# Why is Hungarian so different from Finnish?



## whir77

Hungarian and Finnish are in the same family, so I expect them to be on the same level as Romanian to Spanish or English to German! Why are they so different?


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## Zec

I don't think that is a fair comparison - Romance and Germanic languages are thought to have split no more than some 2000 years ago (Germanic a bit earlier than Romance), while the split of Uralic languages is comparable to those of Indo-European languages - up to 6000 years ago. Therefore, a better comparison would be between Irish and Bengali. And these two languages certainly aren't very similar!


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## Ben Jamin

Zec said:


> I don't think that is a fair comparison - Romance and Germanic languages are thought to have split no more than some 2000 years ago (Germanic a bit earlier than Romance), while the split of Uralic languages is comparable to those of Indo-European languages - up to 6000 years ago. Therefore, a better comparison would be between Irish and Bengali. And these two languages certainly aren't very similar!


As far as I know Old English and Old Norse where mutually comprehensible still in the XI century. They did not need any interpreters at that time. Much the same could be said about Italian and Iberian dialects at the same time.


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## Zec

Ben Jamin said:


> As far as I know Old English and Old Norse where mutually comprehensible still in the XI century. They did not need any interpreters at that time. Much the same could be said about Italian and Iberian dialects at the same time.



Ah, we seem to have a different idea of what it means "to split up". When a proto-language is defined, as is usual in today's historical linguistics, as a unified common ancestor of a certain number of daughter languages, the split begins with the first unique change a daughter language has made. Mutual intelligibility, of course, remains for some time after that first unique change.


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## Red Arrow

whir77 said:


> Hungarian and Finnish are in the same family, so I expect them to be on the same level as Romanian to Spanish or English to German! Why are they so different?


You should compare the Uralic language family with the Indo-European one. Hungarian and Finnish should look as similar as Romanian and English.


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## franknagy

Look at the map. How far is Hungary from Finland?
Is there a continuum of Uralic dialects in these thousand of kilometers, and/or languages like from Occitan to Gallego, Portuguese, or like Czech-Slovak-Ruthenian-Ucranian-Russian? No.
When were Hungarian and Finnish people separated and wandered towards opposite directions. Four thousand years ago.
Have they met similar people during their migration? Partly. Finish people have not met Turkish tribes. Hungarian people have not met Swedish people.
Two common external linguistic influences exist, however: Russian and German.


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## Ben Jamin

franknagy said:


> Look at the map. How far is Hungary from Finland?
> Is there a continuum of Uralic dialects in these thousand of kilometers, and/or languages like from Occitan to Gallego, Portuguese, or like Czech-Slovak-Ruthenian-Ucranian-Russian? No.
> When were Hungarian and Finnish people separated and wandered towards opposite directions. Four thousand years ago.
> Have they met similar people during their migration? Partly. Finish people have not met Turkish tribes. Hungarian people have not met Swedish people.
> Two common external linguistic influences exist, however: Russian and German.


Also Latin and French, even though they were much weaker, especially on Finnish I believe.


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## killerbee256

Keep in mind, Hungarian is most closely related to Komi, Khanty and Mansi in central Asia, Hungarians migrated west ward in the early middle ages.
Mansi language - Wikipedia See how much more similar they are compared to Finnish and Hungarian. Here's a map to help to visualize the distances https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ae/Lenguas_finougrias.png .


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## Radik Safin

Hungarian word "esz" [mind, intellect, memory] comes from the Uzbek word "эс" (es) [memory].

Bashkir word "иç" (eeth as teeth or ith as with) [mind, memory].



What does this mean?


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## franknagy

Radik Safin said:


> Hungarian word "esz" [mind, intellect, memory] comes from the Uzbek word "эс" (es) [memory].



A little correction:
ész = mind, intellect, memory,
esz = root of "to eat",
esz = musical half-tone.


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## Radik Safin

franknagy said:


> A little correction:
> ész = mind, intellect, memory,
> esz = root of "to eat",
> esz = musical half-tone.



What do you think the Hungarian word "ész" has any relation to the ancient Greek word "ἱστορία" (history)?


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## franknagy

Radik Safin said:


> What do you think the Hungarian word "ész" has any relation to the ancient Greek word "ἱστορία" (history)?


No. These two words are not related.


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## Radik Safin

franknagy said:


> No. These two words are not related.



What do you think Hungarian word "alma" [an apple] has any relation to Komi word "улмӧ" (ulmӧ) [an apple]?


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## OBrasilo

Both might be borrowed from Turkic languages, compare Turkish _elma_.


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## Gavril

The fact that Hungarian and Finnish are so often mentioned in the same breath is not because they're particularly closely related, but because they happen to be two of only three Uralic languages that are official languages in their respective countries (with all the international attention that this status brings), and they were the only two such languages prior to Estonia's independence.

