Japanese Hungarian List

These lists contain 'SIMILARITIES' not alleged Japanese-Hungarian cognates!
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These pages contain 'similar' words in Magyar (organised by Japanese SIMILARITIES), 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:0] 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.

Officially, Japanese is considered an isolate, that is, some linguists claim that it cannot be classified. While others place Japanese into the Altaic family of languages which includes Turkic, Mongolian, Tungus, and Korean.

There have been attempts to include the Ainu (another so-called isolate) into Altaic.

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

The 800 or so A4 pages on the right compare 'similar' words in "Japanese" or Chinese Loans and Hungarian	List 1
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	List 8