# Finnish and Hungarian: Mutual intelligibility



## COF

Are the two languages mutually intelligible? I've looked at example texts of both languages and although they're both clearly related, I don't think to 2 can understand eachother.


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## Lillita

Well, I am Hungarian and I have to confess that I do not understand anything in Finnish!


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## COF

I thought that was the case . It was just someone who'd been to Hungary several times told me otherwise. Although he speaks neither of those 2 languages.


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## Lillita

The grammar of the two languages might be similar (both of them use suffixes, for example). I have never studied Finnish, so I cannot go into details about similarities and differences. Maybe Hungarian and Finnish sound familiar to a foreigner's ears... I don't know, I have never heard anyone speaking in Finnish. But now I am very curious!!


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## Hakro

I've been in Hungary just once, about 20 years ago, and I found even the sound of the language as strange as any other foreign language. 

There are only a dozen of Hungarian and Finnish words that have similarities: hand (kéz - käsi), blood (vér - veri) and other basic words that are very old.

 The similarities in grammar might make it easier to understand the sturcture of Hungarian language, I mean easier than for other Europeans, but still it's very hard for us to learn, much harder than Estonian, for example.


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## Setwale_Charm

The interesting thing about Hungarian, I found, was that they raise their intonation towards the end of the sentence, even if it`s not a question. Very few languages have this, I believe. 
 But, otherwise, I wouldn`t say, I found anything so odd about the sound of Hungarian.
 And, no, sure, there is not more mutual intelligibility between those two than between Russian and Hindi, although both are Indo-European.

 P.S. Hakro!! You Finns never study Estonian anyway! So what is there to bother about???


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## Lillita

Setwale_Charm said:


> The interesting thing about Hungarian, I found, was that they raise their intonation towards the end of the sentence, even if it`s not a question. Very few languages have this, I believe.


 
It is very interesting... The first thing that poor little school children have to learn when they get into school at the age of 6 or 7 is that they must not raise the intonation towards the end of the sentence. Sometimes not even in the case of questions! For example,
_*Mennyi az idő?* (What's the time?)_
_*Jól aludtál?* (Did you sleep well?)_
_*Hány éves vagy?* (How old are you?)_
_*Hogy hívnak?* (What's your name?)_​Well, it seems that by the end of school, we forget this simple rule about not raising the intonation and we speak as if we had never heard of it!  
Of course, this rule can change when you want to give emotion to what you are saying...


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## vince

They shouldn't be too related, since Magyar is part of the Ugric family while Finnish is part of the Finno-Permic family. The Sami languages are actually in the latter family, and since there isn't much intelligibility between them and Finnish, there's probably next to nothing between Finnish and Magyar. Though I heard there is a small amount of intelligibility between Finnish and Estonian. (is that true?)


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## Hakro

Setwale_Charm said:


> P.S. Hakro!! You Finns never study Estonian anyway! So what is there to bother about???


Sooner or later we have to, unless we use English. 

During the Soviet time the Estonians learned Finnish watching the Finnish TV but nowadays they aren't interested anymore. The middle-aged Estonians speak fluently Finnish but the young generation doesn't.


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## Hakro

vince said:


> They shouldn't be too related, since Magyar is part of the Ugric family while Finnish is part of the Finno-Permic family. The Sami languages are actually in the latter family, and since there isn't much intelligibility between them and Finnish, there's probably next to nothing between Finnish and Magyar. Though I heard there is a small amount of intelligibility between Finnish and Estonian. (is that true?)


You're right Vince. 

I'd say that Finnish and Estonian are farther apart than let's say Swedish and Danish.


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## Etcetera

I don't see much similarity between Finnish and Hungarian. 
But the similarity between Finnish and Estonian is remarkable. When I look at a text in Estonian, I can understand an amount of words and some grammatical and syntactic constructions. 
A colleague of mine is half-Estonian, and she speaks Estonian well. She says that Finnish sounds to her very much like Estonian.


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## Jayjay

When I started studying linguistics we learned that both are in the Finno-Ugric family - the only two members, I might add - and that linguists have an on-going debate whether they are related or not. I've heard mostly for-arguments. 
But intelligibility does not necessarily have anything to do with the relationship between two languages. An example: Swedish and Danish (mentioned earlier). Linguists place these two languages on the same sub-chain, whereas Norwegian is further apart, but I speak Danish and understand Norwegian much better than Swedish (I have a personal theory that it has something to do with the development/expansion of vocabulary, but that is not proven...). When the crown prince of Norway got married I had no problems following the ceremony, but if you're from southern Sweden, me might be better off speaking English!


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## chung

To me, Finnish and Hungarian are as intelligible to each other as Farsi and Hindi are. Of course, if one knows either Finnish or Hungarian, then one will have a certain advantage over speakers of non-Uralic or non-Altaic languages in trying to learn the other language.

Concepts such as basic vowel harmony, agglutination and postpositions wouldn't be too tricky. What could throw off Finnish learners of Hungarian are the Hungarian characteristics of definite and indefinite conjugation and perhaps the relatively elaborate vowel harmony compared to Finnish. What could throw off Hungarian learners of Finnish is consonant gradation and the relatively elaborate system of Finnish tenses.


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## Encolpius

Although I cannot understand Finish, when I hear Finnish I feel it is close to my native language. The same about Turkish. When I hear Russian, Chinese, Greek they do not evoke any feeling, they sound strange, distant. I don't know about other Hungarians but both Finnish and Turkish sound rather funny to me. I wonder if Finns or Turks feel the same about Hungarian.


