Magyar Comparison

These lists contain 'similarities' NOT 'alleged Martian-Hungarian cognates'!
I know, it is a difficult concept to fathom, but do try.

The fact that Magyar (Hungarian) has connections to the Uralic language family is well-attested and is not the issue here. Since the reference language is Magyar and because much of the Magyar lexicon is of unknown origin, the existing title seems appropriate.

These pages contain 'similar' words in Magyar and (Basque,Etruscan,Japanese,Sanskrit,Slavic) and each is a subset of the main Magyar Comparisons. NO claim of any relationship is made between them. No matter how many times I stress this, some people still make dogmatic statements about these comparisons. WATCH MY LIPS: nowhere do I claim that Magyar (Hungarian) is related to Basque, Etruscan, Japanese, Sanskrit, Sumerian, or Martian or whatever. I wouldn't dare to make such claims which are, after all, the sole prerogatives of Indo-European.

Be aware that you might not agree with what I consider 'similar', so the whole exercise is not 'scientific' and as such is 'pseudo-science'. By including as many agglutinative languages as possible such as the taboo language isolates I lay myself open to such equally unscientific accusations as nationalism and/or pan-Hungarian fantasies! On the other hand, by using a restricted range of languages for comparisons, one might be accused of being highly selective. You can't win either way! But these are not the only obstacles in this emotionally charged area.

If we were dealing with the 'known' linguistic universe then word comparisons might elicit these words of wisdom :-

"In the respective vocabularies of any two languages there are often words which are similar in form, meaning and sound. However, similar words with similar meanings do NOT prove that languages are related. It may point to a possible relationship; you would still need to examine the origin of each and every word in order to be certain that the similarity is not due to chance or to other factors such as borrowings or native compounding."

However the blanket claim that wordlist comparisons "are based on accidental, superficial resemblances" is not entirely justified. Historical linguists, in particular, insist "...that from a purely statistical point of view, even among any two unrelated languages, there will most likely be a number of similar-sounding words with similar meanings".

The basic premise of this apparently authoritative and oft repeated statement is sound, but it is not based on any hard evidence. With thousands of languages and thousands of words per language, coupled with a finite number of sounds, it does seem reasonable to expect some 'similarities' - whatever they are. Linguists haven't done the sums, so does this "appeal to authority" prove anything?

In an ideal linguistic world, "regular sound changes" should show which words are related and which are not. In this non-ideal world there seem to be annoying exceptions to those rules as well. Serious scrutiny is lacking in all quarters, it seems.

However, we aren't dealing with certainties in the case of the so-called language isolates nor in the case of the substantial Magyar lexicon of unknown origin.

A large problem with language isolates is that their prehistory cannot be reconstructed by means of the comparative method, and little is known of their origins. That substantial Magyar lexicon, which linguists haven't been able to tie to every other language as loans, is obviously also a problem. Not being able to analyse the sound change rules across the thousands of languages of the past and of the present is a serious handicap. Not being able to include the history of every word (even if we knew it with any certainty) in every language both of the past and of the present is obviously a bummer. Not bothering to compare the 'grammatical similarities' of thousands of languages does not bode well, perhaps it's just too hard.

Bickering aside, is it still unreasonable to suppose, without resorting to accusations of pan-Hungarian fantasies, that this material may have found its way into the Magyar lexicon over the unbelievable 5000 year-long trek [art] of the proto-Magyar nation, during which time many peoples joined them and whose variegated multi-cultural contribution eventually formed a vibrant and dynamic people and a new language? Included are words which are often declared as loans from Indo-European without regard to Caucasian, Middle Eastern and even Asian parallels.

The chauvenist view in vogue is that the 'primitive nomadic' Magyar/Hungarians had to borrow thousands of words from "...more civilised peoples before they could form their kingdom and adopt a sedentary lifestyle". Undeniably, borrowing did occur, but so what?

Look at how much was borrowed by English where approximately 65% or more of the lexicon is of foreign (non-Germanic) origin. Swedish also has more than 65% foreign (mostly Low German) vocabulary. While Albanian apparently draws 90% of its vocabulary from foreign sources such as Greek, Latin and Slavic. [dw: p.59] Of course, such statistics can be extremely misleading.

