Magyar Comparison

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

'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/). It is NOT pronounced as MAG-YAR.

The fact that Magyar (Hungarian) has linguistic 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.

The self-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]

According to [msz] the name of the Hungarian people - 'Magyar'- is an obscure compound noun. Its first part is of Finno-Ugric or Ugric origin, which might have meant "man". The origin of its second part is debated. If it originates from one of the Turkic languages, it means man (-eri), if it is Finno-Ugric, it might be identical with the second part of the word man (Finnish yrkö - man, Cheremis erghe - boy).

Two words both meaning 'man' from two different languages to make up a self-designation meaning Man-Man? While reduplication is not an unusual phenomenon, such linguistic speculation still nicely fits the nonsense often written about the Magyar language and people. Sensibly, [Chong] says the whole etymology is uncertain.

According to [pc: p.120] the Greek historian Strabo (64 BC-AD 19) in his Geography says that the Scythian tribe of 'Royal Sarmatians' were also called Oúrgoi a metathesis form of the word ugra attested also in Scythian proper names such as Aspourgos (= Old Iranian aspa- 'horse' + ugra-) who were settled between the Dniester and the Dnieper. These people also dwell along the Ister (Danube) often on both sides. The Oúrgoi apparently also included Hungarians since a third or fourth century Latin inscription from the borders of Hungary mentions raiders called the Mattzari, which agrees with the later Byzantine transcriptions of Magyar, called Majqhari by tenth-century Muslim sources.

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 modern designation for their country is Magyarország which literally means 'Magyar country'. The first part of the word is self-evident. While 'ország' these days means 'country' it is likely that it has 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".

Perhaps originally, the name of their country was the 'Magyar protectorate or keep' actually belonging to the Apostolically appointed Magyar kings which would have included all non-Magyar inhabitants without the modern difficulty of 'differentiating' between (ethnic) Magyar and (political) Hungarian. One is obviously the true (Eastern) designation and the other is a relatively recent (Western) invention. It is only after Ottoman Turkish and subsequent Austrian rule that we find this separation of ethnic and political elements into two mutually exclusive classes which eventually facilitated the dismemberment of Old Hungary.

Interestingly, this has its counterpart in other divisive Western concepts such as the 'Seipel line', and "Asia begins at the Landstrasse" where "...there is often a dichotomy in the portrayal of the West and the so-called East. The West is described as 'rational' and 'democratic' while the East is labelled 'mystical' and 'despotic'. That is, "... if the Orient is exotic, then the West is normal, and the Orient is not merely different but abnormal, defective and inferior. Much the same can be said about certain approaches to Eastern European or Balkan studies. This is a faulty approach to knowledge which has infected not only Western, but also Eastern European writers." [Sowards]

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. Most of them are mutually intelligible.

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.

Officially, the Magyar (Hungarian) language is classed as belonging to the Uralic/Finno-Ugric/Ob-Ugric language group. The (linguistic) 'relatives' of the Magyar language are to be found amongst the Uralic/Finno-Ugric/Ob-Ugric languages which include Khanty, Mansi, Ostyak and Vogul. Magyar is a distant (linguistic) cousin of Finnish, Estonian and so on, since Finnish and Magyar are supposedly separated by 4000 years and share no more than a few recognisably similar words.

The theories concerning the origins of the Magyar are many and varied. However, there is often a confusion between racial and linguistic kinship. It was not that long ago that the dogmatists insisted that the Magyar were 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 as yet evolved into the 'exact' science it is today. Interestingly, such racist 'beliefs' never arose in the case of equally, distant, linguistic relatives such as English and Hindi, for example.

The winds appear to have changed. We can now read such comments from [jla] as "What has been falsified is probably the antiquated idea of Finno-Ugrian cultural or even racial relationship." Doesn't seem to be too sure, though. And from [msz] "The linguistic affinity which ties the Hungarians to the Ugric language family does NOT mean ethnic relationship or common origin".

That enlightened view was not always the norm even among professionals. As recently as 1982 [sh] defined 'Magyar' as 'One of the Mongoloid Race (entering Europe in 884), dominant in Hungary'. The Finno-Ugric people somehow turned into Mongols! Shades of Masaryk [als]

(Map of the Uralic languages to which Magyar belongs, follows p. 459 in reference [alinei].)

It always was, and it still is, insufficient to consider language as the only determiner of relatedness without including anthropological, archaeological and historic evidence. In this broader sense, some also 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 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:0] 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.

What is highly suspect about this is that it does not apply to other Uralic peoples, such as the Finns, Lapps, and Komi, who are thought to have spent the Ice Age in a watery refuge in the Ukraine and Southern Russia before moving North to exploit the new hunting opportunities provided by the retreating glaciers. [Morris]

For a recent and detailed exposition of what we officially 'know' see [art:0], 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:0, 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.

CONTACT	PERIOD
Iranian	Ancient Iranian/Finno-Ugrian contacts lasted from 4000BC to 800BC
	only about 6 words entered from Old Iranian period 8-2 centuries BC
	about 45 words from Middle Iranian 2nd century BC to 7/9th. centuries AD
	Iranian migration to Hungary in 13th. Century
Caucasian	Sometime during that 5000 year long migration period of the proto-Hungarians.
Turkic	pre-Settlement < 10th Century AD 300 words Chuvash-type Turkic animal husbandry, agriculture, accomodation, social life
	11-13th. Century AD Kipchak-type Turkic Due to Pecheneg and Cuman immigration into Hungary
	16-17th. Century AD Ottoman Turkish loans most of which are now obsolete with about 30 words remaining. Some of these may have also come into Hungarian from southern Slav languages.
	For an overview of Hungarian linguistic history and Turkish loans in the first half of the Middle Hungarian period check out this page.
Greek	Small number of loans came into Hungarian from contacts with Byzantium before Settlement in the Carpathian Basin right up to the 12th. Century AD
Slavic	Slavic Loans today number around 600 words. These came into Hungarian over different periods from Old Russian, Southern and Western Slav dialects.
German	Loans resulting mainly from immigrants to Hungary 12-13th. Century AD onwards
German	Intensified under Austrian Hapsburg Germanisation policy from the 17th. Century AD. on
Romance Languages	2000 words borrowed from Latin - religious, legal and scientific terminology, animal and plant names, names of months.
	Dynastic and cultural contacts resulted in loans from French during the 12-13th. centuries. Later loans came from French via German in the 18-19th. centuries.
	Loans from Italian came from early medieval political contacts.
	Rumanian influence is probably more evident in Transylvania than in Hungary proper.

According to [ua97: p.307], 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%)!

"The adoption of a word signifying an object does not necessarily mean that the object was previously unknown to speakers of the recipient language."For example, words for some human body parts were borrowed from Turkic languages, but that does not mean that originally the Hungarians, before their contact with Turkic people, had no words of their own for 'knee', 'navel' and 'stomach'. [art:0 p.109]

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]

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 is often sneeringly referred to as '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.

These lists contain 'SIMILARITIES' not alleged Martian-Hungarian cognates!
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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