Stephen Sisa : The Spirit of Hungary

In this book the words "Magyars" and "Hungarians" are used interchangeably. These words have different roots, but mean the same thing. How did each word evolve?

According to the traditional theory, contested by some Hungarian linguists, the name "Magyar" derives from the Ugric "Mansi" or "Magy" with the addition of the Turkish "eri" forming "Magyeri," which became the name of the largest tribe.

Western historians and chronicles, however, have given the Magyars different names: Hungarus in Latin, Unbarn in German, Hongrois in French, Ungherese in Italian, Ungroi in Greek and finally, Hungarians in English. All these names are derived from the name Hun-Ogur or Onogur used since the fifth century as a reminder of the Magyars' long association with Turkic-Onogur-Hun peoples. Onogur means "ten tribes"; thus the word Hungarian (onogur-ungur-ungar). An examination of Hungarian racial elements shows a composite people. The main components are Turanoid (Turkic-Onogur), East Baltic (Finno-Ugric) with traces of Caucasian, Anatolian, Dinarian, Mediterranean and Alpine racial types.

A Peculiar Language

The Hungarian language is totally different in vocabulary and grammar from the Teutonic, Latin, Slav, or Celtic languages. The construction and the bulk of the Magyar language is Finno-Ugric, enriched with a Ural-Altaic-Turkic vocabulary and about 600 Slavic loan words picked up through frequent contacts with the Slavs during history.

Surprisingly, among the 6000 or so languages spoken in the world today, Hungarian is thirtieth in the number of people who speak it, with approximately 16 million people speaking Hungarian as their mother tongue in various countries. Of these, 10,700,000 live in Hungary itself and two to three million (there is a divergence between Hungarian estimates and Rumanian statistics) in Transylvania and adjacent territories taken over by Rumania after the dismemberment of historic Hungary in the Trianon Peace Treaty of 1920. About 650,000 live in Slovakia, 600,000 in Yugoslavia, and approximately 180,000 in Carpatho-Ruthenia, which was annexed by the Soviet Union after World War II. The remaining Hungarians live dispersed in other countries of the free world. All this means that more than one third of the Magyar nation lives outside the mother country, a fate somewhat similar to that of the Jews.

The millions of Hungarians living outside present day Hungary are diminishing in numbers due to forced assimilation, a practice which borders on "cultural ethnocide" in Rumania and recently also in Slovakia. This loss is aggravated by the voluntary assimilation of those Hungarians who have emigrated to other lands.

The Magyars represent an island in Europe, not even distantly related to any of their neighbors or, for that matter, to any European people except the Finns from whom they separated thousands of years ago. There is only one community in the world where Finns and Hungarians still live side by side. It is, interestingly, in the United States, in Fairfield, Ohio (population 4500), where a Finnish-Hungarian settlement thrives, representing one of the rarest coincidences in the two peoples' history.

Vocabulary studies among Hungarians show that the average 14 year-old can use six or seven thousand Hungarian words. János Arany, one of the greatest Hungarian poets in the 19th century, used 25,000 words in his poems and epics, but it was Mór Jókai, a novelist of international fame, who is said to have possessed and used a vocabulary of over 50,000 words. Jókai even compiled a private dictionary of words used by infants and children to render his narratives more true to life. When he wrote the play Levente, about a descendant of Árpád, he painstakingly created hundreds of new words to imitate the ancient idioms of the age

The seven volume Hungarian Dictionary of Definitions published in the 1960's contains 60,000 entries, but that number is greatly increased to between 800,000 and 1,000,000 when all Hungarian dialects, including the eight major ones, are counted.

And now some peculiarities about the language itself:

It is an agglutinative tongue, the root of words being almost invariably formed by their first syllables. In Aryan languages the root is, as it were, subterranean, and frequently hard to lay bare. In Hungarian the root is always apparent. The vowels have a distinct musical value, and do not resemble the musically indeterminable vowels of English or German. Consonants are never unduly accumulated, as in Czech or Polish.