For an overview of Hungarian linguistic history and Turkish loans in the first half of the Middle Hungarian period check out this page. It is not my intent to list, in these webpages, many obvious borrowings in Magyar unless there are parallels to be found in unlikely places. However it is difficult to find sensible or reliable data about the constituent makeup of modern Magyar/Hungarian.

The popularity of these suspect figures sees them copied mindlessly and uncritically on Wikipedia, Answers.com, www.obnova.sk and on more than 50 websites as of 30th. August 2008. To be fair, Wikipedia, Answers.com do quote the following as the original source of these figures :-

That allegedly academic source has the same figures, and they also add up to 101%! Remarkable. Perhaps that extra 1% is from some extra-terrestial language such as Martian. A skeptic might wonder how is it that with this allegedly huge 70% of foreign loanwords in Hungarian, most people still find Hungarian too difficult to learn and to understand? Is it really true that 7 out of every 10 Hungarian words can be understood by a non-Hungarian? Hardly! Does this mean that Hungarian is not much of a language? Does this mean that there is little worth in the language? Not at all. But these unreliable figures are often used by the ignorant, labouring under such a misconception.

To be fair, the original source of these figures does warn the reader in Hungarian that such a misleading impression is due entirely to the nature of statistics :-

With all those alleged foreign loanwords in Hungarian, that quote should be almost understandable to a non-Hungarian. No, you say? That is hard to believe. It might explain why the warning is always ignored when these figures are taken out of context and used to 'prove' how primitive Magyar must be. Maybe that is why the richness of native Magyar highlighted by the source is also ignored by the reader only interested in misleading statistics. Of course, such a reader is not interested in, nor even aware of the depth and complexity of the Magyar language which is reflected in the fact that in theory, the Magyar verb can have 5070 different forms! Don't believe me? Well, then check out Dr. Tamás Turányi 's effort here!

However, all is not lost. There is an academic article (see ref. [az] below in Hungarian) by the Slavic specialist Dr. András Zoltán of the Eötvös Loránd University which gives a hopefully more reliable set of percentages of loans in Hungarian. Ferenc Papp used a Hungarian root word dictionary by Géza Bárczi and found the following percentages using statistical analysis :-

Notice that these figures add up to only 29.48%, so what about the other 70.52%? Although, the earlier suspect figures in source seem to be inflated by a factor of 2, let us be generous and use its 8.5% of loanwords from Latin, Greek, Rumanian, and 1% of other loans of known origin, then we are still left with about 60% of Hungarian of native/unknown origin which falls into the linguistic, 'too-hard' basket. That figure tallies well with the following reference.

According to [ua: p.307] below, loanwords in Hungarian are held to constitute about 45% of bases in the language. Although the lexical percentage of native words in Hungarian is 55%, their use accounts for 88.4% of all words used (the percentage of loanwords used being just 11.6%)! Some sense at last.

People find Hungarian difficult because Hungarians use loanwords only 11.6% of the time.
A far cry from the misleading figures we started with. Doh!

"It is disquieting, though, that a proportionally significant part of the Hungarian lexical stock is of unknown etymology. There are various theories to explain this. These words – mostly abstract verbs and nouns – could still be of Finno-Ugrian origin, except that they survive in no other Finno-Ugrian languages, or may have been distorted even beyond the recognition of trained linguists. Since there were a great number of languages spoken on the steppes about which we have no knowledge at all – in a few cases only their names are known – these mysterious loanwords could have come from any of these languages; there are words even in English which successfully defy all attempts to find their etymology, in spite of the fact that the etymology of English words has never been a tiresome subject..." [Czigány, Chap. 1.1]

'Could be, might be' is not science, but it seems OK for some to indulge in such speculation.

What is really disquieting is that we are still left to ponder how the 10% Finno-Ugric component (or even that earlier, inflated 21%) ultimately defines Hungarian linguistic relationships without regard for that substantial native Hungarian lexicon of 'unknown' origin which is frustratingly used 88.4% of the time?!