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## Orreaga

I will go further and add that there is no language which is mutually intelligible with Hungarian. At least Finnish does share enough in common with Estonian for there to be a certain degree of mutual intelligibility.  Two languages spoken in western Siberia, Khanty and Mansi, have more in common with Hungarian than Finnish does, but still they are not mutually intelligible with Hungarian.

The only thing that reminds me of Hungarian when I hear Finnish or Estonian is the presence of short and long consonants and vowels.


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## Rallino

Encolpius said:


> Although I cannot understand Finish, when I hear Finnish I feel it is close to my native language. The same about Turkish. When I hear Russian, Chinese, Greek they do not evoke any feeling, they sound strange, distant. I don't know about other Hungarians but both Finnish and Turkish sound rather funny to me. I wonder if Finns or Turks feel the same about Hungarian.



Yes! 

At least Hungarian! -I know too little about Finnish.

I have a Hungarian friend who speaks a decent Turkish, and I studied a bit Hungarian with her. The difficulty in Hungarian is that you guys have a vowel harmony, like we do; but there are dozens of words that are irregular!

I was like: "Why on earth do you have a harmony if you're not going to use it!" 

Anyways, what I find funny about Hungarian is the "a" sound. In Turkish we have the sounds "o" and "á" of Hungarian; no 'a'.  

There was a youtube video where a Hungarian woman was teaching Turkish in an institute, she was saying: 
*onohtor* _(anahtar)_
*çonto *_(çanta)

_But overall I think Hungarian is an awesome language, I'd give anything to learn it well.. =)


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## Encolpius

Oh, do we really have so many irregularities in vowel harmony, I did not know that. Does Turkish have no irregularities or not so many? I know only the basics about Turkish. 

The Hungarian a is funny even for me, once an Estonian friend of mine spoke Estonian and I must laugh because of the Estonian-Hungarian a, which are the same. But that strange a has some Dutch dialect as well and I find it funny, too.


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## Rallino

Nah we have irregularities too, though fewer than in Hungarian.=)


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## nightwica

A Hungarian doesn't understand Finnish and neither vica versa, and maybe they don't find their languages just by hearing similar. But I'm sure a foreigner would find these two similar - because of the often usage of vowels


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## Angelo di fuoco

Jayjay said:


> When I started studying linguistics we learned that both are in the Finno-Ugric family - *the only two members, I might add* - and that linguists have an on-going debate whether they are related or not. I've heard mostly for-arguments.



You might not: there are many more, like Estonian and a number of lesser-known (and surely lesser-spoken) Finno-Ugric languages in Russia.



Jayjay said:


> But intelligibility does not necessarily have anything to do with the relationship between two languages. An example: Swedish and Danish (mentioned earlier). Linguists place these two languages on the same sub-chain, whereas Norwegian is further apart, but I speak Danish and understand Norwegian much better than Swedish (I have a personal theory that it has something to do with the development/expansion of vocabulary, but that is not proven...). When the crown prince of Norway got married I had no problems following the ceremony, but if you're from southern Sweden, me might be better off speaking English!



I think the good intercomprehension between Danish and Norwegian is due to the fact that Norway stayed a little bit too long under Danish reign and that Bokmål (the less puristic norm of the Norwegian language) is heavily influenced by Danish, whereas Nynorsk (the more puristic, but lesser-spoken norm of the language) is based on more conservative western Norwegian dialects.


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## Encolpius

nightwica said:


> A Hungarian doesn't understand Finnish and neither vica versa, and maybe they don't find their languages just by hearing similar. But I'm sure a foreigner would find these two similar - because of the often usage of vowels



I agree, the mutual intelligibility is zero, but I wonder how many false friends we could find between Hungarian/Finnish and let's say Hungarian/German. And I do not mean international, Latin words in the latter case. Just open a Finnish-Hungarian dictionary, and I am not speaking about words after conjugation or declension, that's why I think there is some similarity to feel. Or if we could not find many false friends, we could find rhyming words easier.
Italian also uses many vowels but I cannot say it sounds like Hungarian, so I think the important things should be intonation and maybe the music or what you call it.


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## sakvaka

Encolpius said:


> Italian also uses many vowels but I cannot say it sounds like Hungarian, so I think the important things should be intonation and maybe the music or what you call it.



Exactly. Finnish is claimed to sound "dull" and "monotonous", but would you, Encolpius, call Hungarian "dull"?

There are more differences in the pronunciation. Hungarian has many... what do they call them in English... _suhuäänteet_, eg. ʃ, tʃ, ʒ, dʒ, dz, z. Finnish has only s and ʃ. Besides, there aren't many diphtongs in Hungarian. In Finnish, they're more common.

_Italiassa on myös paljon vokaaleja, mutten sanoisi, että se kuulostaa unkarilta, joten uskon, että tärkeimmät asiat voisivat olla intonaatio — ja ehkä myös melodia vai miksi sitä kutsutaankaan._ (Encolpius)

160 sounds, of which 78 are vowels. Vowel percentage 48,75 %.
6 diphtongs, that's surprisingly little!*

I would love to see a similar calculation in Hungarian, or Italian! _Ci sono molte vocali nella lingua italiana..._ . 

* I counted the letter frequencies with this tool: http://rainbow.arch.scriptmania.com/tools/word_counter.html


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## Encolpius

When comparing with Italian I'd say Hungarian sounds dull, too, but I think I should listen to those 2 languages simultaneously to feel the difference. 

I checked a book which says this about Hungarian. 

vowels : consonants = 42:58
the most frequent vowel is definitely the E (26% of vowels) and the A (24% of vowels)
the most frequent consonant is the T (13,3%) and L (10%)

I'm trying to translate my text into Hungarian, but I am afraid I am not sure how that counting machine works. I got different results in Finnish. But maybe you can check it and compare the results. 

