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Interesting Chinese/Hungarian similarity | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7156 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes  20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 81 of 97 02 November 2008 at 7:43pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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The Uigur-Hungarian connection reminds me of the articles by Vambery or Kiszely.
The thing I'm not sure about is who influences whom. Headlines such as "Hungarian folk music traced to the Uigurs" seem more about trying to create sensation and poking holes in the arguments supporting Hungarian kinship with the Khants or Mansis. Was it the Uigurs who influenced the Hungarians (and also influenced the ancient Chinese)? Why make the claim that the Uigurs did it? Why not say the Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Tuvans, Khitans, Manchus or Mongols? Could it be that the Uigurs (or their ancestors) had been influenced by another Central Asiatic people, who in turn also influenced the ancient Hungarians? God forbid, maybe even the ancestors of the Hungarians did the "influencing" I have a suspicion that some enthusiastic Hungarian Turkophiles jumped on the vague nominal similarity between the names "Uigur" and "Onogur" (~ Hungarian) and this attracted Korosi Csoma, Vambery and Kiszely in the first place leading to a quasi-self-fulfilling prophecy among supporters of a strong Hungarian-Uigur connection. Of course there is a relationship between the Hungarians and Uigurs because of language (similar typology and recognizable Hungaro-Turkic isoglosses) and folk music (pentatonic scale which is common throughout Eurasia). However none of these similarities is exclusive to the relationship between the Hungarians and Uigurs. Therefore taking the research further and implying that Hungarians somehow acquired their folk music scales from the ancestors of the Uigurs would be foolish since the similarities in folk music are shared not only between Hungarians and Uigurs, but other Eurasian people too. Bartok's and Kodaly's research concluded that Hungarian folk music showed similarities with folk music of people speaking Finno-Ugric, Turkic, Mongolic and Sinitic languages. That relationship cuts across at least three language families (i.e. Uralic, Altaic and Sino-Tibetan) so trying to nail down Hungarian origins to a dominant element seems problematic. Their musicological research makes me wonder about whether the other Hungarian scholars and their supporters today are truly willing to take a more wide-ranging approach or are still trying to uphold black-and-white world-views on Hungarian ethnogenesis (i.e. extension of the "Ugro-Turkic" war among Hungarian scholars). At the risk of repeating myself, there's a definite link between Hungarians, Central Asiatic and Siberian peoples but determining how exactly it fits seems a lot more intricate than either Hungarian Turkophiles (e.g. Vambery Armin) or Hungarian Uralophiles (e.g. Hajdu Peter) would like for us to believe. I, for one, am just as skeptical of a dominating Turko-Hungarian relationship as I am of a dominating Uralo-Hungarian relationship since both of these positions seem simplistic and only work when trying to draw schematic trees of language families or give abbreviated accounts of Hungarian history. I do agree that "Finno-Ugric peoples" (just like "Turkic peoples") is a misnomer since it should be printed as "Finno-Ugric-speaking" people. However, it doesn't work that way, and as a means of comparison it's common to speak of "Indo-European people", "Dravidian peoples", "Germanic peoples", "Slavonic culture" etc. The lines between ethnic, linguistic and cultural delineation have been blurred for some time already. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| Cisa Super Polyglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6419 days ago 312 posts - 309 votes 2 sounds Speaks: Hungarian*, Slovak, FrenchC1, EnglishC2, Mandarin, SpanishB2, RussianB2, GermanB2, Korean, Czech, Latin Studies: Italian, Cantonese, Japanese, Portuguese, Polish, Hindi, Mongolian, Tibetan, Kazakh, Vietnamese, Modern Hebrew | Message 82 of 97 04 November 2008 at 12:00pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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I tried to follow , honestly, this discussion, but I keep asking myself whether it is already about ethnic, musical or linguistical relationships! It would be really nice to make it clear at last, ´cause it seems to me that people are just talking away between each other and soon it will become the usual quarrel about Hungarian origins- about which we actually know very little compared to that of some other nations. As to languages, the Finno-Ugric version is the official one, while it is obvious that we share much with Turkic languages if we look at loanwords or grammar. I don´t seen the point in mixing in Attila, the Huns or Uyghur music here.