'Magyar' is pronounced 'something akin' to MA-DYAR with stress on the first syllable (i.e' /gy/ sounds like a palatised /d'/ similar to the Basque sound /dd/).

The proper designation for their country is Magyarország where 'ország' (these days means 'country') but it is believed to have its origin in the word 'õrség' meaning "guardianship, garrison, keep" which can be further analysed as consisting of 'õr' (keeper, guard) and '-ség' which is a suffix similar to the English suffix '-ship' expressing "state, condition, quality of a collective".

There are many theories on what the designation 'Magyar' means and on its origins.

The proper designation for a Hungarian is 'Magyar', and it is believed to derive from the Ugrian 'Mansi–' or 'Magy–' with the addition of the Turkic '-eri.' forming 'Megyeri' – 'Magyen.' – 'Magyar', which was the name of the largest Hungarian tribe. Both particles mean "men". [zb] However, the whole etymology is uncertain. [Chong]

The Western designation of 'Hungar-' is seen as having different origins. It is thought that the Magyar became a part of a loose federation of semi-nomadic group, the Onogurs or 'The Ten Arrows' or ten tribes from which some claim derives 'Hungarian'. Others claim the word is an old Turkish (turanian) word, 'Hun' = Hun, 'Gar' = 'Gur' = Great.

The major dialects in Hungary proper on the map below are from the Debreceni Summer University. We have nyugati (Western), dunántúli (Trans Danubian), palóc (Northwestern), déli (Southern), északkeleti (Northeastern), tiszai (of the river Tisza), mezõségi (Plains). The smaller dialects include Gõcsei, Jász, Kalotaszegi etc.

There is the Székely nation in Transylvania (once part of Hungary, now part of Rumania), who numbered around 800,000 back in 1920.

Of course, there is the Csángó nation, a Roman Catholic people in Moldavia (Rumania) numbering around 65,000 who speak an archaic dialect of Magyar in danger of being lost.

The theories concerning the origins of the Magyar are many and varied. The dogmatists insist that the Magyar are related to the racially disparate Uralic Finno-Ugric peoples, based entirely on very narrow linguistic similarities alone. The theory has its roots in the work of Joannis Sajnovics published back in 1770 when linguistics had not yet evolved into the 'exact' science it is today. Remember that the 10% Finno-Ugric component of Magyar defines its linguistic relationships, ignoring the larger part of the Magyar lexicon of unknown origin.

Is it sufficient to consider language as the only determiner of relatedness without including anthropological, archaeological and historic evidence? In this broader sense, some believe that the Magyar are distantly connected to the ancient (Turkic) Uighur in the northern Chinese province of Xinjiang whose folkart, clothing and music are remarkably similar to unique styles of the Magyar peasantry. While others also see some Magyar cultural and linguistic elements having connections not only with Turkic but with Caucasian, Iranian and Eastern cultures of the distant past.

Perhaps no amount of linguistic, anthropological, archaeological and historic evidence will ever be enough. Recently Mario Alieni proposed that Etruscan was an archaic form of Hungarian as part of his 2003 'theory of continuity'. Though there has been no research/work done in refuting/falsifying this theory's claims since its publication, the work has managed to attract flack from 'experts' who have allegedly read it published only in Italian (2003) and Magyar (2005), for daring to actually connect Etruscan with Magyar of all things.

Alinei readily admits that there are areas of Etruscan that have not been explained by his theory, such as its words for numbers. His main point about the Turkic origins of Etruscan vocabulary for offices of state is nevertheless a powerful one. His theory also has the distinct virtue of generating testable hypotheses, most notably regarding the separation of the Hungarians from the Obugric group. If one accepts these, one is obliged to accept a causal chain of events that projects the Hungarians back to a Bronze Age presence in the Carpathian Basin, and by extension, to the Kurgan peoples. Alinei’s linguistic conclusions may thus be as important for Uralic studies as Ventris’ decipherment of Linear B was for Greek." [Morris]

Such a scenario would certainly turn conventional wisdom on its head, but the theory has not been treated in the spirit of scientific debate nor examined seriously even though Alinei also included historical and archaeological arguments to back up his theory of continuity.

