Magyar Latin
Grammatical Comparison

This page is a very basic and naive comparison of grammar between Magyar and Classical Latin, and the 'agglutinative' languages in general. NO claim of a 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 Latin, Etruscan, Sumerian, or Martian or whatever. I wouldn't dare to make such claims which are, after all, the sole prerogatives of Indo-European.

We all know that "Latin" belongs to the Indo-European group of languages. Classical Latin was spoken by the patrician Roman classes, however the version spoken by the 'vulgus' or 'common people' of Rome came to be called 'vulgar' Latin out of which developed the so-called Romance languages we now know as French, Spanish, Portuguese, Rumanian and Italian.

Classical Latin is often described as a highly 'inflected' language as in [wlg: 14] which according to my dictionary pertains to "the variation of the termination of nouns etc. in declension, and of verbs in conjugation". Perhaps it is no surprise that Etruscan, another inflected language [lb: 19], also had a great influence on the culture of Rome and its language.

What is not so well known is that Magyar (Hungarian) is seen as belonging to the Uralic language group and is NOT an Indo-European language. Officially, the closest linguistic relatives of Magyar are believed to exist amongst the Uralic/Finno-Ugric/Ob-Ugric languages which include Khanty, Mansi, Ostyak and Vogul. Incidentally, Magyar is a very distant cousin of Finnish, Estonian and so on, separated by 4000 years and share no more than a few recognisably similar words. In contrast to Classical Latin, Magyar is often described as an 'agglutinative' language which refers to "the act of gluing or cementing suffixes to root words to form new meanings and concepts". Apparently, it is important to stress this distinction.

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. 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. While [msz] says that "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'. Shades of Masaryk [als]

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

Having at one time or another been immersed culturally and linguistically in the Magyar, German and Anglo-Saxon environments during my formative years, I was also a one-time high school student of Latin and French many moons ago, much of which is now long-forgotten. At the time, I was struck by the strangely ordered structure of the Latin sentence. I couldn't understand the reason for my discomfort whenever I practised my lessons in translating English to Classical Latin and vice versa. I had long forgotten this puzzling experience until I read an article by [kjd] speculating on this very observation.

In formal composition, the common word order in a Classical Latin sentence is

 It is important to understand that this ordering is not a fixed and hard rule and there are many possibilities for variety and emphasis according to [wlg: 14], who writes that the position of the Latin verb ".. is probably connected with the Romans' fondness for the periodic style, which seeks to keep the reader or listener in suspense until the last word of a sentence is reached."

But that is surely the impression of someone who does NOT naturally think in terms of a language such as Latin!?
Did the Romans really need to wait till the end of a sentence to completely figure out what a person was saying?

I tried translating to Magyar a few simple Latin sentences and to my surprise the syntax made perfect sense. There was no need to twist and turn Latin concepts as is the case when translating to idiomatic English. Why should this be? Well, Classical Latin often forms sentences in the Subject-Object-Verb (SOV) word order whose meaning and syntax is determined by suffixes added to 'stems' much like many unrelated languages of the world both past and present. Guess what? Magyar is also one of those languages. To show you what I mean, I present here my poor attempt at translating some very basic Latin sentences into Magyar.

This is not a proof of any relationship between Magyar and Latin, as many languages have an SOV syntax and use suffixes to achieve the same result.

Ø = null suffix here.
Magyar leány 'girl' has variants as lány, jány, lyány

Observe that the Latin adjective requires the gender, number and case to match that of its subject. In contrast, the Magyar adjective has no gender, number or case, but the noun is 'inflected' with suffixes in this order with (1) number, (2) person (owner) and (3) case! However, if a Magyar adjective is used as a noun then it may be fully declined just like a noun! The Magyar verb root is often the 3^rd. person singular, present tense.

The point to note is not how dissimilar the two languages may be as far as vocabulary is concerned, but how similar they are in the underlying grammar. The correspondence of the word order or the lack thereof, and the similar use of suffixes is not forced nor artificial in Magyar relative to Latin. The resulting meaning in Magyar is perfectly natural and often identical to the Latin without the need to constantly juggle words and meanings in order to produce idiomatic English for example.

Word order in both Latin and Magyar is not as important as it is in English as the suffixes attached to the 'stems' in Latin and to the 'roots' in Magyar completely and unambiguously determine the context. However, word order in Latin and Magyar is still important, particularly for emphasis. The following simple examples from [wlg: 14] translated to Magyar make perfect sense without alteration of the original meaning.

Try rearranging the words in the English sentence "The boy is giving a rose to the pretty girl" without changing the original meaning.