_Az olasz is sok magánhangzót használ, de_n_ nem mondanám, hogy úgy hangzik, mint a magyar, tehát szerintem az a fontos, hogy milyen az intonáció vagy talán a zene, vagy hogy is hívják ezt.

Anche l'italiano ha molte vocali, ma non direi che suona come l'ungherese, allora penso che la cosa piu importante sarebbe l'intonazione e forse la musica o come si chiama. 


_


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## Gavril

sakvaka said:


> Exactly. Finnish is claimed to sound "dull" and "monotonous", but would you, Encolpius, call Hungarian "dull"?
> 
> There are more differences in the pronunciation. Hungarian has many... what do they call them in English... _suhuäänteet_, eg. ʃ, tʃ, ʒ, dʒ, dz, z. Finnish has only s and ʃ. Besides, there aren't many diphtongs in Hungarian. In Finnish, they're more common.



_suhuäänne _would be _sibilant_ in English, although [tʃ, dʒ, dz] etc. are usually called affricates rather than sibilants.

By the way, when you say that Finnish has the sibilant [ʃ], are you thinking of recent loanwords like _shakki_ etc.?


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## Awwal12

> But I'm sure a foreigner would find these two similar - because of the often usage of vowels


Well, I personally do not. Yes, the both use vowels willingly, but it seems that in Finnish much more words end in vowels. For instance, in the last example provided by Encolpius I've found only two such words ("a"  and "zene").


> Finnish is claimed to sound "dull" and "monotonous"


I'd rather call it "viscid".  Hungarian doesn't make such an expression. But that may depend on a native language, of course.


> I agree, the mutual intelligibility is zero.


Furthermore, even between Komi and Finnish the mutual intelligibility tends to be zero. Both language belong to Finnish (Finno-Permian) subgroup of Finno-Ugric languages and even have a noticeable number of cognates (which sometimes are even evident ). Nevertheless, there are too few clear cognates to ensure communication, and that is aggravated by different phonology and different grammatical suffixes. No wonder that Hungarian and Finnish appear to be mutually unintelligible as well.

The main reason is that Finno-Ugric group is extremely old, and so are its subgroups or even separate branches. For a comparison, the entire Slavic group is probably of the same age as the Baltic-Finnic (also known as just Finnic) linguistic branch (which includes Finnish, Estonian, Karelian and some minor languages).


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## bibax

> For instance, in the last example provided by Encolpius I've found only two such words ("a" and "zene").


Four: a (2x), de, intonáció, zene


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## Awwal12

> Four: a (2x), de, intonáció, zene


Sorry for "intonáció" - I was damned sleepy...  But where did you find "de" there? I see "de*n*" only.


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## sakvaka

> I'm trying to translate my text into Hungarian, but I am afraid I am not sure how that counting machine works. I got different results in Finnish. But maybe you can check it and compare the results.


That did demand a bit more work than Finnish, because the machine didn't recognize foreign letters. So, I had to convert the texts into a format that people can understand .
_
Az olas iʃ ʃok magaanhaŋgzoot hasnaal, dɛn nɛm mondanaam, hoɟ uuɟ haŋgzik, mint a maɟar, tehaat sɛrintem az a fontoʃ, hoɟ mijɛn az intonaatsioo vaɟ talaan a zɛnɛ, vaɟ hoɟ iʃ hiivjaak ɛzt._

148 sounds, of which 63 are vowels, that's 42,57 % *(we won!!)*.
The most common vowel is "a" – 49,21 % of all vowels. Then comes "o" with 20,63 %. 
_
Anke litaliaano a molte vokaali, ma non direi ke suona kome lungereeze, alloora penso ke la kooza pju importante sarebbe lintonatsioone e forse la muusica o coome si kjaama._

142 sounds, of which 66 are vowels, that's 46,48 %.
The most common vowel is "a" – 31,82 %. Then comes "o" (28,79 %) and "e" (27,27 %).



> By the way, when you say that Finnish has the sibilant [ʃ], are you thinking of recent loanwords like shakki etc.?


Exactly. The sibilant has been more common in the past, but as "š" is slowly disappearing, the sibilant does so, too. Many borrowings have originally been spelt and pronounced with that sound: tussi used to be tušši and so on. I don't believe that original Finnish words would use that.



> Yes, the both use vowels willingly, but it seems that in Finnish much more words end in vowels.


That's a good point. Besides, when we compare open and closed syllables in Finnish, French and German, we find out that French prefers open syllables, German closed syllables and Finnish uses the both equally much.



> ... and even have a noticeable number of cognates (which sometimes are even evident ).


True; for example, Estonian is famous for its "false cognates" here in Finland :
häät = pulmad ('wedding', 'problems')
siivooja = koristaja ('cleaner', 'decorator')
haamu = vaim ('ghost', 'wife')
maailmantuska = ilmavaevad ('Weltschmerz', 'flatulence')
kallio = kalju ('rock', 'bald')
kirja = raamat ('book', 'Bible')


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## bibax

> But where did you find "de" there? I see "den" only.


but = de (den must be a lapsus tastaturae)


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## Awwal12

Then, sorry: my knowledge of Hungarian is rudimentary, of course. )


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## Christo Tamarin

Some decades ago, I visited Hungary and the Russian-speaking interpreter told us that there was no mutual intelligibility between Hungarian and Finnish. She told us that there was an expression, "Поезд отправляется." ("The train is departing.") which sounds identically in both languages. However, the Hungarian word for "train" means "is departing" in Finnish and the Finnish word for "train" means "is departing" in Hungarian. 

