevant today.

For a long time the aspects of descriptive linguistic research dominated. The historical andcomparative study of languages, as a scientific matter, developed at the beginning of the 19th century. The methods were defined. Thinking minds have, of course, previously studied thehistorical and relational questions of language. Many discoveries were made that were methodically proven only later. This is valid for our native language as well. After many hesitant attempts, theancestral relations between the languages of what we call today Finno-Ugric (and Uralic) familywere studied in voluminous works. Two significant Hungarian researchers and their work are worthmentioning from the heroic era of historical-comparative linguistics: János Sajnovics (1735–1785;„Demonstratio. Idioma Ungarorum et Lapponum idem esse” [≈ „Proving that Hungarian and

Lappish languages are identical”] Copenhagen. 1770) and Sámuel Gyarmathi (1751–1830;„Affinitas linguae Hungaricae cum linguis Fennicae originis grammatice demonstrata” [= „Therelation between languages of Hungarian and Finnish origin, proven grammatically”] Göttingen.1799). These — by contemporary terms — actually proved the relationship between certain Finno-Ugric languages. The authors of these two works recognized that in addition to checking thesimilarities of vocabulary, grammatical comparisons had to be made as well. By the second part of the 19th century a relatively large material was collected of Finno-Ugric languages. The methods of historical-comparative linguistics became fairly well sophisticated. As a result, serious andextensive scientific research started in Hungary and other European countries.

Let’s see, after this short introduction, how we make sure that languages are related. Thecriteria for language relatives are the following:

1. Common words in the so-called basic vocabulary (kinship terms and body parts, livingcreatures, objects, natural phenomena, pronouns, numerals, basic actions, events and so on).

2. The words of common, ancient origin (that is, words having identical or at least similar meaning) have regular sound correspondences, that is, systematic similarities and differences.

3. Common grammatical features originating from a common antecedent, such asmorphological elements (suffixes) and syntactical phenomena.

The ancestor of kindred languages is called the proto-language. Reconstruction meansfinding out its building stocks (sound inventory, vocabulary, the morphological tools, such asaffixes and suffixes). The reconstruction of the proto-language means, in addition, finding out andsumming up the rules of syntax. The proto-language, of course, cannot be fully reconstructed:several elements and details can, on the other hand, be discovered.

Those opposed to proto-language reconstruction now and then question the existence of a proto-language, saying

that the present-day languages are not descendents of one definite proto-language, but usually came into existence through

the mutual influence of more — whether genetically related to one another or not — languages; or rather that we have

scarcely any or a very approximate knowledge concerning the temporal and spatial localization of a given proto-language; we

do not know the dialectal distribution of the proto-language, and the characteristics of the dialects, and how they were related

to one another, etc. The danger in a reconstruction is that we might place beside one another forms derived from different

ages or different dialects. Contrary to this, however, it would not show common sense to deny the former existence of a

common predecessor for the genetically cognate languages known today, a (Uralic, Finno-Ugric; Indo-European, Germanic, etc.)

proto-language; naturally, however, the view according to which the individual proto-languages would have been sort of

undifferentiated formations and the languages derived from them, not being influenced by neighboring genetically cognate and

non-cognate languages (which would have developed according to their own internal laws) would be unacceptable. Therefore



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we cannot in every case and generally regard the reconstructed proto-language forms as being undoubtedly reliable. Taking

the above also into consideration, there could also be more reasons for this:

1. The more distant the age is in which the proto-language becomes dissociated, the more difficult it is to

determine its duration and to define it in time, and the greater are the changes that took place in the daughter languages,

among them not a small number of „irregularities”, the reason or conditions of which we do not know.

2. Just like the present-day living languages, the individual proto-languages also evidently showed a more or less

definite dialectal separation; but for the time being, we can accept this circumstance in Finno-Ugric rather only in theory than

in practice; but if we wish to explain nowadays certain exceptional sound correspondences, „irregularities” by means of

dialectal differences of the proto-language, than we would only give an opportunity for the arbitrary and unscientificetymologies; if we can obtain the completely reconstructed word-stock and grammatical framework of our language family, we

will perhaps then have some hope of finding out something about the dialects of the proto-language; naturally we must

imagine the dialectal distribution of the proto-language not or not only according to language groups known today, but former

dialectal bounderies probably did not necessarily coincide with the bounderies or dividing lines between units of the population

speaking the proto-language and moving in the path of separate language development.

3. If convergence development took place in the daughter languages in a certain area or areas, this cannot be

clarified through comparative linguistic methods and it is lost for reconstruction.

4. Among languages that have continued independently, two or more living in the neighborhood of each other and

coming into contact and creating areal contacts can form a system of secondary agreements.

5. Because of the possible lack of early linguistic monuments, a reconstruction that is built upon speculation must

bridge over a larger temporal distance, as a result of which the chance of error is greater; this difficulty can be especially

felt in the research dealing with the history of the Uralic languages.

6. The fact that our knowledge reflecting proto-language relations can change and grow supports already by itself its

necessity that in each case we adjust the reconstructed forms to our more exact knowledge.

7. Finally, besides reconstructing the sound body of each proto-language word, the semantic hypothesis belonging to

the word causes some problem if — as it sometimes happens — we come across divergent meanings or semantic ranges in

the present-day languages which at first glance show a small number of common features; surmounting this calls for an

investigation of meaning changes and an application of the hypotheses concluded from this investigation, because the

reference to possible semantic parallels does not unconditionally lead to unanimously reliable and convincing results.

Proto-languages that follow one another present the problem of no distinct phoneticrepresentations, that is why the reconstructed vocabulary of the Uralic (= U) and the Finno-Ugric (=FU), as well as the Finno-Permic (= FP) and the Finno-Volgaic (= FV) proto-language layers aredistributed to separate groups in the „Etymological Dictionary of Uralic Languages” (= UEW).