There is no feeling of "suspense" as claimed above if someone is expressing such sentences in an agglutinative language like Magyar and perhaps even in that so-called 'inflected' language known as Latin. It only seems that way when I switch to thinking in a 'positional' language such as English, which tends to order words in an SVO fashion.

The point I am trying to make is that Latin and Magyar make use of similar grammatical devices to achieve the same effect. With the use of suffixes, both express concepts in much the same manner. Though the form of the Latin and Magyar suffixes may differ, there is no difference in much of their functionality as shown in the following tables.

Declension of Nouns

To see what I mean, consider the following table which compares the so-called 'inflections' of one 1^st. declension noun in Latin with its Magyar equivalent.

While Latin has around 6 cases as listed above, Magyar has a much more complicated system ranging from 16 to 24 forms [bm]. Thus, one can see that Latin and Magyar use suffixes to express a concept in a very compact form and in a very similar manner. Magyar nouns can be thought of as consisting of a root or stem followed by three positional suffixes marking number, person and case. The Latin noun functions similarly in expressing number, gender and case when fully declined. For a comparison of Finnish, Estonian and Magyar case systems see Fred Hámori's page here.

Conjugation of Verbs

Now, compare the way Latin and Magyar use suffixes to define Latin Present Indicative Active of a First Conjugation verb and the Magyar Present Indefinite and Definite conjugations.

The (Back,Front) refers to the Vowel harmony that operates in Magyar.

Adverbs

Many Latin adverbs are derived from adjectives by adding a suffix to the stem.

Many Magyar adverbs are formed from adjectives by adding suffixes -n,-an,-en and sometimes lengthen the vowel before -n to -á- or -é- subject to Vowel Harmony! The root in Magyar may shorten as in bátr-an in a similar manner to the stem in Latin ācr-iter. The phenomenon is called 'vowel elision' in Magyar.

The Participles - Present, Perfect, Future

Latin participles are verbal adjectives. Such adjectives can also be used as nouns. While Latin has two active (Present, Future) and two passive participles (Perfect,Future) formed from normal transitive verbs, Magyar has the Present, Past and a Future Participle for comparison. The Magyar suffixes -ó and -ő form adjectives from verbs. Such forms represent the Magyar Present Participle which can also be used as a noun, and can also be declined just as in Latin.

The Present Participle

The Perfect Participle

The Latin Perfect Participle exists in passive form only and expresses action prior to that of the verb. [wlg: 107]

 Similarly, Magyar has a Past Participle or Participle of Completed Action which expresses "...an antecedent action and the states which result from it. It syntactically often behaves as an adjective. Its form is identical with the third person singular past indefinite verb form (-t)." [bm]

Although much rarer, the Magyar Past Participle may also be used as a noun. For example múl-t 'past'.

The Future Participle (FP)

Latin expresses the FP as a stem + suffix where the forms are

 Magyar expresses the FP as a root + suffix where the suffixes -andó and -endő form the Participle of Future Action, that is such forms represent the Magyar FP which can also be used as a noun, and may be declined just as in Latin.

 It is interesting just how much the Magyar suffixes bear some similarity to the Passive Latin forms! The grammar also functions in a similar manner in both languages. Must be a coincidence. Finally, consider the following more 'abstract' example.

Expression of Purpose or Will

According to [wlg: 134], it is important to understand that the Romans did not express purpose by the infinitive 'especially in translating Latin to English'. Instead they used ut (in order that, so that, to) or nē (in order that...not, so that...not, not to) with the Subjunctive. Let's see whether this warning applies to translating into Magyar.

Magyar expresses 'purpose' or the will or wish of a subject in much the same way as the patrician Romans did so long ago, in the syntax of Classical Latin to boot! Even the Latin conjunction UT has some similarity to the Magyar HOGY where the phoneme /gy/ sounds like a palatised /d'/. Could be one of those chance coincidences we hear so much about. Perhaps the grammar IS a loan from Latin, after all Latin was the official state language amongst the nobility for hundreds of years in the Old Magyar kingdom.

Interestingly, [ehh3] notes that the (circa 1440 AD) Jókai codex's sentence structures are strongly influenced by Latin, because the Latin text is often clumsily translated word for word, and the Hungarian version follows not only the meaning, but also all the word order, passive voice and agreement of Latin. But [ehh3] fails to mention whether Magyar grammar was eventually influenced by Latin overall, or whether the similarity was due to the fact that both languages form sentences in a Subject-Object-Verb order and use suffixes to express ideas and concepts in a similar manner! Nor are we enlightened on how the common folk who spoke Magyar, Slavic, German, Rumanian, Yiddish, French, Italian and so on in Old Hungary managed to adopt Latin grammar particularly since linguists insist that borrowing grammar is harder and much rarer than borrowing vocabulary from other languages.

