Learning Hungarian

To learn Hungarian puts you in the company of 13 million speakers. 10 million live within the country of Hungary while 2.5 million live in surrounding countries. This is largely the product of the Treaty of Trianon which reduced Hungary’s borders immensely in 1920 creating Hungarian speaking communities in Romania, Slovakia, Serbia and Ukraine. Hungarians, who call themselves the Magyars, are proud of their culture and heritage. Studying Hungarian is studying an incredibly unique and rich language.


The origins and history of Hungarian are somewhat contested though most authorities believe that Hungarian began as a distinct language in 1000 BCE when the ancestral tribe of Hungary broke apart from similar groups and settled the area west of the Ural Mountains with nomadic sheep and cattle raising. From 400 BCE to 896 AD the Hungarian language came under heavy influence from the nearby Turkish Empire. Our current word “Hungarian” derives from the Turkish word “onugor” meaning ten arrows and significant of a tribal alliance they had formed.


Study Hungarian Abroad
In 896 Hungarians conquered what is present-day Hungary and its surrounding areas. While they lived as raiders for some time, by 1000 the Christian Kingdom of Hungary was created led by Stephen the Ist. This lead to the introduction of Latin as the country’s official language and the adaptation of Hungarian to the Latin alphabet. Gradually, over the next 500 years, Hungarian in this form became used more and more prominently. In 1533 the first Hungarian book was published, a translation of the letter of Saint Paul. During the 18th century, in an effort to keep the language current with science and literature, there was a major reform of Hungarian. This lead to the creation of over ten thousand words and by 1844 Hungarian became the country’s official language.


The Hungarian Language

Hungarian is an agglutinative language, meaning that base words can be built upon with various affixes to change and direct the words meaning. This can give rise to some very long words such as “legeslegmegszentségteleníttethetetlenebbjeitekként.” With the base word “szent” meaning holy, this enormous addition of affixes makes the word translate to “like those of you that are the very least possible to get desecrated.” While words never get this long in practice it demonstrates how they may be constructed in Hungarian.


In descriptions such as places, time or even a person’s name, Hungarian orders the words from most generic to most specific. For example, in Hungarian, last names come first followed by a middle name and then, finally the personal name.


Hungarians from the village of Kocs invented the horse-drawn coach, we get the word from the Hungarian “kocsi.” As well, the English term itsy-bitsy comes from “ici-pici” which means tiny.