The history of the Hungarian language

The Hungarian language is approximately 3,000 years old. However, over the centuries, it has changed a lot. Read this article to discover the history of the Hungarian language!

Language Family

The Hungarian (magyar) language is a member of the Finno-Ugric group of the Uralic language family. In addition, Hungarian belongs to the Ugric branch of Finno-Ugric. Although Hungarian is spoken mainly in Hungary, people living in for example Slovakia, Romania, Austria, Croatia and Slovenia use it, too.

The history of the Hungarian language consists of different phases:

• Early Hungarian period: from around 1000 BC – 896 AD
• Old Hungarian period: 896 – 1526
• Middle Hungarian period: 1526 – 1772
• Modern Hungarian period: from 1772 to the present

The Pre-Hungarian Period

Before Hungarian became an independent language, there was a so-called Pre-Hungarian period. The earliest words used for fishing and hunting show Finno-Ugric origin, writes mek.oszk.hu. The words for horse, halter, saddle and dog also originate from this era. Furthermore, family relations must have been important as already in this period, Hungarians used words for mother, daughter, etc.

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The Early Hungarian Period

Starting with the separation from the Ugric language community, this period ended with the conquest of the Carpathian Basin. For this period, the enrichment of vocabulary is characteristic. Hungarian ancestors are likely to have met ancient Turkic, ancient Iranian and other languages. This is proven by Turkish (nyak, nyár, homok, harang) (neck, summer, sand, bell), Iranian (tehén, tej, tíz) (cow, milk, ten) and words of unknown origin (ápol, gyámol, csen, gyanú) (care, guardian, lure, suspicion), writes arcanum.com.

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The Old Hungarian Period