The aim of this presentation is to show to people who may not be (entirely) familiar withlinguistics how we can decide, with the help of the above criteria, if two or more languages used tohave a common ancestor. For this it is useful to present how this task is done by specialists. It isdone mostly by studying the vocabulary. People learning foreign languages are facing the wordsfirst, and if they already know a foreign language, they notice that they know certain words that are

strikingly similar to the newly learned words, in terms of phonetics and meaning. Thedemonstration material contains words from the Romance (French, Italian, Spanish, Romanian) andGermanic (German, Dutch, English, Swedish) languages. It must be noted that the members of these two groups are relatives of many other languages and language groups of Eurasia, for example, the Slavic and the Celtic languages, with which they make up the Indo-European (or Indo-Germanic) language family. After presenting the examples of the Indo-European languages I willdemonstrate that — mutatis mutandis — Hungarian and Finnish are coming from a commonancestor. I will prove it in a similar way through a part of the words in the common vocabulary andthrough regular sound correspondences between certain words. This is going to be followed by a presentation of a small part of the common grammatical phenomena which further prove therelations between these two languages. The methods used in presenting Hungarian–Finnishrelations can be used to prove genetic relationships between other languages as well.

1.1. It is common knowledge that many offspring of the official language of the Roman

Empire, Latin, are spoken in Europe (and due to colonization, outside Europe, too). Classic Latinhad transformed into the Romance languages for around 2000 years. Words, if they did not die out,did not stay the same phonetically in the majority of the cases. Certain elements and sounds of thewords changed. Some of those sounds can have more than one representation today depending onwhere they were located in the word, in what phonetical environment they can be found. From thislanguage group, I will now show regular sound correspondences with the present-dayrepresentatives of two Latin consonant clusters, ct (= kt ) and pt .



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Latin > Italian Spanish Portuguese French Romanianct (= kt) tt ch (= č ) it it > i0 pt pt tt t t t pt

For example:Classic

Latin >

Low

Latin >

Italian Spanish Portuguese French Romanian Meaning

lect us lect o lett o lecho leit o lit — ’bed’ fact um fact o fatt o hecho feit o fait fa pt ’fact’tect um tect o tett o techo teit o toit — ’roof’lac, lact is lact e latt e leche leit e lait la pt e ’milk’nox, noct is noct e nott e noche noit e nuit noa pt e ’night’oct o oct o ott o ocho oit o huit opt ’eight’ se pt em se pt em sett e siet e set e (Old French set >)

sept şa pt e ’seven’

From the material of Germanic languages we can get to know two kinds of sound changesthrough the example of unvoiced stops ( p, t , k ), which happened during different ages. One onlychanged in High German and not in the whole Germanic linguistic area.

The first (or Germanic) sound shift (in German: die erste [germanische] Lautverschiebung):

Indo-European *p > Germanic *f GermanicGreek LatinGerman Dutch English Swedish Gothic

meaning

pat ± r pater V ater vader f ather f ader f adar ’father’ pélla pellis F ell vel f ell f jäll f ill ’skin’

piscis F isch vis f ish f isk f isks ’fish’The German springen, the Dutch springen, the English spring , the Swedish springa word

family illustrates that one sound change does not necessarily take place in all phoneticenvironments, just like the p following the s does not become f here.

Words belonging to one word family of different related languages do not always keep their original meaning. As an example, take the words meaning ’skin’ above: the Greek pélla, as far as Iknow, is only documented as part of a compound word, èrysí-pelas ’skin infection, dermatitis’. For

this reason I provide meanings at certain word families only for information.

Indo-European*t > Germanic *þGermanicGreek LatinGerman Dutch English Swedish Gothic

meaning

t reĩ s, t ría t res d rei d rie three t re þreis ’three’tú t u d u d u

(obsolete) thou (dialectical,obsolete)

d u þu ’you’

Indo-European *k > Germanic * χ GermanicGreek LatinGerman Dutch English Swedish Gothic

meaning

k ýōn canis H und hond hound hund hunds ’dog’

centum hundert honderd hundred hundra hund ’hundred’r ē ctus recht recht ri ght rät t raí hts ’right’

The second (or High German) sound shift (in German: die zweite [hochdeutsche]Lautverschiebung):

pf (in word initial and a post-consonantal position)



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Germanic * p

ff (in postvocalic position)

German Dutch English Swedish Pf lug ploeg plough plog stam pf en stam pen stam p stam pa

o ff en o pen o pen ö ppenSchi ff schi p shi p ske pp

c (in word initial and a post-consonantal position)

Germanic *t

s (in postvocalic position)German Dutch English Swedish Z unge t ong t ongue t unga set z en zet t en set sät t a Her z har t hear t hjär t a schwar z ’black’ zwar t swar t svar t essen et en eat ät a Fu ß voet foot fot

k (in word initial and a post-consonantal position)

Germanic *k χ (in postvocalic position; according to German spelling: ch)

German Dutch English Swedish K orn k oren corn k orn star k ster k star k star k suchen zoek en seek sök a Buch boek book bok

The etymologically kindred words of Uralic languages show similar systematiccorrespondences. The existence of common words and a declaration that these words havesystematic sound correspondences would not be sufficient to claim that they are linguisticallyrelated, for those grammatical matches, similar traits are also necessary.

1.2. Sound correspondences in the basic vocabulary of Uralic/Finno-Ugric languagesThe oldest words of Hungarian with word initial *k - in the Uralic (U), Finno-Ugric (FU) or

Ugric (Ug) proto-languages have k - in case the k - is immediately followed by a palatal vowel (thatis, e, i, ö, ü, é, í , ő , ű ). If it is followed by a velar vowel (a, o, u, á, ó, ú), this *k is then represented by h- i Hungarian. For example, Hungarian hal ’die’ ~ Finnish kuole- ’id.’ (< U *kola-); Hungarianhal ’fish’~ Finnish kala ’id.’ (< U *kala); Hungarian ház ’house’ ~ Finnish kota ’hut, cottage’ (<FU *kota); Hungarian kéz ’hand’ ~ Finnish käsi, käte- ’id.’ (< FU *käte); Hungarian kér ’ask’ ~Finnish kerä-ä- ’collect’, kerjä-ä- ’beg’ (< FU *kerä-); Hungarian kér-eg ’bark, rind’ ~ Finnish keri ’id.’ (< FU *kere).

