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Is Hungarian easy for a Finnish speaker? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6950 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes  20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 9 of 22 04 February 2014 at 5:56pm | IP Logged | ||
Practically speaking, there's no such language. However if you really stretch your imagination and have the patience to look for common features, maybe Erzya (or Moksha) could act as a limited bridge. Like Hungarian but unlike Finnish, Erzya has indefinite and definite conjugation and based on a survey of 100 "basic words", 34 out of the stock of 100 basic words in Finnish have cognates in Erzya compared to 27 out of those 100 Finnish words with Hungarian cognates. On the other hand, the results of that survey suggest that Mari (Meadow Mari?) has the most reflexes of lexical roots from Proto-Uralic implying that it contains the most words that also have cognates in Finnish and Hungarian. See also the Swadesh list for Finno-Ugric Languages to get a short lexical comparison. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Hungringo Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 3782 days ago 168 posts - 329 votes Speaks: Hungarian*, English, Spanish Studies: French | Message 10 of 22 04 February 2014 at 6:45pm | IP Logged | ||
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In my opinion Hungarian is not a purebred Finno-Ugric language in the same way as English isn't pure Germanic rather a Romance-Germanic mongrel. Although Hungarian has Finno-Ugric roots just like English has its Germanic Anglo-Saxon roots, Hungarians - unlike our Finnish and Estonian cousins - were so heavily exposed to Turkic and Caucasian languages that it had similar impact on the Hungarian language that Norman-French had on English. English has some transparency with Romance and Germanic languages and my personal experience shows that Hungarian has more transparency with Turkish than with Finnish.
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| YnEoS Senior Member United States Joined 4048 days ago 472 posts - 893 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Russian, Cantonese, Japanese, French, Hungarian, Czech, Swedish, Mandarin, Italian, Spanish | Message 11 of 22 04 February 2014 at 7:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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Which Caucasian languages would have the most transparency with Hungarian?
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| Hungringo Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 3782 days ago 168 posts - 329 votes Speaks: Hungarian*, English, Spanish Studies: French | Message 12 of 22 04 February 2014 at 7:38pm | IP Logged | ||
I don't think we could find any today. But before Hungarian tribes settled in the Carpathian basin they lived along Khazars, and then and also in the following centuries Chechen, Ossetian and many already disappeared Caucasian groups played a role in Hungarian ethnogenesis. Another very interesting question is the language of the Eurasian Avars (not the Caucasian Avars) who lived in the Carpathian basin before the arrival of the Hungarians. It is a very controversial topic, but it is very likely that the remaining Avars also influenced Hungarian language. Some historians believe Avars spoke a Turkic language, but its much more a theory than a proven fact. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| ScottScheule Diglot Senior Member United States scheule.blogspot.com Joined 5022 days ago 645 posts - 1176 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Latin, Hungarian, Biblical Hebrew, Old English, Russian, Swedish, German, Italian, French | Message 13 of 22 04 February 2014 at 7:42pm | IP Logged | ||
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Origin of word roots in Hungarian
Uncertain 30% Uralic 21% Slavic 20% German 11% Turkic 9.5% Latin and Greek 6% Romance 2.5% Other known 1% http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_language#Lexicon 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| prz_ Tetraglot Senior Member Poland last.fm/user/prz_rul Joined 4653 days ago 890 posts - 1190 votes Speaks: Polish*, English, Bulgarian, Croatian Studies: Slovenian, Macedonian, Persian, Russian, Turkish, Ukrainian, Dutch, Swedish, German, Italian, Armenian, Kurdish | Message 14 of 22 04 February 2014 at 7:55pm | IP Logged | ||
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Don't forget about Slavic languages!
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| Hungringo Triglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 3782 days ago 168 posts - 329 votes Speaks: Hungarian*, English, Spanish Studies: French | Message 15 of 22 04 February 2014 at 7:59pm | IP Logged | ||
Yeah, we basically don't know where one third of our words came from. The 21% of Uralic can be a bit misleading when you want to judge transparency. The Uralic vocabulary split off the rest of Uralic languages such a long time ago that this part of the vocabulary went through the biggest changes. In theory Finnish "pota" and Hungarian "fazék" have the same root in proto-Uralic, but this wouldn't help the average language learner. More recent loan words from Turkic and Slavic languages are more easily recognisable. "Apple" in Hungarian is "alma" in Turkish "elma". "Servant" in Hungarian is "szolga" in Croatian "sluga". Edited by Hungringo on 04 February 2014 at 8:27pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Chung Diglot Senior Member Joined 6950 days ago 4228 posts - 8259 votes 20 sounds Speaks: English*, French Studies: Polish, Slovak, Uzbek, Turkish, Korean, Finnish | Message 16 of 22 04 February 2014 at 8:09pm | IP Logged | ||
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Nitpicking here but it's pata and elma in Finnish and Turkish respectively. There is alma in Azeri, Kazakh and Tatar among others and so that's all still close enough
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