Finnish and Hungarian

thomasS · Post by **thomasS** » Tue Mar 26, 2013 4:19 pm

Hello there,

I speak some Hungarian but no Finnish at all.. I have learnt to know that the two languages are related, but my question is if the relationship only deals with grammar or are there quite some words that are similar as well. If anyone has any clue I would love to get some information!

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Deni85 · Post by **Deni85** » Tue Mar 26, 2013 6:32 pm

My Hungarian friend who was starting her Finnish course used to say that if Finnish and Hungarian belong to the same family of language, then Finnish must be that kind of relative that you never heard of.

She said some words sound similar but have a different meaning. One example is in Hungarian dad is "apu" and one day her 3 years old daughter was screaming for her dad on a shopping mall apu, apu, apu, apu and people start to stare at her. When you say it fast in Finnish sounds the same as "apua" = help

One advice, I know you have a word that Hungarians use to say a lot, it sounds the same as perse in Finnish. So, watch out your language when you talk here in Finland

AldenG · Post by **AldenG** » Tue Mar 26, 2013 6:36 pm

Once heard a Hungarian on a course say he recognized the word katkelma.

Of course whether it meant the same thing to him is a different question.

I think I can guess more or less what hu.Wiktionary is saying about it:

katkelma

Ez a lap jelenleg nem tartalmaz szöveget. Rákereshetsz erre a címszóra, megtekintheted a kapcsolódó naplókat, vagy szerkesztheted a lapot .

Something about "This definition was deleted by the Soviets. Put on a teapot while I find somebody to write a new one for you."

Pursuivant · Post by **Pursuivant** » Tue Mar 26, 2013 6:40 pm

I think some linguists invented the languages being related as a joke when they were drunk. But then some Hungarian linguist in the 17th century found that the Sami language had some resemblances and the Finns started looking to Samoyeds in the 19th century. So yes, apparently there is some relation, but its only evident to linguists - when they are drunk.

Sami-Is-Boss · Post by **Sami-Is-Boss** » Tue Mar 26, 2013 7:27 pm

Pursuivant wrote:I think some linguists invented the languages being related as a joke when they were drunk. But then some Hungarian linguist in the 17th century found that the Sami language had some resemblances and the Finns started looking to Samoyeds in the 19th century. So yes, apparently there is some relation, but its only evident to linguists - when they are drunk.

It took a linguist a long time to come up with a sentence that was apparently mutually intelligible in Finnish and Hungarian (and Estonian, for the hell of it) - Elav kala ujub vee all (Estonian). Elävä kala ui veden alla (Finnish). Eleven hal úszkál a víz alatt (Hungarian). Reckon you'd have got that from the Hungarian?

I found this example sentence from the end of what is a very good article about the Finno-Ugric languages in Russia from the Economist - http://www.economist.com/node/5323735.

Rob A. · Post by **Rob A.** » Tue Mar 26, 2013 9:58 pm

Sami-Is-Boss wrote:
Pursuivant wrote:I think some linguists invented the languages being related as a joke when they were drunk. But then some Hungarian linguist in the 17th century found that the Sami language had some resemblances and the Finns started looking to Samoyeds in the 19th century. So yes, apparently there is some relation, but its only evident to linguists - when they are drunk.
It took a linguist a long time to come up with a sentence that was apparently mutually intelligible in Finnish and Hungarian (and Estonian, for the hell of it) - Elav kala ujub vee all (Estonian). Elävä kala ui veden alla (Finnish). Eleven hal úszkál a víz alatt (Hungarian). Reckon you'd have got that from the Hungarian?

I found this example sentence from the end of what is a very good article about the Finno-Ugric languages in Russia from the Economist - http://www.economist.com/node/5323735.

Thanks for the link....and your example above covered the two words I knew previously to be similar in Hungarian ..."hal" and "viz".... I checked out a few others ....and they all tend to be fairly basic, "old" type words....here are a few examples....."vaj" and voi ...."menni" and mennä... and most interesting, I think... the words, "méz" and mesi....which are related to the English word, "mead"....all suggesting something very "ancient" I suppose....

Apparently modern Finnish and Hungarian are "separated" by about 4,500 years..... a long time for linguistic drift to occur....but I think the basic foundations are similar and for really observant people the connections seem obvious.

I mentioned in some previous post, which I can't find now, about recently hearing an old man speaking a familiar sounding, yet totally incomprehensible language.... it turned out to be Hungarian....

Sami-Is-Boss · Post by **Sami-Is-Boss** » Wed Mar 27, 2013 12:44 am

Mesi is maybe a bad example as there are similar words in Indo-European languages ('honey' is myod in Russian and miel in French, for example), but you're right, it seems a lot of the similarities are really basic or 'old'/heritage words. I remember reading somewhere (might even be that article, my computer's too slow to load it up again) that of all the similar words still around in the Finno-Ugric languages, about half of them are to do with reindeer

Rob A. · Post by **Rob A.** » Wed Mar 27, 2013 1:31 am

Yeah....though it seems you really have to be open-minded and rather circumspect when comparing words between languages...at some point you have to recognize when you're beyond your depth....

I checked out the Hungarian word for "house"....ház ....Well, the first impression was this must have been borrowed from a Germanic language...you know...Haus....not that I was comfortable with this idea..."house" being such a basic human word...

But, naturally....

, it's related to similar Finnish and Estonian words....koti and kodu.... I guess a Finno-Ugric linguist will know that "h" and "k" sounds are signs of similar word origins in these languages... [Edit: Oh..and I think it is fairly well known that "s", "t" and "d" have some sort of relationship with each other.]

And my idea with mesi was that it will be such an ancient word....in all languages I would think, that it probably suggests some equally ancient language connections...whether through borrowing, or some thing more fundamental....

Rosamunda · Post by **Rosamunda** » Wed Mar 27, 2013 10:21 am

As the OP states in the beginning of the thread the similarities are prosodic, syntactic and grammatical rather than lexical. Learning Hungarian (recreationally in Budapest for 2 years) did prepare me in some ways for the impending chore of learning Finnish, though I think Hungarian grammar is actually more challenging than Finnish grammar. For example, verb inflections differ depending whether the verb is followed by a direct or an indirect object (if I remember correctly...). In Finnish, verb inflections only depend on the subject (if I remember correctly

).
The languages are similar in that they are both orthographically simple due to the correlation between the letters and the phonemes (so, easy to read/spell) and this has often been cited as an explanation for Hungarian students being so strong in maths and science (they don't spend so long learning to read). As the simplicity of the Finnish language explains partially why Finnish students achieve high levels of fluency in school.

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