An ancient word with initial * p- is almost always represented by f - in Hungarian, very rarely by b-, whereas in Finnish the original consonant is preserved. For example, Hungarian felh-ő , felle-g ’cloud’ ~ Finnish pilvi ’id.’ (< FU * pilwe/* pil ηe); Hungarian fi-ú ’boy, son’ ~ Finnish poika ’id.’ (< FU * pojka); Hungarian fész-ek ’nest’ ~ Finnish pesä ’id.’ (< U * pesä); but: Hungarian bő r ’skin, hide’ ~ Ostyak pĕ r ’id.’ (< U * per ‹ ), Hungarian bél ’intestines’ ~ Zyrian p2ls- ’internal’,Votyak pol - ’id.’ (< FU * päl ‹ ).



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An ancient word with initial *t - has almost all the time t - in Hungarian, very rarely d-, whilein Finnish the original consonant is always preserved. For example, Hungarian tud ’know’ ~Finnish tunte- ’know, feel’ (< *tunte- < U *tumte-); Hungarian tél ’winter’ ~ Finnish talvi ’id.’ (<FU *tälwä); Hungarian tava-sz ’spring (time)’ ~ Finnish touko ’sowing (time)’ (< FU *towk ‹ );Hungarian te-sz , te-, tev- ’do, make’ ~ Finnish teke- ’id.’ (< FU *teke-); Hungarian te-t ű ’louse’ ~Finnish täi ’id.’ (< FU *täje); Hungarian te ’you’ ~ Finnish si-nä ’id.’ (< Early Proto-Finnic *ti-nä< FU *t x); but: Hungarian dug ’stick, put’ ~ Finnish tunke- ’id.’ (< FU *tuηke-).

If there was a *-t - between two vowels in a word of the Uralic, the Finno-Ugric or the Ugric proto-language, it is always followed by a - z (-) in Hungarian. In Finnish the -t - is preserved, but if itis followed by an i, we find an - s- in its place, for example, Hungarian ház ’house’ ~ Finnish kota ’hut, cottage’ (< FU *kota); Hungarian kéz ’hand’ ~ Finnish käsi, käte- ’id.’ (< FU *käte);Hungarian víz ’water’ ~ Finnish vesi, vete- ’id.’ (< FU *wete); Hungarian méz ’honey’ ~ Finnishmesi, mete- ’id.’ (< FU *mete).

If a word of the proto-language contained a cluster of an „oral (produced in the oral cavity)stop + a homorganic (that is, produced at the same place) nasal (produced in the nasal cavity) stop”then at the place of this consonant cluster there is always a homorganic voiced oral stop inHungarian, that is: *mp > b, (*mt >) *nt > d , *ηk > g . For example, Hungarian hab ’wave’ ~ Finnishkumpu- ’stream, flow (water)’, kumpu ’hill’ (< U *kumpa ’wave’); Hungarian lúd ’goose’ ~ Finnishlintu ’bird’ (< FU *lunta ’bird’); Hungarian tud ’know’ ~ Finnish tunte- ’know, feel’ (< *tunte- U <*tumte-); Hungarian dug ’stick, put’ ~ Finnish tunke- ’id.’ (< FU *tuηke-).

Around half of the living cognate languages preserved the palato-velar vowel harmony of

proto-language origin, for example, Hungarian egér ’mouse’, egér-ben ’in (the) mouse’, egér-t ő l ’from (the) mouse’ ~ Finnish hiiri ’mouse’, hiire-ssä ’in (the) mouse’, hiire-ltä ’from (the) mouse’;Hungarian ház ’house’, ház-ban ’in (the) house’, ház-tól ’from (the) house’ ~ Finnish kota ’hut,cottage’, koda-ssa ’in (the) cottage’, koda-lta ’from (the) cottage’.

These few Hungarian–Finnish examples are, of course, from the so-called basic vocabulary.I could go on but let it suffice that I mention most of our common numerals (mostly of Finno-Ugricorigin): Hungarian egy ’one’ ~ Finnish yksi, yhte-; Hungarian két , kett ő ’two’ ~ Finnish kaksi,kahte-; Hungarian három ’three’ ~ Finnish kolme; Hungarian négy ’four’ ~ Finnish neljä;Hungarian öt ’five’ ~ Finnish viisi, viite-; Hungarian hat ’six’ ~ Finnish kuusi, kuute-; Hungarianhét ’seven (; week)’ ~ Vogul sÁ t , sāt , Ostyak läwət , tapət ; Hungarian nyol-c ’eight’ ~ Vogul ńal-ālow, ńol-ōlow, Ostyak ń5l -zγ, ńĭ wət ; Hungarian húsz ’wenty’ ~ Vogul kos, χ us, Ostyak kos, χ us,Zyrian k 5 ź ; Hungarian száz ’hundred’ ~ Finnish sata.

Stress in the proto-language fell on the first syllable, and so is the case in the majority of the present-day languages.