I am not sure about the story as I know neither of those languages. Also, I am not sure if she really knew Finnish.


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## Encolpius

It would be a really interesting story, but since I know no Finnish, it is hard to prove, but checked my little dictionary and I am starting to believe the interpreter just fooled you or was misinformed. 

Hungarian train = vonat; Finnish train = juna? (reminds me of the Hungarian "jön a (vonat)" = the train is coming)

Hungarian it departs = indul


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## sakvaka

Encolpius said:


> It would be a really interesting story, but since I know no Finnish, it is hard to prove, but checked my little dictionary and I am starting to believe the interpreter just fooled you or was misinformed.
> 
> Hungarian train = vonat; Finnish train = juna? (reminds me of the Hungarian "jön a (vonat)" = the train is coming)
> 
> Hungarian it departs = indul



In Finnish "(a/the) train departs" would be _juna lähtee_. But how about _vonat? Palaa_ (returns), _tulee_ (comes), _saapuu_ (arrives)... Are there any close verbs in Hungarian? And how about your double conjugations which I've heard so much about.


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## Encolpius

sakvaka said:


> In Finnish "(a/the) train departs" would be _juna lähtee_. But how about _vonat? Palaa_ (returns), _tulee_ (comes), _saapuu_ (arrives)... Are there any close verbs in Hungarian? And how about your double conjugations which I've heard so much about.



None of the verbs you mentioned match any Hungarian word.  And the vonat can't be because -t is the second person singular. So how about vonaa or vounaa or something like that. Double conjugation makes no difference here because it is an intransitive verb.  But checking some infoes I have found these false friends now: 

tiedän (Finnish: I know) - tieden (Hungarian: on yours)
tiedät (you know) - tiedet (a funny Hungarian swear word of sort)
meri (sea) - meri (he/she dares)
kuka (who) - kuka (funny word in Hungarian: dustbin or Hungarian name of Dopey, the dwarf)
eräs (some) = eresz (eaves)
apu (help) = apu (daddy)
heti (right away) = heti (week as adjective)
ken (who) = ken (he/she smears)
marja (berry) = marja (he/she bites (like acid))
hinta (price) = hinta (see-saw)
rokka (pea soup) = rokka (nice word; spinning wheel)
muki (cup) = muki (a bloke, very funny word)
puna (blush, flush) = puna (vulgar and funny for female genitals)
karja (cattle) = karja (his/her arm)
kasa (pile) = kasza (scythe)
kives (testicle) = kivesz (he takes out)
alku (beginning) = alku (negotiation)   
apina (monkey) = a pina (the cunt)

And what's more I think one could find more Finnish - Czech false friends, like: 

matka (Finnish: road) - matka (Czech: mother)
kolo (hole) = kolo (bicycle)


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## sakvaka

Encolpius said:


> None of the verbs you mentioned match any Hungarian word.  And the vonat can't be because -t is the second person singular. So how about vonaa or vounaa or something like that. Double conjugation makes no difference here because it is an intransitive verb.  But checking some infoes I have found these false friends now:
> 
> tiedän (Finnish: I know) - tieden (Hungarian: on yours)
> tiedät (you know) - tiedet (a funny Hungarian swear word of sort)
> meri (sea) - meri (he/she dares)



_Vonaa..._ nope, unfortunately. But wasn't Hungarian _v_ the Finnish _p _or something like that? Ponaa, pounaa, ponaa... Äsch, _palaa_ is the closest one. I am starting to believe that there's no connection.

Is _tieden_ "on yours"? In Finnish _teidän_ is the genitive of "yours". It would be nice to find other false friends. It's a pity that I don't own a F-H -dictionary...

EDIT: It seems that you've added some more. 
EDIT2: _Week as an adjective... _Did you mean _weak_?


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## sakvaka

Encolpius said:


> But checking some infoes I have found these false friends now:



Check your dictionary for _paszkot_, I can give you a clue: it's not a bird.  And _persze_ isn't "of course"...


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## Encolpius

sakvaka said:


> _Vonaa..._ nope, unfortunately. But wasn't Hungarian _v_ the Finnish _p _or something like that? Ponaa, pounaa, ponaa... Äsch, _palaa_ is the closest one. I am starting to believe that there's no connection.
> 
> Is _tieden_ "on yours"? In Finnish _teidän_ is the genitive of "yours". It would be nice to find other false friends. It's a pity that I don't own a F-H -dictionary...
> 
> EDIT: It seems that you've added some more.
> EDIT2: _Week as an adjective... _Did you mean _weak_?



Yes, it seems they just wanted to find a connection. 
Yes, tied (informal) or tiéd means yours tied-en (on yours). 
I don't have any Hungarian-Finnish dictionary either, just a vocabulary at the end of my textbook, but I just need to open any text and would ran into a lot (funny) expressions. For Hungarians short words with a doubled consonant and ending especially in -i sound funny and pleasant (like: kukka, kuppa, tutti)
heti is the adjective form hét (week; viikko?)


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## Encolpius

sakvaka said:


> Check your dictionary for _paszkot_, I can give you a clue: it's not a bird.  And _persze_ isn't "of course"...



I know the Finnish word paska  and knew what it meant.  It is a nice sounding word for me. The Hungarian pászka is a Jewish term.


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## sakvaka

Encolpius said:


> I know the Finnish word paska  and knew what it meant.  It is a nice sounding word for me. The Hungarian pászka is a Jewish term.



OK. _Paskot_  is the 2nd person singular form of the corresponding verb.

As for _hét_: I thought you had confused _weak_ with _week_. But I think I now have an idea of the "adjective form" of _viikko_. 