On the other hand, does this mean that there is a relationship, no matter how tenuous, between Latin and the agglutinative languages? It may just be one of those chance coincidences so casually dismissed by dogmatists. Although, in probabilistic terms it is too much of a coincidence. IF the 2003 "theory of continuity" of Mario Alinei - emeritus professor at the University of Utrecht, where he taught from 1959 to 1987 that Etruscan is a very archaic form of Hungarian [alinei], has some basis in fact to the annoyance of the dogmatists, then it is entirely possible that the similarity in grammar between Magyar and Latin is not simply due to chance.

After all, the Etruscans with their own highly 'inflected' language had a great influence on Roman culture and language which [kjd] suggests was a grafting of "...an Italic, Indo-European vocabulary onto an Etruscan grammar, forming the basis of the Classical Latin spoken by the patrician class. These patricians also retained the Etruscan military and cultural ethos, though the leaders of the 'Romans' who subsequently overthrew the Etruscan king Tarquin the Proud were not eager to remind people that they themselves had descended from the Etruscan elite."

Such a linguistic scenario is not as far-fetched as it might appear. According to [lj] in Eastern Turkistan, the Eynu language is characterized by an extreme form of substrate influence, a large-scale introduction of foreign elements by imposition. Its speakers have copied a mainly Indo-European (IE) Persian vocabulary onto a non-IE Altaic/Turkic Uyghur basic code, i.e. taken over the system of Uyghur, but partly retained the lexicon of their original primary language!

If "... Latin is the mother of the Romance languages and the fons et origo of grammatical studies in Europe", [kjd] then such issues are perhaps too hard or too politically charged for the current state of linguistics. But paradigm shifts do occur from time to time in Science much to the dismay of vested interests. No one has a monopoly on Absolute Truth, especially in those 'exact' areas of knowledge called Linguistics and History (much of which is selective and not entirely free of self-serving bias nor free of blind prejudice towards others who aren't really like 'us').

While this short paper proves nothing it still hints that Magyar is in some fundamental sense not all that grammatically different from Classical Latin, where both express ideas and concepts in a similar manner. Of course there are differences between two such unrelated languages separated by 2000 years, just as there are major differences between related languages of today.

After all, the derived languages from vulgar Latin have all lost the original case 'inflections' except for some vestigial forms used only on Rumanian nouns and adjectives, where the preference seems to be for 'inflecting' the definite article joined to the noun? While there is evidence that Old Magyar (10^th.-11^th. Centuries A.D.) might not have been as heavily suffixing as Modern Magyar is today, (see Gábor Bodroghy's discussion on Historical Linguistics: Old Hungarian).

Magyar - the language and the people who speak it were greatly vilified by such distinguished scientists as Antoine Meillet (1886-1936), one of the most influential of French linguists and Indo-Europeanists around the time of the French destruction of the Magyar kingdom when the Magyar lost 71% of their lands and 60% of their citizens as dictated by the Treaty of Trianon in 1920. In his work "Les Langues dans l'Europe nouvelle" (1st. ed. 1918, 2nd ed. 1928), Meillet presented the Magyar language and nation in a very negative way :

"Hungarian is a very difficult language, full of borrowings, and too deeply influenced
by European languages to be the bearer of an original civilization. Preserved in the past by a dominating oligarchy, it is bound to
disappear in the new world."

These are curious claims for a 'linguist'. (1) Which language is easy to learn? Chinese, Russian? It certainly is not French whose words are often not even pronounced as they are written.  (2) Which language is not full of borrowings? French (Arabic, English,Latin), English (Latin~30%, French~30%,Germanic~25%), Dutch (~30%), Swedish (45%), Japanese (~11%). According to [ua97: p.307], loanwords in Hungarian are held to constitute about 45% of bases in the language and 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%)!  (3) Which languages are bearers of an original civilization? French < vulgar Latin, perhaps? (4) By the way, the Hungarian language was NOT preserved by a 'dominating oligarchy' whose official means of communication was actually LATIN for hundreds of years and then later German and French, NOT Hungarian; it was the common folk who spoke and preserved the Hungarian language for over a thousand years! In reality, the 'dominating oligarchy' included representatives from Slavic, Germanic, Italic, and even Jewish ethnic groups in the Old Kingdom beside those 'oppressive' Magyar. Just check J. Siebmacher's "großes Wappenbuch" of noble family names many of whom were not ethnic Magyar in Old Hungary. Objectivity in Science? Bah! Humbug!