These languages avoid consonant clusters at the beginning of words. This is such an ancientcharacteristic that it is shown by words that were borrowed from Indo-European languages as well,when the original words had two or more consonants at their beginnings. It can be seen that Finno-Ugric languages tried to somehow cease the consonant cluster. For example:



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Hungarian < original word Finnish < original wordiskola’school’

Latin schola koulu ’school’ Swedish skola < Latin schola

palánta ’plant’

Latin planta lanttu ’kohlrabi’ Swedish planta < Latin planta

kereszt

’cross’

Old Russian kr ĭ st ŭ or South

Slavic (cf. Old ChurchSlavic) kr ĭ st ŭ

risti ’cross’ Old Russian kr ĭ st ŭ

asztal ’table’

Slavic (cf. Old Church Slavic stol ŭ ~ Germanic *st ōla)

tuoli ’chair’ Swedish stol (cf. Germanic *st ōla ~ Old Church Slavic stol ŭ)

szabad ’free’

Slavic (cf. Old Church Slavic *svobod ĭ )

vapaa ’free’ Russian svoboda

unoka ’grandchild’

Slavic (cf. Croatian unuk,unuka)

vunukka ’grand-child’ (dialecticalword)

Russian vnuk

szoba ’room’

Old High German stuba (>German Stube)

tupa ’room,cottage’

Germanic *stuba > Old HighGerman stuba > German Stube

zsinór ’string,

cord’

Middle-High German snûr (>German Schnur )

nuora ’string’ Old Scandinavian *snōra >Swedish snöre (~ German

Schnur )

Due to strong foreign influence these languages are now willing to tolerate word initialconsonant clusters, for example, Hungarian traktor ’tractor’ ~ Finnish traktori ’id.’ (internationalloanword), cf. German Traktor , Swedish traktor , English tractor ), Hungarian spenót ’spinach’ ~Finnish spenaatti (international loanword, cf. German Spinat , dialectical Spenat, Spenot , Swedish spenat , English spinach), Hungarian strand ’beach’ < German Strand ’seacoast, beach’ (but Finnishranta ’shore, coast’ < Low German strant ’seacoast, beach’).

The Hungarian–Finnish word pairs of this list could deceive superficial observers: theymight think these are proofs of a common ancestry from an ancient period (from the Uralic or Finno-Ugric proto-language). If, however, we check whether these words correspond to each other in a phonetically systematic way, or, if we check whether it is possible that the concepts denoted bythese words were known to speakers of the proto-languages (for example, ’school’ or ’room’), then

we immediately have to exclude them from the list of possible evidences of language relationship.However phonetically similar are the Hungarian pap ’priest, churchman’ and the Finnish word pappi, which means the same, all they have in common is the Slavic root (* popŭ) where they wereimported from; the Hungarian rozs ’rye’ (< Slavic, cf. *r ŭ ž ĭ ) and the Finnish ruis ’rye’ (< Germanic*rugiz ) are very similar both phonetically and semantically, yet what only relates them is that theSlavic and Germanic words they originate from, and their (here not quoted) Baltic equivalents, belong to the same Indo-European word family. People unfamiliar with science tend to relate wordswhich are taken from the vocabularies of different languages, but which look and sound similar andhave similar meanings, and confused, illogical ad hoc explanations. Those who are not wellacquainted with the science of comparative linguistics may believe that the Latin habere ’possesssomething’ must be the same, etymologically, as the German haben ~ English have words, whereasin fact the former can be originated from the Indo-European proto-language verb *ghabh- ’hold’,and the ancestor of the Germanic verbs is the verb *ghebh- ’take’ (Buck 1988: 739–740). There aresome cases, of course, when an etymologically common word of two cognate languages has

developed into two such phonetically different words that for outsiders it seems unbelievable thatthey stem from the same origin. As an example, the Hungarian ég ’sky’ ~ and the Finnish sää ’weather’ (< *säηe ’air’, s. UEW 1: 435), can be mentioned, or the Italian ucello ’bird’ ~ and theFrench oiseau ’id.’ (< Low Latin *avicellus ’little bird’ < Latin avis ’bird’; s. Cortelazzo – Zolli1999: 1757, Bloch – von Wartburg 2004: 443). In the vocabularies of different languages we canfind numerous word forms (whether the languages are cognate or not) which are the same from



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sound to sound, or they are phonetically very similar, yet they have nothing to do with each other,even if their meanings are somewhat, sometimes, similar. Some sort of forced semantic relation can be explained in cases such as:

Hungarian ház ’house’ (~ Finnish kota ’hut, cottage’ < FU *kota ’id.’, s. UEW 1: 190) — German Haus, English house (< *hū sa- < *hud - s-a-, s. Kluge 1989: 297) — Italian casa ’house’ <Latin casa ’id.’ (Cortelazzo – Zolli 2008: 306–307);

Hungarian vér ’blood’ (~ Finnish veri ’id.’ < FU *wire, s. UEW 1: 576) — German Wehr ’defence, protection’ (abstracted from the verb wehren ’hinder, prevent’, which originates from theIndo-European proto-language, s. Kluge 1989: 781);

Hungarian ki ’who’ (~ Finnish ke- ’id.’ < FU *ke, *ki ’id.’, s. UEW 1: 140) — Italian chi ’id.’, French qui ’id.’ (< Latin quis ’id’, l. Cortelazzo – Zolli 1999: 319, Bloch – von Wartburg2004: 602);

Hungarian tet ő ’roof’ (the old „tetik ’be visible stb.’ verb [now tetszik ’please, like’] becamea present participle which became a noun, tetik is of unknown origin, s. EWUng 2: 1514, 1515) — Italian tetto ’roof’, Portuguese teito ’id.’ (< Latin tectum ’id.’, s. Cortelazzo – Zolli 1999: 1692, vonWartburg 1966: 156);

Hungarian fiú ’boy, son’ (~ Finnish poika ’id.’ < FU *poika, s. UEW 1: 390) — Romanian fiu ’son of somebody’ (< Latin filius, s. von Wartburg 1949: 522).

1.3. Ancient suffixesFrom the proto-language today’s languages inherited a lot of suffixes. I will mention a few

of these.