Encolpius: There are also some "humorous" karaoke videos in _Hungarian–Finnish_ on the most-popular-video-site-on-the-Internet-owned-by-the-most-popular-company-on-the-Internet (are we allowed to mention its name here?) I am not going to post any links or advertise them, but perhaps you find them funnier than I.


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## Zsanna

The adjective you are looking for is weekly (= heti). 

N° 34
tiedet - its first meaning is simply _yours_ (in Accusative) - like "I took yours" (e.g. your book). 
(I would not think many people would actually use it in the sense of something like  _Up yours_! - the meaning mentioned first because we usually swear less often than not.)

N.B. T_iéd(et)_ and _tied(et)_ are simple variants, there is practically no difference between them.

kuka - originally means _deaf and numb_ (= neutral description of a handicap) and I would warn anybody not to follow the old example when simple people found certain handicaps funny.
Even if it was originally that attitude that gave birth to its other meaning: a person who (being a bit thick) doesn't know how to grab his chances (= *mafla* or *mamlasz*). Now that is slightly funny, especially if you try to visualise such a person.

The expression seemed to go through the same evolution in English and the word _dumb_ would be the translation for these 2 words above - even if in English I don't think it goes with such a funny image of such a person. (= A slightly useless, bit dim but totally harmless - personage, who is just "standing there" with a spider-biter look on his face.)

So when Kuka is used as a dwarf's name in Snowwhite (or in other tales), this it is why it seems funny. 

N°28
I read ages ago that in Finnish the ratio between vowels and consonants is the highest for vowels compared to all the other European languages meanwhile French and Hungarian followed closely with the same ratio. But I do not remember the source anymore. I wonder if these sort of measures are really scientific or what they indicate really...

According to some of my foreign friends, Hungarian does sound monotonous.
I find it a bit strange because if you make an effort to speak "nicely" (in Hungarian), the idea is exactly to care about intonation, among other things. (And certainly not to rise it towards the end of a sentence that is not a question - as was said before.)
But maybe people in general don't do it so the general "buzz" is monotonous...


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## bibax

In Czech kuka means dust van/garbage truck (szemeteskocsi). It is an acronyme: Keller und Knappich Augsburg, a German company.

I think it is also the origin of Hungarian kuka = szemétláda (dustbin).


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## Zsanna

Yes, the half automatic rubbish collecting van as well as the dustbins that were introduced at the same time (I suppose) are both called _kuka_ in Hungarian as well and we borrowed the word from the Czech.
But I didn't know that the original was that acronyme, very interesting!


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## Encolpius

Can we say that Finnish is a Finno-Ugric language at all? I am asking that because I ran into some statistics about the Hungarian language where I read that about *55% of all Hungarian words* is of ancient, Finno-Ugric origin (5% onomatopoeic, 3% Slavic, etc.). Unfortunately I was not able to find any complete information about the Finnish vocabulary but read something that only about 300 words in Finnish are of Finno-Ugric origin. Has Finnish been influenced mostly by Nordic Languages? Thanks.


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## sakvaka

Encolpius said:


> Can we say that Finnish is a Finno-Ugric language at all? I am asking that because I ran into some statistics about the Hungarian language where I read that about *55% of all Hungarian words* is of ancient, Finno-Ugric origin (5% onomatopoeic, 3% Slavic, etc.). Unfortunately I was not able to find any complete information about the Finnish vocabulary but read something that only about 300 words in Finnish are of Finno-Ugric origin. Has Finnish been influenced mostly by Nordic Languages? Thanks.



Well *that* is an interesting piece of information! Unfortunately I don't have any reference tables, but don't forget the Baltic influence to Finnish. We have many cognates to them, too. Russian and Swedish affected us later. Besides, you were the first to separate from the Finno—Ugric group. I can see the images from the past in my mind: _The Ugrians left us, NOW we can make up a secret language!_ 

But I'm not a linguistic. It would be interesting to hear more.


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## Encolpius

I find this link very interesting, after checking it my résumé is there are only two mutually intelligible words: *kopp-kopp / kop-kop* (I think they are no false cognates, because  I doubt there were doors when we were together ) and the second word is *sarvi / szarv* (horn).


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## Encolpius

Finnish *illat *(evenings) - Hungarian *illat *(fragrance)


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## vianie

First, we have learned at school about Ugro-Finnic tribes and languages always, not Finno-Ugric. Isn't that relevant?

Secondly, which and how philological position seats Estonian among Finnish and Hungarian?



Encolpius said:


> I ran into some statistics about the Hungarian language where I read that about *55% of all Hungarian words* is of ancient, Finno-Ugric origin (5% onomatopoeic, 3% Slavic, etc.).



Tertio, I ran into these statistics, check out the references.


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## Encolpius

I checked in Wikipedia and some languages (Slovak, Spanish, Italian..) seems to prefer the Ugro-Finnic compound, while other ones (Hungarian, English, German...) the Finno-Ugric variation. The Oxford Concise Dictionary shows only the word Finno-Ugric.

I read the mutual intelligibility between Estonian and Finnish is like that between Spanish and Italian.


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## sakvaka

Encolpius said:


> I read the mutual intelligibility between Estonian and Finnish is like that between Spanish and Italian.


 
That's very true. There are closer languages to Finnish than Estonian.

PS: I used to think that Finns are the only people in the world who say _Finno-Ugric_. All the others say _Ugro-Finnic_.  But the truth seems to be something else.


