|
 |
Turkish , Finnish , Hungarian | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| albysky Triglot Senior Member Italy lang-8.com/1108796Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 4387 days ago 287 posts - 393 votes  Speaks: Italian*, English, German | Message 1 of 6 01 October 2014 at 1:35pm | IP Logged | ||
|
What is the relationship between these three languages , is there any degree of mutual intellegibilty
between them ? Edited by albysky on 01 October 2014 at 1:37pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cabaire Senior Member Germany Joined 5598 days ago 725 posts - 1352 votes | Message 2 of 6 01 October 2014 at 1:40pm | IP Logged | ||
|
My Finnish teacher said, there are only some words about hunting and fishing, which were similar in Hungarian, so I would say no, although Finnish and Hungarian are genetically related. But for example French and Hindi is too, so that does not mean much.
So try to discuss your latest experiences in the wilderness... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7155 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 3 of 6 01 October 2014 at 3:06pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Cabaire has neatly dealt with the connection between Finnish and Hungarian.
In general all three languages apply often agglutination to make morphological distinctions and vowel harmony, although the details of their application vary from one language to the next. Among Estonian, Finnish and Hungarian, the Estonian philologist Mall Hellam gathered that the only sentence that would most likely be mutually intelligible for all three languages is "The living fish swims under the water." or Estonian: Elav kala ujub vee all. Finnish: Elävä kala ui veden alla. Hungarian: Eleven hal úszkál a víz alatt. However it would take a very geeky Hungarian to understand these contrived Estonian and Finnish sentences, and the same goes for the Estonian and Finn when facing the contrived Hungarian sentence. Mutual intelligibility between Finnish and Hungarian is near zero. A contrived example that I often see posited by Hungarian Turkophiles or Pan-Turkicists keen on emphasizing a Hungarian-Turkic connection is "There are many little apples in my pocket." or Hungarian: Zsebemben sok kicsi alma van. Turkish: Cebimde çok küçük elma var. In general, the presence of Turkic words in Hungarian is explained by extensive borrowing from Chuvash (a Turkic language spoken just west of the Ural Mountains) and later from Ottoman Turkish because of the Turkish occupation of southeastern Europe. Note though that Hungarian van is unrelated to Turkish var although the latter is linked to Hungarian barom meaning "livestock" with the latter being a derivation of a loanword from Turkic. It is possible to state that Finnish and Hungarian are distantly related to Turkish once we follow the theories of the Nostrastic school of comparative linguistics or Joseph Greenberg, however these represent a minority interpretation among linguists. I admit that I am sympathetic to their efforts and have gradually come to perceive the splitter attitude in mainstream comparative Uralic linguistics (i.e. Uralic languages are unrelated to other languages) as bordering arrogance. See also the following: Finnish-Hungarian etymologies The Udmurtian code: saving Finno-Ugric in Russia Is it really true that Finno-Ugric and Turkic are NOT related? Suomi-Türkish common words 9 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| robarb Nonaglot Senior Member United States languagenpluson Joined 5058 days ago 361 posts - 921 votes Speaks: Portuguese, English*, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, French Studies: Mandarin, Danish, Russian, Norwegian, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Greek, Latin, Nepali, Modern Hebrew | Message 4 of 6 01 October 2014 at 8:14pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Contriving sentences is always good fun. When the languages are closely related, you can do even better:
English: My hand is in warm water. Afrikaans: My hand is in warm water.
Of course, even if Nostratic is correct, most of the surface similarity between Turkic and Uralic would still be due to areal features and loanwords. The hypothesized Proto-Nostratic is far enough back that it would be expected to leave a very faint trace indeed. In fact, the similarities due to areal features and loanwords are one main reason Nostratic is hard to demonstrate. Indo-European is well known to be more similar to Uralic than would be expected by pure chance, but they're thought to have had significant contact with each other several thousand years ago. Genetic relation and contact leave different patterns of similarities, but when it was that long ago it's very hard to piece apart. The splitting argument is really just that we can't show with confidence which families to group in which way, not that they actually have independent origins that trace all the way back tens of thousands of years. Take the Amerindian languages, for example. There are a couple big standard language families, but then a massive number of small families/isolates. Greenberg grouped these into a few macro-families. This must be correct at some level, as it doesn't seem plausible that so many independent languages came into the Americas with the initial migration- many of them must have split after the Americas were populated. But the big groupings might still be speculative, and the true relationships could be very different yet without all being split. In the example sentence above, vee/veden/víz "water" comes from proto-Uralic *vete, which might be a cognate with Proto-Indo-European *wodr. Or it might be a loanword, or it might be a coincidence. I wonder if proto- Uralic and Proto-Indo-European (and Proto-Turkic or Proto-Altaic) speakers could've had this discussion, and contrived sentences that were sort of mutually intelligible! Edited by robarb on 01 October 2014 at 8:20pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cabaire Senior Member Germany Joined 5598 days ago 725 posts - 1352 votes | Message 5 of 6 01 October 2014 at 11:59pm | IP Logged | ||
|
The finnish-ugric family has even become a topic of political debate in Hungary. The political right wing try to negate the relationship with Finnish (who wants ancestors living in the forests and doing some fishing) and want to substitute it with more glorious Hun-Scythians (warriors on horses are better for your ego). And all this a complot of the evil Habsburgs...
1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7155 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 6 of 6 02 October 2014 at 12:38am | IP Logged | ||
|
Yeah, it's been like this for some time among Hungarian nationalists. Jobbik's stance is perpetuating something happening since the 19th century if not earlier.
The problem that I see in Hungary and much of the rest of Eastern Europe is how language is held to be a reliable marker of ethnicity. Because Hungarian is classified as an Uralic language, then Hungarians are to be considered as biological kin of Finns, Estonians, Saami, Mordvins et al. Following this path leads to that warped thinking that at least ancient Hungarians had a lot in common with hunter gatherers who eke a living in the swamps and tundra of western Siberia. To me it'd be about as silly as making a big deal that the Icelanders and Gypsies are related because their respective native languages are classified as Indo-European. It seems to elude both Hungarian Uralicists and plain ol' Hungarian nationalists that one's native language is a poor indicator of one's ethnic/tribal identity. Who's to say that language shift didn't happen? Many Hungarians of today trace their origin to native speakers of languages other than Uralic ones. 1 person has voted this message useful |
If you wish to post a reply to this topic you must first login. If you are not already registered you must first register
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