Derivative endings:*-mp-: Hungarian id ő s-b ~ id ő s-ebb ’older’ (cf. id ő s ’old’) ~ Finnish iso-mpi ’bigger’ (cf.iso ’big’) ~ Yurak-Samoyed ηarka-mpoj ’considerably big’ (cf. ηarka ’big’);

*-nt-: Hungarian szá-d ’mouth, aperture opening, open shed’ ~ Finnish suu-nt a ’direction’(< U * śuwe ’mouth’ + *-nt- suffix); Hungarian negy-ed (-ik) ~ Finnish neljä-nt e- ’fourth’ (< FU*ńeljä-nt e/*neljä-nt e);

*-le-, *-re-: Hungarian sü-l ’porcupine’ (~ sün ’hedgehog’) ~ Finnish sii-li ’hedgehog’ (<FU * śije-le); Hungarian eg-ér ’mouse’ ~ Finnish hii-ri ’id.’ (< FU * šiηe-re);

*-l- frequentative suffix, for example, Hungarian úsz-kál ’swim about’ (< úsz-ik ’swim’) ~Finnish uis-kel e-e ’swim about’ (< ui- ’swim’);

*-tt- causative affix, for example, Hungarian néz-et ’get sg see’ (< néz ’look (at)’) ~ Finnishnäy-tt ä-ä ’show’ (< näky- ’be visible, seem’).

Suffixes of locative cases:*-na/ *-nä, is locative suffixe answering to the question ’where?’. Their descendants are used

in various functions in today’s languages: Hungarian ház-on ’on (the) house’, kéz-en ’on (the)hand’, gyors-an ’quickly’, szép-en ’nicely, prettily’, *kéz-belen > > kéz-ben ’in (the) hand’ ~Finnish taka-na ’at the back, behind’, koto-na ’at home’, käte-nä ’as, like a hand’, *käte-s-nä > > käde-ssä ’in (the) hand’.

*-ta/ *-tä, is also locative suffixe of place answering to the question ’where?’: HungarianGyő r-ött ’in Győr’, Kolozsvár-(ot )t ’in Kolozsvár’, mos-t ’now’ ~ Finnish ny-t ’now’, Vogul nī -t ,nē -ta ’on woman, in woman’, low-t ā , low-t ’on horse, in horse’.

One of the plural suffixes:*-i ~ *- j, is one type of suffixes of plural: Hungarian ház-ai -m-ban ’in my houses’ ~ Finnish

kod-i -ssa-ni ’in my cottages’, Hungarian ládikó-i -nk-ból ’from our cases/chests’ ~ Finnish laatiko-i - sta-mme ’id.’.

Suffixes of moods:*-ne-, indicates the conditional mood: Hungarian men-ne ’he would go’ ~ Finnish men-ne-e

’perhaps he goes’; Hungarian len-ne ’he would be’ ~ Finnish lie-ne-e ’pehaps he is’.*-k (> > Hungarian - j), indicates the imperative mood: Hungarian men- j ! ’go!’ ~ Finnishmene-’ , dialectal mene-k ’id.’.

Suffix of the past tense:



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*- j: In Hungarian this is only preserved in certain dialects. It is used, archaically, asimperfect past tens in the literary language. For example, Hungarian *mene- j > > mene ’went’ ~Finnish men-i ’id.’; Hungarian *ada- j > > ada ’gave’ ~ Finnish anto-i ’id.’.

People not familiar with language history could believe that the Hungarian infinitive menni ’to go’ and the Finnish mennä ’id.’ not only have their roots in common, etymologically, but theinfinitives are built up from the same elements as well. This is nothing more than fata morgana! The suffix of the Hungarian infinitive, -ni can be traced back to the *-nä form, while its functionalcorrespondent in Finnish used to be *-tak/ *-täk , and the infinitive of the Finnish verb that means ’togo’ used to be *men-täk , which probably went through the following chain of changes: *men-täk >*men-δäk > *men-näk > men-nä’ men-nä.

1.4. Common syntactical featuresCompound words are very important when it comes to creating words. We do not have any

proto-language data of this category, however, compound words in the proto-language almostcertainly existed. The so-called copulative compounds are a characteristic group of compounds of the Uralic languages. For example, Finnish maa-ilma ’world (= land/country-air)’ , Estonian suu- silmad ’face (= mouth-eyes)’, Estonian isad-emad ’parents (= fathers-mothers)’, Votyak Ï m-nÏ r ’face(= mouth-nose)’, Ostyak ewi-po χ ’child (= daughter-son)’, ne- χ o ’human being (= woman-man)’,ńol-sem ’face (= nose-eye)’, Vogul āγi-piγ ’child (= daughter-son), Hungarian ia-fia ’all his family,the whole gang (= *his daughter-his son)’ (~ Vogul āγi-piγ, Ostyak ewi-po χ ), arc ~ orca ’face (=*nose-mouth)’.

The names of one member of body parts that are pairs are given as ’half’, for example,

Hungarian f é l-szem ’one eye (literally: half eye)’, Vogul sam- p ā l ’id., one-eyed’, Finnish silmä- p u o l i ’id.’, Ostyak k d r - p e { ə k ’one leg (literally: half leg), one-legged’.

At the majority of the language family members the pronominal possessive is still marked by a possessive suffix at the end of the word indicating possession, for example, Hungarian (én)hal-am ’my fish’, Vogul (am) χūl-əm ’id.’, Ostyak (ma) χ ul-əm ’id.’, Finnish (minun) kala-ni ’id.’,while Indo-European languages express the same with a possessive pronoun, for example, Germanmein Fisch, English my fish, French mon poisson, Russian моя рыба [= mojá rýba].

One group of verbs are typically provided with a suffix that answers to „where to, in what”questions, for example,

Hungarian ~ Finnishbelehalt az é h e z é s - b e hän kuoli n ä l k ä - ä n’he died of hunger (literally: to the hunger)’ ’id.’v í z - b e fulladt/fúlt hän hukkui v e t e - e n’he got drowned in water (literally: to water’ ’id.’The expression of predicative possession is usually done not by a verb of possession

(’habere’), but by a substantive verb (’esse’), and it is expressed by a possessive adverbial phrase,for example,

Hungarian Finnish(nek-em) v a n könyvem minu-lla o n kirja’I have a book (literally: my book is [to me]’ ’id. (literally: book is on me)’a fiú-nak v a n szája poja-lla o n suu ’the boy has mouth (literally: his mouth ’id. (literally: mouth is on the boy)’

is to the boy)’These languages most probably did not have conjunctions or formally subordinate clauses.