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## sakvaka

Encolpius said:


> Can we say that Finnish is a Finno-Ugric language at all? I am asking that because I ran into some statistics about the Hungarian language where I read that about *55% of all Hungarian words* is of ancient, Finno-Ugric origin (5% onomatopoeic, 3% Slavic, etc.). Unfortunately I was not able to find any complete information about the Finnish vocabulary but read something that only about 300 words in Finnish are of Finno-Ugric origin. Has Finnish been influenced mostly by Nordic Languages? Thanks.



I *love *statistics, so I made a short survey (~ 70 words) around some nouns and verbs of J.L. Runeberg's _Vänrikki Stoolin tarinat: Sven Dufva_.   (That's a great book! Try it, if it has been translated into your language)

Results:
43 % original (Uralic or Baltic-Finnic)
19 % unknown
18 % Germanic
7 % onomatopoiec
4 % Indo-European
3 % Baltic
3 % Swedish
1 % Russian
------------
98 % in total

Naturally, _Vänrikki Stool_ was written in 19th century (and originally in Swedish), so modern words aren't included. Besides, my methods aren't very scientific.  But I think we all can see where the Finnish words come from. In my opinion, the figures of Swedish, Russian, and Baltic should be higher.


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## Encolpius

Very interesting and promising statistics for me, since I know German, but do not know Swedish. I always thought you adopted a lot more from Swedish. And sometimes we also adopted the same words, so we do not share them because of the common origin: tasku (Finnish) - táska (Hungarian), puoti - búdé, kartano - kert,


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## Freca

The inquestionable fact that Finnish and Hungarian languages are relatives at a certain level, does not mean, that these two languages have a common ancestor.
Relativeness could have other reasons.


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## Gavril

Freca said:


> The inquestionable fact that Finnish and Hungarian languages are relatives at a certain level, does not mean, that these two languages have a common ancestor.



Doesn't it mean that by definition?



> Relativeness could have other reasons.



I don't want to start a long off-topic discussion, but, what reasons did you have in mind?


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## Freca

To Gavril

In my opinion, language relativeness can occur for example in that way that a group of people takes over the language - even some of its basic structures - another group. Tribe A takes over the language of Tribe B. A thousand years laterthey appear to be language relatives. But Tribe B has a much closer language relative, Tribe C. This Tribe C never had any contact  with Tribe A  (that's why it is not a "common" ancestor) and has been extincted, perhaps  without  written material of their language.


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## Encolpius

Freca said:


> To Gavril
> 
> In my opinion, language relativeness can occur for example in that way that a group of people takes over the language - even some of its basic structures - another group. Tribe A takes over the language of Tribe B. A thousand years laterthey appear to be language relatives. But Tribe B has a much closer language relative, Tribe C. This Tribe C never had any contact  with Tribe A  (that's why it is not a "common" ancestor) and has been extincted, perhaps  without  written material of their language.



Any concrete proved example?


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## Norfren

Do you mean that a tribe  acquires, borrows a new language? This is the case of Lapps. It is generally accepted that the Lapps - who are physyologically quite a different race from the Finns - may be descended from some ancients subarctic race and at some stage they acquired a Finno-Ugric language.


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## Ayazid

Freca said:


> The inquestionable fact that Finnish and Hungarian languages are relatives at a certain level, does not mean, that these two languages have a common ancestor.
> Relativeness could have other reasons.




Finnish and Hungarian obviously have a common ancestor, however if the current Finnish and Hungarian peoples are ethnically related and how close they are to each other is a different matter.


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## galaxy man

sakvaka said:


> _Vonaa..._ nope, unfortunately.



It's a pity the Hungarian-Finnish train anecdote could not be fixed here earlier. 
Let's give it another try, this is how I remember the original Hungarian story:

-------------------------------------------

"Are Hungarian and Finnish similar?"

"They sure are! A short sentence proves it:
Hungarian: Jön a vonat.
Finnish: Juna vonna.
Meaning: The train is coming."

"This is great! It certainly proves it!"

"Yes, although there is a small "but".

"What is it?"

"Jön" in Hungarian means: "coming". "Juna" in Finnish means: "train".

-------------------------------------------

It certainly takes a second to digest the humor created by the absurdity of this "proof", when the meanings of the respective words are inverted, yet, it would be quite a good joke ... if it was true.

The Hungarian phrase is certainly correct. "Jön" is "coming" or "comes", (ö is pronounced as in German), "a vonat" is "the train". The whole expression is perfectly usable in Hungarian.

Can an appropriate Finnish verb be found that looks or sounds similar to "vonat", "vonna" or "vuna", which, added to "juna", would complete an acceptable phrase with the approximate meaning: "the train is coming" (or going, or moving, etc.)?


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## Gavril

galaxy man said:


> It's a pity the Hungarian-Finnish train anecdote could not be fixed here earlier.
> Let's give it another try, this is how I remember the original Hungarian story:
> 
> -------------------------------------------
> 
> "Are Hungarian and Finnish similar?"
> 
> "They sure are! A short sentence proves it:
> Hungarian: Jön a vonat.
> Finnish: Juna vonna.
> Meaning: The train is coming."
> 
> "This is great! It certainly proves it!"
> 
> "Yes, although there is a small "but".
> 
> "What is it?"
> 
> "Jön" in Hungarian means: "coming". "Juna" in Finnish means: "train".
> 
> -------------------------------------------
> 
> It certainly takes a second to digest the humor created by the absurdity of this "proof", when the meanings of the respective words are inverted, yet, it would be quite a good joke ... if it was true.
> 
> The Hungarian phrase is certainly correct. "Jön" is "coming" or "comes", (ö is pronounced as in German), "a vonat" is "the train". The whole expression is perfectly usable in Hungarian.
> 
> Can an appropriate Finnish verb be found that looks or sounds similar to "vonat", "vonna" or "vuna", which, added to "juna", would complete an acceptable phrase with the approximate meaning: "the train is coming" (or going, or moving, etc.)?