In the Hungarian language, the distribution of vowels and consonants is such that on the average 100 vowels occur for every 142 consonants. This is exactly the same proportion as in French.

In a Hungarian word the "high vowels" do not mix with the "deep vowels"

High vowels: e,é,i,í,ö,,ü, (tenger, gyönyör)

Deep vowels: a,á,o,ó,u,ú (búza, koszorú)

Since the language is agglutinative, language parts are "glued" to the main stem so that the preposition becomes a suffix, e.g. ház: house; házban: in the house.

Hungarian has no gender, nor any word to express the idea "to have" as an auxiliary verb. Pronounced, it is perfectly phonetic'.

The language possesses one peculiarity unknown in most other languages: the power of expressing a complete sentence (subject, verb. object) with a single verbal conjugation. For example: szeretlek (I love you); látom (I see him, her or it); verem (I strike him, her or it). One verb can also express a sentence with an indefinite object: szeretek, látok, verek which mean simply "I love," "I see," "I strike." This defining of verbal action gives the language great exactness of meaning coupled with extraordinary conciseness, making an objective pronoun with the verb unnecessary. In the illustration of this quality note below,. how concise the poem in its original Hungarian is, as compared to its English language translation.

Október 23 The 23rd of October

Rian a föld, a falak dlnek The earth cries out in pain, the walls are falling

Kék harsonákkal zeng az ég. Blue trumpets to the sky with triumph smite

S barlangjából a dohos knek And from the dank stones of the dungeon crawling

Az ember újra fényre lép. Man issues forth again and walks in light.

Fonnyadt testünket záporozza, Our withered bodies are a-flood with feeling.

Sápadt arcunkra hull a nap. Upon our faded cheeks the sunlight gleams.

Szédülten, szinte tántorogva Our steps are staggering, nay, almost reeling,

Szabadság, szívjuk sugarad. Our souls are bright with freedom and its dreams.

Sötétbl tárul ki a szívünk. Our hearts, out of the dark, throw wide their portals,

Bibor virág a föld felett. A purple flower from the earth upsoars.

A szolgaságból fényt derítünk, Out of our slavery, we show light to mortals,

Fegyver nélkül is gyztesek. Without a weapon, we are conquerors.

Tollas Tibor Translated by Watson Kirkeonnel

.

In conclusion, here is a little "beauty contest" about the Magyar language:

Dezs Kosztolányi. a famous Hungarian poet, picked what he thought to be the ten most beautiful words in Hungarian:

Láng (flame), gyöngy (pearl), anya (mother), sz (autumn), szz (virgin). kard (sword). csók (kiss), vér (blood), szív (heart), sír (grave).

Of course, this list mirrors one individual's taste and another writer might put entirely different words among the top ten. Indeed, two words that have been put forward as candidates for the single most beautiful word in Hungarian are not even on Kosztolányi's list: csillag (star). and pillangó (butterfly). Our vote goes to the latter, because while both are beautiful, it can be pronounced phonetically by foreigners as well.

Appreciation of the Hungarian language is not limited to Hungarians, however.

R. Nisbet Bain, a savant with the British Museum who was extraordinarily proficient in languages, once described a Magyar sentence as "a miracle of agglutinative ingenuity."

Sir John Browning who translated many Hungarian poems into English, found that "the structure of this language originated in an age when most European languages did not even exist." and said, "This language is the oldest and most brilliant monument of national spirit and intellectual independence."

Mezzofanti, who spoke one hundred languages and was perhaps the greatest linguistic genius of all time, held that "next to Italian and Greek, Hungarian is the most melodious tongue in the world with utmost adaptability for poetry."

Ebersberg, a famous Austrian linguist, stated that "the construction of the Hungarian language is as if it had been created by a task force of linguists striving for conciseness, regularity, harmony and clarity."

Last, but not least, one of the world's greatest philologists, Jakob Ludwig Karl Grimm, recommended Hungarian as the ideal universal language.

To those who happen to know Hungarian. congratulations!

Stephen Sisa : The Spirit of Hungary