science

History of the Hungarian language

History of the Hungarian language is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand History of the Hungarian language rather than just read about it. In short: Hungarian is a Uralic language of the Ugric group. It has been spoken in the region of modern-day Hungary since the Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin in the late 9th century.

Key takeaways

History of the Hungarian language belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect History of the Hungarian language to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of History of the Hungarian language from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Hungarian is a Uralic language of the Ugric group. It has been spoken in the region of modern-day Hungary since the Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin in the late 9th century. Hungarian's ancestral language probably separated from the Ob-Ugric languages during the Bronze Age. There is no attestation for a period of close to two millennia. Records in Old Hungarian begin fragmentarily in epigraphy in the Old Hungarian script beginning in the 10th century; isolated Hungarian words are attested in manuscript tradition from the turn of the 11th century. The oldest surviving coherent text in Old Hungarian is the Funeral Sermon and Prayer, dated to 1192. The sermon begins with the words Latiatuc feleym zumtuchel mic vogmuc. yſa pur eſ chomuv uogmuc (/laːtjaːtuk fɛlɛim symtyxːɛl mik vɔɟmuk iʃaː por eʃ xɔmou vɔɟmuk/ — "Do you see, my friends, what we are: truly, we are only dust and ash.") The first Hungarian translation of the Bible is the Hussite Bible, dated to 1416. The Old Hungarian period by convention covers Medieval Hungary, from the initial invasion of Pannonia in AD 896, to the collapse of the Kingdom of Hungary following the Battle of Mohács of 1526. Printing begins during Middle Hungarian, from 1526 to 1772, i.e. from the first books printed in Hungarian to the Age of Enlightenment, which prompted language reforms that resulted in the Modern Hungarian language. Events of the 1530s and 1540s brought a new situation to the country: the time of Humanism – which had flourished only a few decades earlier under Matthias Corvinus – was over; the population, both in villages and towns, was terrorized by Ottoman raids; the majority of the country was lost; and the remainder began to feel the problems of the new Habsburg rule. This predicament caused backwardness in the cultural life as well. However, Hungary, with the great territorial and human losses, soon entered into a new cultural era, the Reformation. This religious movement heartened many authors to find new ways. Cultural life was primarily based in Transylvania, but Royal Hungary also saw the rebirth of the Hungarian culture. The first printed book written in Hungarian was printed in Kraków in the Kingdom of Poland in 1533. It is a partial Bible translation, containing the Pauline epistles. The translation was done by Benedek Komjáti. The New Testament's first printed edition was published by János Sylvester (1541). He also composed the first scientific analysis of the Hungarian language, in 1539, titled "Grammatica Hungarolatina". Like Komjáti, Sylvester printed his works in Cracow. The previous publications, however, were not Protestant in their sense. The first directly reformed Hungarian book was Imre Ozorai's Argument, published in Cracow, in 1535. Among other works, Aesop's Fables – a collection of moral short stories – was first translated into Hungarian by Gábor Pesti (1536). These are the first denoted Hungarian short stories. The first attempt to standardize Hungarian was by Mátyás Bíró Dévai. He proposed a logical and feasible orthography to the language. His book, Orthographia, is known from its second edition, printed in 1549.

Prehistory

Separation from Common Uralic

The history of the Hungarian language begins with the Uralic era, in the Neolithic age, when the linguistic ancestors of all Uralic languages coexisted in the area of the Ural Mountains.

Many Hungarian words, particularly among the language's most basic vocabulary (cf. Swadesh list) are traced back to common Uralic origin: words of a corresponding shape occur in other Uralic languages as well, and linguists have not been able to classify them as loanwords. Those that are not present in the Samoyedic languages are commonly also described as being of Finno-Ugric origin, but the existence of a definite distinction between "Uralic" and "Finno-Ugric" is disputed. (See Uralic languages#Traditional classification.) As the Uralic unity disintegrated between the 4th and the 2nd millennium BC, the speakers of Samoyedic languages moved eastwards, while others, such as the Finnic and Hungarian speakers, moved westward. Hungarian and the Ob-Ugric languages show several similarities and are known as the Ugric group, which is commonly (but not universally) considered a proper sub-branch of Uralic: that is, the Hungarian and Ob-Ugric languages would descend from a common Proto-Ugric language. The speakers of Ugric languages were still living close together approximately until 1000 BC, when the ancestors of Hungarians separated for good from the Ob-Ugrians.

Proto-Hungarian

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with History of the Hungarian language

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what History of the Hungarian language claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to History of the Hungarian language before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about History of the Hungarian language ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of History of the Hungarian language

In research: History of the Hungarian language appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses History of the Hungarian language in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: History of the Hungarian language is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics History of Hungary by topic, Hungarian language, Hungarian prehistory, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for History of the Hungarian language outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study History of the Hungarian language in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what History of the Hungarian language means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain History of the Hungarian language out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is History of the Hungarian language in simple terms?

Hungarian is a Uralic language of the Ugric group. It has been spoken in the region of modern-day Hungary since the Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin in the late 9th century.

Why does History of the Hungarian language matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study History of the Hungarian language?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on History of the Hungarian language.