An equivalent question on the IE side would be e.g. "Why is Polish so different from Albanian?" (In fact, Albanian and almost any other IE language might be a good point of comparison here.)


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## Hummermeister

I have heard in this a joke. At one time there was a language "exchange"; Finnish get all the vowels, Hungarian all the consonants

Perhaps it sound different in German, but as I once have been told this, I laugh so, so much.


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## franknagy

OBrasilo said:


> Both might be borrowed from Turkic languages, compare Turkish _elma_.


Almati, capical of Kazakhstan = Almák-atyja in Hungarian = The Father of Apples in English.


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## Ben Jamin

I would say that Finnish and Hungarian show a stunningly high degree of similarity of grammar and phonetics for two languages that split so long time ago. Try to compare any two IE languages divided by the same span of time and you won't find any two that are so alike,
And now an anecdote: I was travelling together with a Finnish friend of mine and sat in the same compartment in a train with two Hungarians. My Finnish friend said to me: "The language they speak sounds very much like Finnish, but I don't understand a word.
Actually, linguists have managed to concoct even some sentences that are comprehensible in both languages like "Kala uiskelee elävänä veden alla - Hal uskal eleven viz alatt".


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## Gavril

Ben Jamin said:


> And now an anecdote: I was travelling together with a Finnish friend of mine and sat in the same compartment in a train with two Hungarians. My Finnish friend said to me: "The language they speak sounds very much like Finnish, but I don't understand a word.
> Actually, linguists have managed to concoct even some sentences that are comprehensible in both languages like "Kala uiskelee elävänä veden alla - Hal uskal eleven viz alatt".



I can't speak for native speakers, but I'm fairly sure that that sentence is not mutually comprehensible for most speakers of Hungarian/Finnish. The point of that sentence is that it includes only cognate words, so if you are an etymological expert, then you can recognize most (or all) of the common elements.


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## ahvalj

I agree that the sounds of Finnish and Hungarian have something in common:  monotonous long words with chains of ö and ü, but strangely this is the particularity of only these two languages, all other Uralic languages I have heard sound differently, even the non-Russified Estonian (it has a lower and rather gurgling sound with extreme tone movements vs. the almost toneless Finnish). Both Mordovian languages (the sister lineage to Baltic-Finnic) in contrast have an almost Russian intonation and articulation, and it is disputed among linguists whether Russian influenced Mordovian or this was the Volgaic substrate that shaped the characteristic articulation of the Middle Russian dialects and hence of the standard language.


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## ilocas2

To me Hungarian sounds like Slovak, and Finnish doesn't sound like any other language.


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## Radik Safin

OBrasilo said:


> Both might be borrowed from Turkic languages, compare Turkish _elma_.





franknagy said:


> Almati, capical of Kazakhstan = Almák-atyja in Hungarian = The Father of Apples in English.



The Udmurt word 'улмо' (ulmo) [an apple]...


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## rushalaim

Some scholars are saying, that according to DNA one may suppose, Turks invaded into Hungary and slaughtered all males completely, but Turks took females as wives. So, though, Hungarian-language and Finnish in common family, but Hungarian-people are Turks indeed.


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## franknagy

rushalaim said:


> Some scholars are saying, that according to DNA one may suppose, Turks invaded into Hungary and slaughtered all males completely, but Turks took females as wives. So, though, Hungarian-language and Finnish in common family, but Hungarian-people are Turks indeed.


That is an exaggeration. First reason: the devastation of the Hungarian land during the 150+ years of Turkish occupation was less that that of the 15 years of expulsion of Turks done by the Gerrnan imperial troops.  

There is a Hungarian saga about the chase Golden Hind which might contain the truth about the  Turkish-Hungarian blood mixing. 
Once upon a time when Hunor and Magor, sons of chieftain Nimrod, brethren rode each with 100 warriors to a hunt somewhere on the coast of the Azovian Sea. The saw a Golden Hind whom they could not shot with their arrows. Finally they found the 2  daughters of King Dul and their 2×100 maidservants. The chieftain sons took King Dul's daughters. The warriors took the maidservants.

If you consider this saga not as the proof of Hun-Hungarian brotherhood put you suppose that Dul's people was Finnougric and Nimrod was Turk the sage is explains the language of the culture of the Magyar's conquering Hungary.


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## ahvalj

ahvalj said:


> Both Mordovian languages (the sister lineage to Baltic-Finnic) in contrast have an almost Russian intonation and articulation, and it is disputed among linguists whether Russian influenced Mordovian or this was the Volgaic substrate that shaped the characteristic articulation of the Middle Russian dialects and hence of the standard language.


An example of the Erzyan speech: http://vaigel.ru/broadcast/play/596cab886c7a5_8743641.mp3 Sorry for the disaster they consider music ,-(

(Erzyans themselves: эрзяне - Поиск в Google)


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