Such relations were mostly expressed by participal phrases, for example,Hungarian Finnish j ö t t ö m b e n találkoztam vele t u l l e s s a n i tapasin hänet

’coming I met him’ ’id.’m ë n t ë m b e n láttalak téged(et) m e n n e s s ä n i näin sinut ’going I saw you’ ’id.’

An example from „Halotti Beszéd és Könyörgés” („Funeral Sermon and Prayer”; about 1200): Hadlaua c h o l t a t terumteve iÐ ten tvl , which used to, probably, read as follows: hadlaváh o l t á t terümtevé istent ű l ’he heard from God that had created him, he will die’.



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In attributive phrases whith a substantive noun qualified by a numeral above ’one’ the nounis in singular, for example, Hungarian három szem ’three eyes’, Vogul χūr əm sam ’id.’, Ostyak χ ol əm sem ’id.’, Finnish kolme silmää ’id.’ (note: the Finnish silmä ’eye’ is also singular, but after numerals above ’one’ the noun gets a so-called partitive suffix, that is why it is silmä-ä).

2. „Relationships” of the Hungarian languageSearch for the relatives and source of the Hungarian language started centuries ago. There wereideas among the initial suppositions that were later proven correct, however, hypotheses whichintended to plant into the minds of the literate people of the time the idea of language kinship withHebrew from among the „sacred” languages were much more common. Advocates of the latter were usually writers of grammar who started their trade from the 16 th century. From the 17th centurywe can see another branch starting to develop, which seemed to have discovered Eastern relatives inthe languages of Huns, Schytians (cf. szittya ’considered to be the common ancestors of Huns andSchytians’), Avars and Turks. The idea of a linguistic relationship between Finnish and Hungarianalso came up, although only tentatively.

The demand increased, for the generations that came after one another, to look for languagekinship because they recognized the isolation of their mother tongue in their surroundings. They bitterly realized: „we are alone in the Slavic and Germanic seas”. That is why the sad compatriotslooked for the siblings of their mother tongue in idioms spoken far away, by people who they believed were rich or who they had romantic ideas about.

One part of the Hungarian nobility of the 19 th century desperately protested against the

„fish-smelling relatives” (Finns, Lapps and so on). A breakthrough came in the 19th

-20th

centurieswhen more than fifty „cognate” languages were discovered, among them, and I’m only mentioninga few, Chinese, Japanese, Sumerian, Dravidian, Etruscan, Turkish, and Maya. Not deeming theFinno-Ugric relations prestigious enough, dreamers seemed to have found language relatives on allcontinents. They tried to quiet down in more and more dismissive terms the experts who challengedtheir views. This „noble” tradition peaked in the second half of the 20 th century and seems to befully virulent in the 21st. We are not alone in this respect: some in other nations are busy concoctingtheories of their people’s past and the origin of their languages to tailor it to their tastes. The popularization of these dilettante views by the „prominent writers” of the unlearned is audaciouslysupported by the correspondingly uneducated and sometimes uninhibited workers of the written andelectronic press. They want to make people, who are incapable of clear thinking, believe that whatthey want to believe is correct, and if their sham is repeated enough times, many people tend to believe what is actually nothing more than fata morgana — this is true, of course, and sadly, in allfields of science. By consequence, it is due to both camps, that is, the dilettantes and the employeesof the press who are not well educated in scientific matters that scientists sometimes have to step upto the public and refute the overall rubbish in these areas instead of concentrating on their scientificresearch. The surge of the dilettantes has increased especially in the past few decades. After the fallof Communism, with the advent of the freedom of speech, linguistic dilettantism has become analmost hysterical epidemic, which, in the three Finno-Ugric states, have been affixed with politicalovertones. This in turn has been reinforced by foreign alliances (Italian and Dutch). We can regardtheir products as an expression of opinion; on the same platform they could vent that the Hungariannational tricolour is not „red-white-green” but „pale purple”. These amateurs do not refrain from broadcasting linguistic „truths”, moreover, the more militant of them want to make the public believe that they are the sworn-in enemies of dictatorship, while the scientists were the collaborates.The experts have dealt with this problem in a few papers meant to make science popular. Linguistshave never taken up the glove thrown by the combative amateurs. In this way the wild „theories” of Hungarian originating from Sumerian or Turkic have mostly been without a response in the

scientific world. Sometimes, however, scientists have taken the pain to publicly comment on theseamateur views. A research paper is being prepared, parts of which I used when writing this presentation. The quality of these amateur views can be reflected in the 19th century statementaccording to which God must be Hungarian, too, because he is most of the time portrayed as havinga beard and a moustache, mirroring the fashion of the day in Hungary. Amateur linguists representthe same level of scientific value as miracolous healers who are originally accountants, shepherds,



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or frustrated intellectuals who claim to have discovered the sole medicine against cancer. Most of the time the declarations of these smart people appear as indisputable truths. For the expert, they aremostly not interpretable, they cannot be dealt with, lacking methods, logic, or coherent arguments.These views are only vague ideas, e x c a t h e d r a d e c l a r a t i o n s . People who make theseviews up do not refrain from distortions or the wildest lies.

When I look at the displays of bigger bookstores, I have to note that there are loads of publications among linguistic works that are only good for misleading the public. Their true placewould be among „esoteric” books. Of course I am aware of the fact that these people, who are noteducated in science, want to question not only linguistics but other scientific fields as well. Theythink they are better versed in the subject than the experts even though they have never been closelyacquainted with the methodologies of the given scientific area. They are harshly stepping up in public against those who are creating at least the impression of scientific methods.

Archeologists, microbiologists, mathematicians, lawyers, graffiti analyzers and so on wouldlike to have their voices heard in comparative linguistic studies of the Hungarian language, makingit awkward for linguists to refute them, because they are, in their own fields, highly acclaimedmembers of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences or they are university professors. Half-illiterate people are encouraged by their amateurish declarations, saying, „look, now members of theHungarian Academy of Sciences question the origin of the Hungarian language and do notsubscribe to the views of the official linguists, who represent Jewihs, Germans, and Russianinterests”. There are people at all levels of society who are excited by these fancy ideas. They arevehemently against the fact of Finno-Ugric origin, while they are not educated at all in linguistics.