Dear Gül Baba, the Chinese language DOES exist. It is normal, that in such a huge country the local dialect differs regionally. The Beijing dialect happened to become the standard, that´s all. It happens to most languages when they become official ones, that linguists etc. choose a regional dialect to become the pronunciation standard. So what we call today Chinese is Chinese indeed, only the local differences are huge. And I´m sure about not learning a non-existent language. ;) Also nobody supposed that Chinese-Hungarian connection, only made some observations about some Wu words, which is really interesting and may be one of those accidental sinilarities between non-related languages. As to the other languages, nobody supposed they were Chinese languages, only minority languages spoken in that country. So I don´t know what´s the point in your reply. This is all I wanted to say regarding this discussion, I don´t really want engage myself in proving unproved things, guys. Have a nice day, Cisa Edited by Cisa on 04 November 2008 at 12:03pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7156 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 83 of 97 04 November 2008 at 12:58pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
Indeed that is what I had asked earlier when wondering whether Gül Baba was focusing on musical or linguistic similarities or trying to turn the discussion in a different direction Cisa, I think that the problem lies in the fact that studies on the ethnogenesis of any group of people often rely heavily on linguistic evidence. To take an extreme example, no one would ascribe a dominant Anglo-Saxon origin to a native speaker of American English who is black. Yet if one adheres to the well-worn concept of language being the primary marker of ethnicity, then it follows that one could conclude (spuriously) that a black person somehow must have ancestors from the British Isles by virtue of his/her native ability in English. By the same token, the relatively close relationship between Hungarian and Mansi has led to a reconstruction of Hungarian ethnogenesis on either side of the Ural Mountains despite the relative lack of decisive archaeological evidence corroborating this reconstruction. I'm not surprised that Attila, Huns or Uigurs get thrown into this discussion since one could logically posit that the similarities between disparate groups such as Hungarians and Chinese may be attributable to Turko-Mongol intermediation. Yet that's speculation, albeit somewhat plausible speculation. I do think that this discussion is interesting but I admit that it helps to have read some of the literature available on the subject and to be immune to the more sensational claims made by the more vocal supporters of the respective interpretations. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| Cisa Super Polyglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 6419 days ago 312 posts - 309 votes 2 sounds Speaks: Hungarian*, Slovak, FrenchC1, EnglishC2, Mandarin, SpanishB2, RussianB2, GermanB2, Korean, Czech, Latin Studies: Italian, Cantonese, Japanese, Portuguese, Polish, Hindi, Mongolian, Tibetan, Kazakh, Vietnamese, Modern Hebrew | Message 84 of 97 05 November 2008 at 2:41am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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Chung, I totally agree. I really hope this interesting topic won´t become the usual "quarrel of origins", I have seen so many of those already, it would be a pity! ;)
Have a nice day, Cisa 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| Gül Baba Triglot Newbie Hungary erikreadingbooks.blo Joined 6659 days ago 17 posts - 18 votes Speaks: Hungarian*, Romanian, English Studies: Turkish | Message 85 of 97 15 November 2008 at 5:27am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
Kedves Cisa!
Varieties of Chinese
Cantonese
The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy Edited by Gül Baba on 15 November 2008 at 5:41am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| Leonidas Newbie ColombiaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5850 days ago 1 posts - 1 votes Speaks: Spanish* | Message 86 of 97 18 November 2008 at 9:20am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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Chung...what you have failed to notice is that it is impossible to know all the
different barbarian tribes moving throughout eastern and western lands. While some are born, some die. When the nomadic Hunnic tribes arrived in Europe excluded from their Asian homes, under Attila they conquered nearly all eastern Europe placing their capital, it is believed, somewhere near modern day Budapest. Like the former province of the roman empire, (referring to Romania) it is possible that when the Hunnic influence in europe died, their name and memory did not. Hungaria may have inherited many Hunnic features in culture and language, but through several invasions of the later barbarians, may have almost entirely changed... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 7156 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 87 of 97 18 November 2008 at 10:19am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
How do you mean? Of course it's impossible to know the history of the tribes. That's why I posted that Hungarian ethnogenesis is messy and that "solutions" posited by Ugrophiles (i.e. those advocating exclusive or dominant kinship with Khants and Mansis) and Turkophiles (i.e. those advocating exclusive or dominant kinship with Uigurs or other Turkic-speaking people) are equally simplistic. Also notice that I agree with the second part of your post and that discussions on Hungarian ethnogenesis by necessity contain a lot of "maybes" or "may have"s as your own comments show. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| Sima Diglot Newbie United States Joined 6054 days ago 11 posts - 11 votes Speaks: Mandarin, English | Message 88 of 97 21 December 2008 at 9:02am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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I just want to re-focus the discussion to Vlad's orginial point: Hungarian-Chinese similarity.
When such similarities are noticed, we can have at least three explanations: 1) coincident 2) common ancestry 3) exchange In this case, why do so many members incline toward 1) or 2)? Do these aruments sound more linguistic? With the existing link between Hungarian and Chinese in acient time, putting the similarities in a historical context simply makes more sense than pure linguistic argument. Yes. It has been difficult to comb through the vocabulary of the two sets. But we have got new tools and information exchange has never been so powerful. I doubt anyone ever compared Hungarian to Chinese dialects that conserved a large portion of ancient elements. By collecting more examples, we may piece together a big picture. A close example: if you try to understand why a Filipino fisherman and a Peruvian farmer use similar words, you'd better first check whether there was an historical connection. Language is the product of human society. Similarity between two languages is more often the result of people interaction than pure coincident. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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