_vonna _doesn't sound at all familiar to me in this context. The phrases _Tulee juna _/ _Juna tulee _/ _Tässä (tulee) juna_ / etc. all mean "The train is coming", and there are probably other phrases you could use, but none that I can think of sound like _Juna_ _vonna._

We should let the native Finnish speakers have the final word on this, of course.


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## sakvaka

I don't think there's any verb that would match _vonaa_. Well, _vonkaa_ exists, but it means something very different (beg, usually for sex).


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## Gavril

sakvaka said:


> I don't think there's any verb that would match _vonaa_. Well, _vonkaa_ exists, but it means something very different (beg, usually for sex).



Something just occurred to me: what about _junavaunu _"train car"? If someone saw a train approaching, would it be normal to respond by saying "Junavaunu!" or similar?


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## sakvaka

Gavril said:


> Something just occurred to me: what about _junavaunu _"train car"? If someone saw a train approaching, would it be normal to respond by saying "Junavaunu!" or similar?



It wouldn't be "normal", but you've come up with the best explanation so far! I am mad that I didn't notice that before you. ;-) Probably it just needed foreigner's pair of eyes.


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## galaxy man

Gavril said:


> what about _junavaunu _"train car"?



Gavril, sakvaka, thank  you very much both of you! This may well be the missing piece, so the mystery seems to be solved. Of course it proves that  Finnish and Hungarian are very far apart, but this was the tenet of the thread,  anyway


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## Encolpius

From another forum and I am sure all know this old sentence: 

Hungarian: Zsebemben sok alma van. [I've got many apples in my pocket.]
Turkish: Cebimde çok elma var. [sounds very similar to the Hung. sentence]

I find that more convincing than the jön a vonat.


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## Awwal12

> From another forum and I am sure all know this old sentence:
> 
> Hungarian: Zsebemben sok alma van. [I've got many apples in my pocket.]
> Turkish: Cebimde çok elma var. [sounds very similar to the Hung. sentence]
> 
> I find that more convincing than the jön a vonat.


Well, it is totally different topic. ) They do not only sound similar, but also mean the same and each word is on its place: Zsebemben/Cebimde - "in my pocket", sok/çok - "many", alma/elma - "apple", van/var - "is". Just note, please, that "alma" is really a Turkic loanword in Hungarian and "zseb" is most likely too (correct me if I'm mistaken).


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## Csaba

Mutual intelligibility is zero, but the vowels are very similar. I hear Finnish often nowadays and it sounds very similar to Hungarian but I don't understand anything. (I am a native Hungarian speaker) Also the structure is similar as both are agglutinative and there are no genders but lots of cases


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## Norfren

> I hear Finnish often nowadays and it sounds very similar to Hungarian...


Very true. Especially people without knowing any Hungarian and Finnish very often mix the two languages, it depends upon the circumstances which one they assign. It happened to me several times that when walking in the streets at St. Petersburg and talking Hungarian, Russian people thought we were Finnish. The opposite was true in Poland: when speking Finnish in a restaurant, people at the next table thought we are Hungarians.


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## dinji

If you follow the link to the word list in html format on this page you will find some 440 of the most ancient Finnish word stems. Roughly one quarter of these occur in Hungarian as well. The existence of such a correspondance is marked for each word.

A very easily accessible list of the cognate words, and an introduction to the subject, is found here.


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## Ben Jamin

Lillita said:


> It is very interesting... The first thing that poor little school children have to learn when they get into school at the age of 6 or 7 is that they must not raise the intonation towards the end of the sentence. Sometimes not even in the case of questions! For example,
> _*Mennyi az idő?* (What's the time?)_
> _*Jól aludtál?* (Did you sleep well?)_
> _*Hány éves vagy?* (How old are you?)_
> _*Hogy hívnak?* (What's your name?)_​Well, it seems that by the end of school, we forget this simple rule about not raising the intonation and we speak as if we had never heard of it!
> Of course, this rule can change when you want to give emotion to what you are saying...


 
I have been to Hungary many times, and was always impressed with the invariably falling tone of every sentence. A Hungarian sentence always begins on a fairly high pitched tone, just to fall metodically until the very end, with practically no breaks between the words or word groups.


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## Ben Jamin

Hakro said:


> I've been in Hungary just once, about 20 years ago, and I found even the sound of the language as strange as any other foreign language.
> 
> There are only a dozen of Hungarian and Finnish words that have similarities: hand (kéz - käsi), blood (vér - veri) and other basic words that are very old.
> 
> The similarities in grammar might make it easier to understand the sturcture of Hungarian language, I mean easier than for other Europeans, but still it's very hard for us to learn, much harder than Estonian, for example.


 
There is a rather nonsensical sentence concocted by linguists that illustrates the relation between Finnish and Hungarian:
Kala uiskelee elevänä vesien alla. 
Hal uszkal elevenen viz alatt.
(Fish swims alive under water)
NB! Not correct grammatically.


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## Encolpius

Ben Jamin said:


> I have been to Hungary many times, and was always impressed with the invariably falling tone of every sentence. A Hungarian sentence always begins on a fairly high pitched tone, just to fall metodically until the very end, with practically no breaks between the words or word groups.



Thanks, very interesting comment. Unfortunately I cannot learn much about suprasegmental language features, but once a Czech friend of mine drew my attention to that problem with Hungarian - Czech difference. I wonder if that melody exists only in Hungarian. He said it is because we tend to have very long words, so we start at a high pitch to have enough air at the end.