They keep saying they have toppled the Finno-Ugric theory. They are not worth arguing with, because a possible discourse would only strengthen their belief that they know something about thesubject. Their discussions delude well-meaning people and only thrill them. When experts quotethem they think it means that they are somewhat taken seriously. I will now give a short overviewof the wild branches that have sprung up in the past 30 years. Of these weeds I will only tell you theones I personally dealt with.

I divide those who disregard any kind of scientific methodology into three groups:1. absolutely amateur linguists,2. scientifically educated people (especially archeologists and historians) who do not have

enough knowledge in historical-comparative linguistics and who meddle themselves with issuesthat are not in their fields,

3. colleagues who studied linguistics but have wandered off into fantasy land.The most far-flung idea is that all languages of the world originate from the Hungarian

language. This is the farthest you can get from the truth. Some people actually claim that you canrecognize Hungarian language elements in all languages. From the loads of rubbish I haveencountered I will now mention those for the understanding and critique of which no seriouslinguistic background is needed.

That Hungarian and Sumerian are linguistically related is a delusion. People accepting suchviews believe that Huns, Avars, Schythians and California Indians share the same languageancestors. The palette is sometimes even wider: some amateurs would like to have between fiftyand a hundred languages accepted as relatives of Hungarian.

Sumerian is a language that is as isolated genetically as Basque. With the Huns and theAvars the problem is that we know nothing about their language. Of the Scythians we only knowthat their language belonged to the Iranian language group. From this fact some amateurs can createevidences of a theory, for example, an author of an „alternative textbook” explains: „Many believethat we have nothing to do with the Sarmatians, the Alans, the Huns, because — they claim — theformer spoke in Iranian and the Huns spoke in Turkic. However, aside from a few Alan sentences

we have no absolutely undisputed language record either from the Schytians, or the Sarmatians, or the Huns, or the Avars, that is why there is no theoretical barrier to believe they are genetically andlinguistically related, whose language must have been also close to ours!”… By the same token,according to this logic, one could say that the 185.000–200.000 year-old man (Homo erectus) fromVértesszőlős in Hungary is also a relative of ours, of course not only genetically, but „theoretically”linguistically as well, because we have no („absolutely undisputed”) language record to speak of. (It

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may be of no import to this „linguist” that this man hardly could speak.) … The author of another „alternative textbook” argues, with „clear logic”, for the Hun origin of Hungarian: „T h e y [i. e.other dilettants] s a y Hun and Hungarian denote the same people, therefore f o r u s it is nodoubt that we are relatives and descendants”.

Amateurs believe themselves well informed in all fields of science, among others in palaeoanthropology as well, when they try to argue for the old European nature of Hungarians, andthe special, exceptional place of their language. Another „alternative textbook” reads: „Onethousand years ago the ancestors of Hungarians were Neanderthal men as well.” As far as Imanaged to understand palaeoanthropological literature, the Neanderthal men represented a deadend in the development of Homo, therefore they could not be the ancestors of either Hungarians, or Sumerians, or Germans, or Russians, or anybody.

The author of a publication would like to discover the descendants of the Huns or the Avars,or one part of the Hungarians who settled in Hungary, in the residents of a Swiss valley. From hisarguments, I would just highlight one that concerns linguistics: „it is to be noted that in thelanguage now used in the valley stress falls on the first syllable, just like in Hungarian; especially if we take into account that in Italian or French stress falls on the last but one syllable”. This author only „forgot” to say which language is spoken in that valley. From the context, we can guess that itmust be some sort of Romance language, either an Italian or French dialect. Whoever once lookedinto an Italian or French coursebook knows that such foolishness cannot be used when describingthe use of stress in these languages, because in Italian stress does not always fall on the penultimatesyllable, cf. università• ’university’, scri•vere ’to write’, cammina•re ’to go on a walk’,

cammi•nano ’they go on a walk’; whereas in French, the last syllable gets the stress, for example:université• ’university’, écri•re ’to write’, écrivo•ns ’we write’.From their etymological ideas I will mention some that anyone with a clear mind will admit

is nonsense.„Of the Indo-European languages, for example the English verb write belongs together with

the Hungarian verb vakar ’to scratch the surface of something’”, says a self-appointed linguist.Another author declares that the English house (for this writer, it is consistently hause) and theGerman Haus „cannot be interpreted from either English or German, but from Hungarian”, cf.Hungarian ház ’house’. The same author, in his book „Az angol szókincs magyar szemmel” (=„The English vocabulary with eyes of Hungarians”) provides English words with Hungarian origin.I will quote some such „etymologies”: English loch < Hungarian luk ’hole, gap’, English lack <Hungarian luk ’lack’, too(!), English high < Hungarian (for example) hágó ’mountain pass’, fel-hág ’step up’, English field < Hungarian föld ’earth’.

One of the amateurs, who clearly belongs to the first group, shared his opinion with the public in one magazine that there is nothing scientifically wrong with reading, for example, ancientEgyptian texts written in hieroglyphs „with the help of the Hungarian language”.

One of them managed to „decode”, for example, the people’s name hungarus ’Hungarian’, which is Latin from the Middle Ages using Hungarian language; according to this theory, the wordis made up of three elements: hun-g-ar (+ the Latin us ending), where the first element equals hon ’home’, g is a variant of the Hungarian plural suffix, k , and ar would be the same as úr ’Sir,master’, thus the original meaning of hungar(-us) is, accordingly, ’the lord of homelands’. Another amateur came up with the same kind of „scientific-based” information: „Hungarians are, to this day,called Huns, most languages call the country the land of Aryan-Huns, HUN-G-ÁRJA” (= ’Hun-s-Aryan’).