So what does conventional wisdom say? Prior to the 5th. century A.D. the information on the proto-Magyar nation is rather scanty, purely speculative and highly debatable.

But the general consensus according to [zb] is that sometime in the 3rd. and 2nd. millenia B.C. the Ugrians leave the Finno-Ugrian area (northern Russia) and move south. A large part of this Ugrian group is thought to have formed the people who later called themselves "Magyar". In the Ist. millenium B.C. the Ugrians find themselves in contact with Turkic peoples in the region where Europe and Asia meet and they apparently form close ties both culturally and linguistically.

Jumping speculatively to the beginning of the Christian era, the proto-Magyar are thought to have wandered south again and came into contact with Kharez-Iranian culture. In the Caspian region they absorbed some additional Turkic-Hunnic and Scythian ethnic groups. Five hundred years later they moved west into the Black Sea area coming into contact with Caucasian cultures where they are joined by Alans and Sabirs. They also met the Avars here in the area called "Levedia", and coincidentally were in close contact with the Khazar empire.

[zb] suggests that it is likely that in the 7th. century a large part of the proto-Magyar nation called the "late Avars" or "early Magyars" decided to migrate and settle in the Carpathian basin. The rest stayed as allies of the Khazar empire until the beginning of the 9th century when eventually they moved to the Etelköz region together with a rebellious Khazar tribe, the Khabar. By the end of the 9th. century this group formed itself into a nation of eight tribes that came to occupy the Carpathian Basin in 895-6 A.D.

Based entirely on linguistic speculation linguists can derive history itself to show that the ancestors of the Hungarians left their Uralic cousins around 4000 BC [art] and wandered about on the Eurasian steppes for 5000 years on their way to the Carpathian Basin without suffering a major disaster in their encounters with some of the fiercest nations such as the Khazars, Bulghar-Turks, Alans, Slavs, Mongols, the numerous Turkic nations and Indo-Iranians and so on. All this while great civilisations rose and fell. Hard to believe, but it is the officially accepted view.

For a more recent and detailed exposition of what we 'know' see [art] in the references, it gives you an idea of the difficulties encountered in tracing pre-Settlement Magyar history. Researchers are not always as objective as you would think if they harbour prejudices against 'nomadic peoples'. [art: p.117]

There is nothing written in stone before the officially accepted settlement of the Carpathian Basin by the Magyar tribes in 895-6 AD. As described above, some see the Magyar of 895 as simply one phase of the migrations of kindred peoples such as the Hun and the Avar into the Carpathian Basin thus forming a continous occupation of the area by related peoples.

Concerning the origins of the Magyar nation and of the Magyar language, it seems that we don't have any absolute answers, all we have is a tenuous "consensus" (scientific, of course) and a variety of alternate theories, which should ALL be assessed with an open mind without necessarily always indulging in bogus skepticism.

These lists contain 'SIMILARITIES' not alleged Martian-Hungarian cognates!
Do you understand?, Verstehen Sie?, Comprenez-vous?, ¿Entiende?, Capisce?

[az] Zoltán András Dr., lecturer at the Eötvös Loránd University

Basque
Etruscan
Japanese
Sanskrit
Latin Naive grammatical comparison with Magyar
Magyar Lexicon 'Grammatical' Comparison Afro-Asiatic,Altaic,Austro-Asiatic,Basque,Caucasian, Dravidian,Etruscan,Sino-Tibetan,Sumerian etc. and even some Indo-European links.
Slavic
	Altaic, Dravidian, North Caucasian Sino-Tibetan databases and more	Sergei Starostin
	Chinese Similarities Dravidian Languages compared Small Hurrian & Urartuan dictionary Sumerian Topics Hungarian Myths & Legends Phonology and sound rules of Sumerian (2005)	Fred Hámori
	Indian Lexicon	Dr. S. Kalyanaraman
	The Indo-European Database	Cyril Babaev
	Ural Altaic Etymology Dictionary	Peter Chong
	Sumerian Language Page	John A. Halloran
References and Links

The Structure and Development of the Finnish Language