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## Ben Jamin

sakvaka said:


> Well *that* is an interesting piece of information! Unfortunately I don't have any reference tables, but don't forget the Baltic influence to Finnish. We have many cognates to them, too. Russian and Swedish affected us later. Besides, you were the first to separate from the Finno—Ugric group. I can see the images from the past in my mind: _The Ugrians left us, NOW we can make up a secret language!_
> 
> But I'm not a linguistic. It would be interesting to hear more.


 That's definitely not correct. Finnish has been havily influenced by early IE languages (mostly Baltic), then by old Germanic, then Swedish, but it IS a genuinely Finno-Ugric language. I do not know the exact percent of the FU words, but I think it's not much less than 50%.


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## sakvaka

Ben Jamin said:


> That's definitely not correct. Finnish has been havily influenced by early IE languages (mostly Baltic), then by old Germanic, then Swedish, but it IS a genuinely Finno-Ugric language. I do not know the exact percent of the FU words, but I think it's not much less than 50%.



Sorry, I mixed the terms up! Words influenced by Baltic languages are naturally not _cognates_ but _borrowings_... 

Edit: Those ideas aren't new here. See 
http://forum.wordreference.com/showpost.php?p=8743244&postcount=50 and 
http://forum.wordreference.com/showpost.php?p=7710560&postcount=13


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## dinji

Ben Jamin said:


> That's definitely not correct. Finnish has been havily influenced by early IE languages (mostly Baltic), then by old Germanic, then Swedish, but it IS a genuinely Finno-Ugric language. I do not know the exact percent of the FU words, but I think it's not much less than 50%.


 


dinji said:


> If you follow the link to the word list in html format on this page you will find some 440 of the most ancient Finnish word stems.


 
If you follow the link to the word list in html format on this page you will find that there is more than a hundred word stems from Baltic, probably close to 200. Words of Indo-Iranian origin amounts to significantly less than one hundred, i have not counted them. Only the oldest of Proto-Germanic word stems are also counted around one hundred. In total Paleo- and Proto-Germanic and Proto-Norse stems have been estimated at around 450. Only this number is roughly double to the amount of stems proven to be inhereted fro Proto-Uralic.

So out of wordstems more than 1000 years old with an known etymology yu could give a very indicative estimate that 50% would be Proto-Germanic or Proto-Norse. Inhereted stems amount to more than 20% (depending how you count Finno-Permic stems of limited distribution), Baltic stems 20% and Indo-Iranian and Proto-Indo-European borrowings would account for less than 5%. Of course stems of unknown origin are not counted here, these are numerous as well.


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## Vaskez

Ben Jamin said:


> There is a rather nonsensical sentence concocted by linguists that illustrates the relation between Finnish and Hungarian:
> Kala uiskelee elevänä vesien alla.
> Hal uszkal elevenen viz alatt.
> (Fish swims alive under water)
> NB! Not correct grammatically.




Heh, just joined and I was about to post the same thing 

Az eleven hal a víz alatt úszik, would also be correct grammatically

Interesting discussion, but wow, I've never hear ANYONE think that Finnish and Hungarian are mutually intelligible!  There are maybe a few dozen words that sound similar and that's about it, check out wikipedia (search for "swadesh lists for finno-ugric languages"


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## dinji

Vaskez said:


> There are maybe a few dozen words that sound similar and that's about it, check out wikipedia (search for "swadesh lists for finno-ugric languages"


 
Since this question arises again and again i will post once more this link, with a list of the words cognate for Finnish and Hungarian, and an introduction to the subject. The site (which omits pronominals and particles) lists 109 word stems. Even with a margin of error this number would be very close to a scholarly consensus of today, give 10% in one direction or the other.


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## Ben Jamin

dinji said:


> Since this question arises again and again i will post once more this link, with a list of the words cognate for Finnish and Hungarian, and an introduction to the subject. The site (which omits pronominals and particles) lists 109 word stems. Even with a margin of error this number would be very close to a scholarly consensus of today, give 10% in one direction or the other.


 Only a few of them are recognizable cognates for non linguists: käsi, menna, voi, veri, uusi, sata.


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## Linguaman

Both Finnish and Hungarian are actually members of the Finno-Ugric branch of the Uralic family of languages, which, like English and most European languages, are members of the much wider Indo-European family of languages.

Both are what is technically called agglutinating languages in that they use suffixes where English and other languages would use prepositions or postpositions such as 'in', 'on' 'to'.

Although the vast majority of words in both languages have a common origin, most speakers of Finnish do not understand Hungarian, and vice-versa.


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## Vaskez

Finno-Ugric languages are NOT part of the Indo-European family. In fact, that's like the first thing stated on ANY encyclopedia page about Hungarian - how it is one of the few non-Indo-European languages in Europe

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_families


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## boros1124

Hi!
 Reassuring everyone that the Hungarian and Finnish language there is no similarity between any. I've seen a Finnish text and did not understand and I'm Hungarian. Learning perspective it is not the same in the two languages. Our other Hungarians in the conjugation. I do not know why you asked, but if you want to learn both languages, you'll need to learn to be separately szomorítsalak separately. Buy a good book:
h ttp://konyv-konyvek.hu/book_images/55a/999640955a.jpg


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## Vaskez

thanks, I feel greatly reassured


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## Zsanna

Hello all,

Thank you for your enthusiastic and valuable contribution in this thread.

However, as new ideas seem to be running short, closing time has arrived. 

If you wish to add anything _new_ and _useful_, please contact me (= the moderator of the Hungarian Forum).

Zsanna
HF moderator


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