The vast majority of amateurs does not even understand the historical-comparative linguisticstudies, which they refuse to read because they are „against Hungarians”. They often treat scientificworks as if they denied facts, furthermore, they contribute such statements to them which they do

not contain, cannot contain, and more than once they cannot spell the titles and names of the authorsof these works they so harshly criticize. Hungarian spelling is very often beyond them, and their compositions are incomprehensibly incoherent.

The Italian linguist Mario Alinei, professor emeritus of Utrecht University, delighted thehearts of Hungarian amateurs with his book titled „Etrusco: una forma arcaica di ungherese” (=„The Etruscan as an archaic form of Hungarian”). The book was also published in a catastrophic



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Hungarian translation. A few examples of word correspondence from this book: Etruscan etera ’fighter, foot-soldier’ ~ Hungarian ezer ’1000’ (> ezred ’regiment’), Etruscan fler ’image, idol’ ~Hungarian fél ’half’, Etruscan fulu ’smith’ ~ Hungarian f ű l ő , that is, ’fireman’ (as far as I know myown mother tongue there is not such a Hungarian word…).

There are linguists in the three Finno-Ugric states who drew a „fantastic” past to Finno-Ugric peoples. According to them our ancestors populated the northern parts of Europe from theUral Mountain to the British islands thousands of years ago, influencing the Germanic, Baltic andSlavic proto-languages at the time to a great extent (their „proofs” are, in the opinion of the expertsof Germanic, Baltic and Slavic languages, „delusional”) but, they think there didn’t exist any Indo-European or Uralic/Finno-Ugric proto-language. Instead, they claim, two pidgin languages existedin parallel, providing a basis for today’s Indo-European and Finno-Ugric languages. This exudesheavy professional ignorance: if pidgins become creole, that is, they become the mother tongue of people, languages with very similar structure and grammar are born, while in this respect Indo-European and Uralic languages differ to a great extent.

In general, national language is the embodiment of the national psyche. It is the mostimportant part of national identity, especially in the case of smaller populations. This is not so trueof former colonizers (cf. English or Spanish). At times soccer substituted it (cf. Italians). In theGerman language area this function of the language was taken over by state boundaries in the 20 th century, in the case of Serbo-Croatian, it was replaced by religious boundaries (Serb: Orthodox,Croatian: Catholic, Bosnian: Muslim).

In the smaller national circles of Europe it is very fashionable to look for a glorious past,

distinguished ancestors and relatives, which means that we Hungarians are not unique in thisrespect. There are two painful historical events in the background in our case: (1) After the death of King Matthias (1490) the grand power status of the Hungarian Kingdom was over, the country became part of the power play of the Habsburg dynasty, and, as a result of Turkish attacks, thecountry was divided into three parts. (2) According to the peace treaty of the First World War,Hungary was shorn of over 72% of the territory it had previously controlled and one third of Hungarians became foreigners. This is, up to this day, a wound in the Hungarian psyche.Hungarians in the neighboring countries have to struggle to be able to keep their mother tongue andnational identity. In some of these countries people in the majority try to justify their superior „ancient” rights to the Hungarian territories they acquired by strange means by creating nationalmyths. To this comes the fairly embarrassing answer of some Hungarians who try to come up withsimilar lies to prove that our ancientness and superiority is better.

In spite of unscientific efforts to find language relatives our mother tongue is undoubtedlyrelated to Finnish, Estonian and other languages. Hungarians are just as mixed genetically as anyother people in Europe. What connects every Hungarian is the mother tongue, independent of thefact that their ancestors two or ten generations ago spoke German, Italian, Croatian or Polish.

BIBLIOGRAPHYBenk ő, Loránd (ed.) (1995), Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Ungarischen. Band II. Kor – Zs.

Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest. = EWUng 2.Bloch, Oscar – von Wartburg, Walther (2004), Dictionnaire etymologique de la langue française. 2e

édition. Quadrige – PUF, Paris.Buck, Carl Darling (1988), A Dictionary of Selected Synonyms in the Principal Indo-European

Languages. A Contribution to the History of Ideas. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago – London.

Cortelazzo, Manlio – Zolli, Paolo (1999), Il nuovo etimologico. Dizionario etimologico della

Lingua Italiana. Seconda edizione in volume unico. Zanichelli, Bologna.Gyarmathi, Samuel (1779), Affinitas linguae Hungaricae cum linguis Fennicae originis grammaticedemonstrata. Typis Joann. Christian. Dietrich, Gottingae.

Kluge, Friedrich (1989), Etymologisches Wörterbuch der deutschen Sprache. 22. Auflage. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin – New York.

Rédei, Károly [ed.] (1988), Uralisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch. Band I. Akadémiai Kiadó – Otto Harrassowitz, Budapest – Wiesbaden. = UEW 1.



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Sajnovics, Joannis (1770), Demonstratio. Idioma Ungarorum et Lapponum idem esse. RegiæScientiarum Societati Danicæ Prælecta, et Typis Excusa Hafniæ. Anno MDCCLXX.

Vasmer, Max (1958), Russisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch. Dritter Band. Sta – Ÿ. Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, Heidelberg.

RECOMMENDED LITERATUREAbondolo, Daniel (1998), Introduction. In: Abondolo, Daniel (ed.), The Uralic Languages.

Routledge, London – New York. 1–42.Fodor, István (2004), The Uralic Peoples: Prehistory and Ancestral Homeland. In: Nanovfszky,

György (ed.), The Finno-Ugric World. Teleki László Foundation, Budapest. 25–29.Honti, László (2005), Research on the prehistory of the Hungarian language. In: Mende, Balázs

Gusztáv (ed.), Research on the prehistory of the Hungarians: A review. Papers presented at themeetings of the Institute of Archeology of the HAS, 2003–2004. Varia ArchaeologicaHungarica XVIII. Archeological Institute of the HAS, Budapest. 157–169.

hungarians and the origin of hungarian a connection between identity and language by lászló honti

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