User:Szaturnfey

Language Project 1 2007. Sep 7.

The language I have chosen for this semester is Hungarian. Though this language is thought to be one of the most difficult of the world’s languages, it should be noted that it is not difficult to learn, merely different from most Western languages.

The Uralian Finno-Ugric Ugric Language One key part of Hungarian being so different from most languages is that it is descended from the remote branch of the Uralic language tree, which is not a part of the Proto-Indo-European tree, which has produced most western languages. To further distinguish, Hungarian developed from the Finno-Ugric branch of Uralic, which also produced Finnish and Lappish, and then branching even further. Few others of these languages remain considering their separation centuries ago. Tree From “Inferring Prehistory…” [] Of course it is still being argued in a few circles whether this is the true origin of Hungarian. Many still believe that Turkish and its ancestors are the true origin of Hungarian. There are many correspondences that connect the two languages like roots among others. However, this view is not considered the official genealogy.

Where? Hungarian is not only spoken in the country of Hungary, but all over Eurasia. Ethnologue.com put the number of Hungarian speakers in 1995 to be at nearly 14 million people worldwide. Approximately 10.5 million people in Hungary speak Hungarian, and another 3.5 million in other countries. Just a few of the countries that boast a sizable population speaking Hungarian include Austria, Israel, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Ukraine, and the United States of America

Language Project 2 2007. Sep 21.

Hungarian suffixes are different from English suffixes in that, the endings are determined by “vowel harmony”. Front: (i, í, ü, ű, e, é ö, ő) Back: (u, ú, o, ó, a, á) The vowels of some suffixes actually take on the front-ness or back-ness of the stems’ vowels. There are three major types of suffixes in Hungarian: 1.	“Non-harmonic” which has only one form that does not change. Ex. –ig ‘until’ 2.	“Harmonic two-form” which has two forms, one being front and one back. Ex. –ban, -ben ‘in’ 3.	“Harmonic three-form” which has three forms, one being the back vowel, one the front unrounded vowel, and the last being the front rounded. Ex. –hoz, -hez, -höz ‘to’ Note: Not all suffixes take on the initial vowel, but just the consonant or final vowel of the suffix is added instead!

Number on Nouns in Hungarian For Hungarian, singular noun stems are not marked. kutya ‘dog’		fa  ‘tree’		paradicsom  ‘tomato’

The plural in Hungarian is created with certain rules which are listed here. The first and second rules seem to be the most productive in creating new plural terms. The remaining rules are less widespread and sometimes only for specific words. A harmonic three-form suffix of –ok, -ek, -ök is used for plural formation with plain stems. rák --- rákok ‘crab ---crabs’ rét --- rétek ‘meadow --- meadows’ töt --- tökök ‘pumpkin --- pumpkins’ A –k is added to the nouns that end with a vowel. olló --- ollók ‘scissor --- scissors’ auto --- autók ‘car --- cars’ fiú --- fiúk ‘boy --- boys’

An –ak or –ek is added to certain “lowering stems” or “stems that cause irregularity in suffix variants”(Törkenczy p.72). ágy --- ágyak ‘bed --- beds’ Certain lowering stems also shorten the final vowel of the actual stem and then add the –ak or –ek. madár --- madarak ‘bird --- birds’

For the plural, stems that end with a short vowel and a consonant, the vowel is deleted and the suffix added. In three words, the final two consonants then switch (pehely ‘fluff’, kehely ‘chalice’, and teher ‘weight’). torony --- tornyok ‘tower --- towers’ pehely --- pelyhek ‘fluff --- fluffs’

Note the next two rules may instead be done in the more general methods in the first two rules!

Thirteen words add a v- to the suffix before attaching to the noun. Of the first 7(ló ‘horse’, fű ‘grass’, nyű ‘maggot’, cső ‘pipe’, műv ‘work of art’, and kő ‘stone’) most shorten their vowels and add v-. lovak ‘horses’ művek ‘works of art’ The next three (hó ‘snow’, szó ‘word’, and tó ‘lake’) change the final -ó to -av before the suffix. szavak ‘words’ The last three words (falu ‘village’, daru ‘crane’, and tetű ‘louse’) changes the final vowel to v- before the suffix. falvak ‘villages’

With certain nouns that also have a possessive suffix, the –ő of the stem may change to –e, and -ó of the stem to –a. ajtaitok ‘doors’ When it comes to sentences with the actual number of the noun, the noun is left in the singular with the number right before it. This is completely different from English, which uses the plural with the number!

Concerning Subject-Verb Agreement in Hungarian:

The subject and verb are always in agreement. If the subject is plural then the verb is also in the plural. Depending on how the verb is conjugated, the noun may or may not take certain endings, depending on which of the 21 cases the noun happens to be in. Basically the conjugal endings of the nouns connect verbs with the nouns.

Én magyar vagyok. s1 ADJ V-being-s1   ‘I am Hungarian.’

Ök magyarok (vannak). p3 ADJ  V-being-p3   ‘They are Hungarian.’

Definite versus Indefinite

In Hungarian, there is the definite conjugation which is a special set of suffixes that are used when the sentence has an object that is definite. This differentiation is not seen in English.

The rules regarding definite and indefinite are as follows: -First person objects are considered indefinite. Ők látnak engem. p3 V-see-p3 ACCPrn-s1   ‘They see me.’

-Second person objects are considered indefinite. Ők látnak téged. P3 V-see-p3  ACCPrn-s2   ‘They see you.’

Note: When the 1st person Singular acts to a 2nd person object, the verb ends with –lak, -lek, -alak, -elek. -Third Person Objects are either indefinite or definite. Definite situations include presence of the definite article (a, az), possessive suffix, proper nouns, presence of noun in the accusative case, third person personal pronoun, reflexive, reciprocal pronouns, demonstrative (azt, ezt), question word ending in “-ik”, or as a clause. Indefinite situations include the presence of the indefinite article (egy), absence of article, lack of a proper noun, absence of possessive suffix, and a question word not of the “-ik” ending.

The indefinite conjugation of the verb is used in sentences with no definite object. For example, the “akar” (want), “szeret” (like/love), “utál” (hate) plus infinitive verb sentences.

Bibliography Abondolo, D.M., Hungarian Inflectional Morphology. Akademiai Kiado, Budapest 1988.

Balazs, Geza, The Story of Hungarian: A Guide to the Language. Corvina Books, Ltd., Budapest, 2000.

Törkenczy, Miklós, Hungarian: Verbs and Essentials of Grammar. Passport Books; NTC/ Contemporary Publishing Group, Lincolnwood (Chicago), 1997.