To be fair, Meillet's comments and worldview "... should be seen in the context of the post WWI years, in which not only were the borders of the European states rearranged, following the Paris Peace Treaty, but also in which Western-European intellectuals were making claims about the superiority of their languages and about the necessity of smaller nations to renounce their own native languages. In particular, Meillet, a professor at the Collège de France and a former student of Ferdinand de Saussure, wrote several books in which he argued that "minor" linguistic communities would naturally prefer to use a more advantageous language [namely, French] (Meillet, Les langues du monde) and to put behind them the linguistic semi-anarchy of interwar Europe, favoring a discipline that would impose "the universal civilization of tomorrow" (Meillet, Les langues dans l’Europe nouvelle). [Varga] That theory seems to have failed badly in former French African colonies who are still in turmoil even though they speak that 'civilizing' French language. Nor has it been any better in the past. The French Reign of Terror (la Terreur) was a time of utter barbarity.

At the time Meillet was writing his book the Hungarian poet and novelist Dezső Kosztolányi was formulating ideas about language very different from those of Meillet. In articles published in Hungarian periodicals Kosztolányi expressed views that threw into question some of Meillet's basic tenets. Indeed, in 1930 Kosztolányi penned a response to Meillet's work in which he challenged the Frenchman's conclusions. Meillet, however, ignorant and even disdainful of Hungarian, could hardly "se tenir au courant." Meillet adopted a conventional approach to language. Echoing Locke's faith in the primacy of thought, he contended that "[la langue] fournit à la pensée une forme". Many of the languages of Europe Meillet thought insufficient for this task. Breton, for example, he dismissed as "un outil si grossier, si peu utile qu'aucun Breton sensé ne peut songer à l'employer de préférence." He had similar contempt for Hungarian. Indeed, the Frenchman believed that the entire Finno-Ugric language family "n'a fourni de véritables langues de civilisation." Kosztolányi thought this ranking of languages absurd. He viewed language as an organic structure and rejected the notion that one language could be considered superior or inferior to another. A people's language, he believed, is an embodiment of its past. According to Kosztolányi, language is "a mighty self-contained organism, a product of nature." "From this lofty standpoint", Kosztolányi argued in his response to Meillet, "all languages are equal. [...] There is not, there has never been, there cannot be a barbaric language." "We cannot pass judgement", he believed, "on nature's primeval manifestation." [Cooper]

Meillet's self-serving bigotry is at the opposite end of the spectrum to that of the writer, and linguist Sir John Bowring who waxed poetically about the Magyar language almost a hundred years earlier in the preface to his anthology entitled "Poetry of the Magyars" (1830) in which he wrote that....

"The Magyar language stands afar off and alone. The study of other tongues will be found of exceedingly little use towards its right understanding. It is moulded in a form essentially its own, and its construction and composition may be safely referred to an epoch when most of the living tongues of Europe either had no existence, or no influence on the Hungarian region."

Between these two extremes is it still unreasonable to ask whether the Magyar way of thinking and expression is any different to that of those highly 'civilised' Romans whose language and literature attracts only admiration and praise? After all, we even have quite extraordinary claims that Latin "Trains your mind. Trains your memory. Unraveling a Latin sentence is an excellent exercise in thought, a real intellectual puzzle, and a good introduction to logical thinking. Latin involves a similar process to that used in Euclid's geometric proofs." [sb]

If unraveling a Latin sentence with its 6 case system produces mental giants, imagine the effect of unraveling a Magyar sentence with its much more complicated 16 to 24 case system! In theory, the Magyar verb can have 5070 different forms! Don't believe me? Well, then check out Dr. Tamás Turányi 's effort here! Perhaps this is why the Hungarians (Magyar and non-Magyar) produced so many brilliant mathematicians, scientists and artists per capita not long after rediscovering the beauty and worth of their own language as a defensive reaction against the tide of Slavic, Rumanian, German, and French nationalism in the 19^th. and 20^th. Centuries?! Mais Oui! But, of course!

But seriously, what sweet irony if there is a tenuous grammatical connection, alluded to by [kjd] and [alinei], between the agglutinative languages (Ugric, Turkic etc.) and the so-called inflected languages known as Etruscan and Classical Latin - bearers of an original civilization. LOL.

Selected References

[sb] Barker, Scot, Why Latin?, National Committee for Latin and Greek.

[sh] Hayward, Arthur L., Sparkes, John J.,

The Concise English Dictionary

Omega 1982

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Last updated 22 November 2011