Language of Hungary

Hungarian is the official language of Hungary and an official language of the European Union. Magyar is the Hungarian name for the language. There are about 13 million native speakers of Magyar out of which 9.5 to 10 million of them live in modern-day Hungary.

Hungarian is one of the official languages of Vojvodina and also an official language of the three municipalities in Slovenia, namely, Hodoš, Dobrovnik and Lendava, along with Slovene. Hungarian is officially recognized as a minority or regional language in Austria, Croatia, Romania, Bukovina, Zakarpattia in Ukraine, and Slovakia. In Romania and Slovakia, it is an official language at local level in all communes, towns and municipalities with an ethnic Hungarian population of over 20%.  

Hungarian is a Finno-Ugric language, more specifically a Ugric language unrelated to most other languages in Europe. The Hungarian language is truly a language unto itself and is one of the small number of modern European languages that do not belong to the Indo-European language family. The language is not Slavic-based, nor is related to that of the Croats or Serbs or has any connection with German. The closest connection to Hungarian is probably a language that is least expected, Finnish. Hungarian actually belongs to a category referred to as Finno-Ugrian, which includes Estonian and a handful of smaller, rarely-used languages.

Hungarian also has distant ties to Turkic, Mongolian and some minor Asian languages. Despite this categorization, Hungarian fails to resemble any of these languages to a measurable degree. Connections between the Ugric and Finnic languages were first noticed in the 1670s and established, along with the entire Uralic family in 1717. The classification of Hungarian continued to be a matter of political controversy into the 18^th and even 19^th centuries. Today the Uralic family is considered one of the best demonstrated large language families, along with Indo-European and Austronesian.

The dialects of Hungarian identified by Ethnologists are, namely, Alföld, West Danube, Danube-Tisza, King's Pass Hungarian, Northeast Hungarian, Northwest Hungarian, Székely and West Hungarian. For most part, these dialects are mutually intelligible. The Hungarian Csángó dialect, which is not listed by Ethnologists, is spoken mostly in Bacãu County, Romania. The Csángó minority group has been largely isolated from other Hungarians, and they therefore preserved a dialect closely resembling medieval Hungarian.

Hungarian is a logical language where diacritical marks assist the pronunciation and even the emphasis of different syllables in words. The word is written as it is pronounced and vice versa. The diacritics symbols even control voice inflection and follow their respective standard vowels in the alphabetical line-up.

Important words and phrases

Yes – Igen

No – Nem

Good Morning – Jó reggelt kivánok

Good Afternoon – Jó napot kivánok

Good Evening – Jó estét kivánok

Good Bye – Viszont látásra

Thank You – Köszönöm szépen

Please – Legyen szíves

Where is the bus station? – Kérem,  hol van a busz megálló?

Where is the train station? – Kérem, hol van a vasút állomás?

Where is the toilet? – Kérem, hol van a W.C.?

Nice to meet you -  órvendek (hogy megismerhettem)

I don't understand – Nem értem

I don't speak Hungarian. – Nem beszélek magyarul

Numbers

One – Egy

Two – Kettó

Three – Három

Four – Négy

Five – Öt

Six – Hat

Seven – Hét

Eight – Nyolc

Nine – Kilenc

Ten – Tíz

By: Shuchita Bist

GOWEALTHY.COM © 2006

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